How I take things now is that I try to look to the future, but I am best dealing with things day by day. How I suffered at the hands of a family friend. How I coped with the immense pain of feeling dramatically let down and for Colin to have been pursued over a matter I had not complained of, when Huntley escaped similar charges, albeit he had not been pursued by a complainant, I do not know.
The impact on my life and other people’s lives is immeasurable. How do you make the police change? How do you make them pay? How on earth could they make it right for me? I’ll tell you how: by getting off their backsides. The police at ground level do a grand job, but the decision makers need to be taken to task for what happened in my case. If I sound bitter, that’s because I am bitter.
Although they have punished and sent Huntley to prison for what he did to Holly and Jessica, are all the other victims just supposed to go, ‘Oh well, he’s not going to do that any more, he’s in prison for the rest of his life’? Because of that, are we supposed to just forget about it and not worry about it?
I will have my day with Huntley, mark my words. I want him to be as scared and as frightened and worried thinking about what’s going to happen to him as I was that day that he was doing that to me.
I want to see the whites of his eyeballs when I bring that action against him, for I must do what the police and the CPS failed to do. In the words of Eleanor Roosevelt: ‘You must do the thing you think you cannot do.’
How scared do I think Huntley will be to be taken from the safety of his prison? As fucking scared as I was when he said he would kill me. I think in his psychotic little mind that he believes that one day he is going to get out of prison. I too honestly believe that one day he will walk away from that prison. And it is now my mission to stop him. I believe that is possible.
I still have nightmares. In fact, I had one that was the most real-to-life feeling. Huntley had been released because he had been given a drug that had rehabilitated him. He was back, working in society, and he had built himself up. He was given this drug, let out for the weekend and had to be brought back on the Monday morning, and this was the Saturday night. Somehow, the scheming molester had found out my address and he came to my house.
Unaware of his weekend out of prison, I was at home alone. I think it was scarier because Colin wasn’t there. I was upstairs. I pushed the bedroom door shut, pulled the curtains across the window and I was just lying in bed watching the telly when, all of sudden, I heard the floor downstairs creak. I jumped up and my whole body started shaking uncontrollably, the same shake as that day I found out that Huntley had been arrested over Holly and Jessica. I opened the door and I stood there thinking, Is it just me being paranoid? Don’t worry about it, it is just me being paranoid, I’m always doing this.
I heard another creak and I jumped out of my skin. It was him and he came up the stairs. The crazed, ghoulish look was back in his eyes and I had nothing but abject fear in mine. I managed to gasp, ‘What are you doing here?’ He said, ‘I’m here to be your friend now.’ He was coming out with all this Jekyll and Hyde rubbish. ‘I’m sorry for what I did, mate. I’ll be your mate now, your best friend. I’ve been taking these special drugs and, you know, I’m going to get a job now. I’m really sorry.’
Suddenly, I just pushed him and blasted at him, ‘Get away from me,’ and then he turned on me, dragged me into the bedroom and did what he had done to me in real life, and then he got up.
To some degree, and I know this sounds strange, I think the evil essence of Huntley still pervades places where I am. Call it autosuggestion, call it what you want, but that is how evil Huntley is.
When he enticed Holly and Jessica into his caretaker’s house, I reckon they scratched and kicked and screamed to get away, whereas I cowered in the corner begging for my life. In my opinion, Huntley sexually abused those girls. With Huntley, it was all about control; the sexual acts were secondary to that. This, I believe, was the only way he could become aroused. I think he has some sort of physical or psychological problem where he could only physically abuse, sexually abuse, before he could get any gratification. This is what I felt when he was abusing me, that he was not becoming aroused and he was not genuinely gaining anything for himself other than getting the power, through sexual abuse, that in turn aroused him. It was sexual power.
In the two agonising hours in that secluded orchard, he tried to brainwash me in order to get that control, to have that power over me.
I felt that tightening grip of his evil persistence, wearing and grinding me down. This, I think, is what he could have done with Holly and Jessica. That he would have tried to grind them down. He could have said to one of them, ‘If you leave, I’ll strangle her right now.’ I think he did that to those girls.
I believe that the fact that Huntley escaped the consequences of his vile attack on me allowed him to penetrate deep into the heart of his obsessions without fear of being caught. He convinced himself that there was no way he could be caught and he went ahead and disposed of his victims’ bodies. He must have been laughing at the police. Well, let’s see who has the last laugh now.
12
A SNAKE IN THE GRASS
COLIN’S TRIAL FOR SUPPOSEDLY ABDUCTING ME WAS LISTED AS A FOUR-WEEK HEARING, BUT IT WAS CUT SHORT DRAMATICALLY ON THE DAY OF THE HEARING. We went to court in the morning and all of my family were there. And there were all these people there who were willing to give statements as to how they saw Colin bundle me into the back of his car and all sorts of silly things.
In the pre-hearing meeting the night before the trial, Colin’s lawyer, Lloyd Edwards, explained that he had seen DC Condon and DC Fell in the police station one night recently.
Colin, none the wiser, said, ‘Oh, right.’
These were the people who made the comments to Colin when he first handed himself in that night, like, ‘I knew I would get hold of you’ and ‘I knew I would find you’, so obviously they had taken a dislike to him.
The lawyer went on, ‘They said they are going to have you for underage sex when you leave court.’
‘Yes,’ said Colin.
After catching his breath, the lawyer continued, ‘They’re going to rearrest you for underage sex and have you done for it and then, in the morning, when you go to court, they are going to put it to the court as well.’
It was explained to Colin that the Prosecution were offering a deal. ‘If you admit you had underage sex with Hailey, you walk free from the court today and you will not get arrested tonight when you leave this very courtroom or anything like that. You will probably get a fine and you will be put on the Sex Offenders’ Register.’
Defence counsel John Thackray told the court that Colin had not known how old I was at the time of the disappearance. He also made it clear that no complaint had ever been made by me against Colin and that we continued to live together in a stable relationship. ‘They are doing well in life,’ he said to the court. ‘He is in full-time work and supports her.’
In February 2003, Colin walked from court and escaped a prison sentence. Instead, he was placed on the Sex Offenders’ Register for five years after admitting having unlawful sex with me between 1 December 2001 and February 2002. He was also handed a three-year conditional discharge and £960 costs. Oh, and as for the abduction charges, Judge Trevor Barber ordered two further counts of abducting a child to lie on file.
When we came out of court, we went into the Duke of Wellington, behind the court, to have a celebratory drink. In the pub, we saw my mum, my dad and a few others walk in, and we started having a few drinks. Then, inexplicably, my dad got hold of Colin and said, ‘Welcome, mate. You made the right choice in doing what you are doing.’
The very same people who had been prepared to give evidence against Colin were now having to save face. To Colin and me, they said, ‘Of course, we didn’t want you to go to prison, that is not what we wanted.’
My mum was insincere when she bragged, ‘I was sitting with the judge.’ Oh, yeah, �
�Hi, mister judge, can I come and sit with you? My name is Mandy Edwards.’
Somehow I don’t think so. I do know the lawyers went to sit with the judge and the prosecution went as well, but that was when they sorted out the deal.
Just as some members of my family had betrayed me, so did a close friend who had come to stay with Colin and me for a while around this time. I took this person – whose identity I cannot reveal for legal reasons – out on a shopping spree. My bank card was always on the sideboard, but I had another bank card that I didn’t use, just in case I lost the first one.
With this friend living with us now, I felt uncomfortable about telling him to look away when I got money out of the cash machine, but when he was by my side I guess he cottoned on to my pin number. And then one day he took Colin’s car from outside the house, leaving a note that said, ‘I have borrowed your car, I hope you don’t mind.’ The cheek of it! He hadn’t even passed his driving test. ‘I will bring it back on Monday,’ he had added. This was on the Saturday.
Colin was on tenterhooks. ‘Oh, for God’s sake, I don’t need this,’ he said. If this bloke was out drink-driving and ran somebody down, obviously ownership of the car would be traced back to Colin.
By chance, my dad had seen this friend at the petrol station in Colin’s car and said, ‘What are you doing in that car?’
‘Colin let me use it,’ he said.
‘I don’t think so,’ Dad said, and drove the car back to my so-called friend’s house and called Colin to say, ‘Don’t you let this young lad drive your car.’
Colin was flabbergasted and told him, ‘I never. He took it and I’ve got the note here to prove that he said, “I have borrowed your car, I hope you don’t mind and I will bring it back on Monday.”’
Dad said, ‘Right, you come and pick up this car from his parents’ house.’
The snake had returned to his parents’ house without a word and two days later Colin picked up the car. I had arranged to go shopping in Meadowhall, in Sheffield, and when we got there I went to the cash machine to draw out some money. I entered my pin and twice the message came up, ‘Incorrect pin number’. I thought, How can that be an incorrect pin number, I’ve had it for ages? On my third attempt the machine sucked my card in.
I sensed something was amiss. I had pampered this bloke with thousands of pounds’ worth of stuff. I wasn’t rich, but I had just come into a few thousand pounds compensation money and wanted to put a little cheer back into his life. Little did I know that he would be a snake in the grass. Obviously, he had got hold of my spare card.
I called him after the weekend and asked, ‘Have you got this card?’
His reply didn’t surprise me. ‘Yes.’
I said, ‘Right, OK. I need to come and get the card as I need some money out of the bank.’
‘OK,’ he said, and Colin and I met up with him.
Knowing something underhand had gone on, I walked into the bank and asked, ‘Can I have a statement of what money has been taken out of my account, please?’
As I read through the statement, I saw £30 had been spent on petrol for the car, £10 on a pair of cheap shoes, and then my eyes opened in stark disbelief as I realised £500 cash had been withdrawn, and, with this and other expenditure I couldn’t account for, the total amount withdrawn was about £1,500, if not a few hundred pounds more.
I got back in the car where he was sitting. He was shaking like a leaf and I looked at Colin and he knew straight away what I was going to say. ‘Can I ask you something?’
‘Yes,’ he replied sheepishly.
‘Just be honest with me,’ I told him. ‘Have you taken any money out of my account with my card?’
The conniving snake sat there shaking, with a dreamy look about him as he blurted out, ‘Oh, yes. I… I… borrowed five hundred quid in June, so I could go on holiday with my girlfriend.’
I was incandescent with rage as I said, ‘Well, it would have been nice if you had asked me before you took my card and withdrew that money.’ Then I thought, I’ll have to keep him sweet, otherwise he won’t pay me my money back.
Making a mockery of my previous generosity, he made a paltry offer, ‘I’ll pay you five pounds a week out of my Giro, OK?’
I held back my anger as I said, ‘That’s fine.’ Well, it’s better that than nothing, I thought.
We went back to his parents’ house because he said he had a little bit of money there. I thought, That must be the other £1,000 that is missing out of my account, that he has got upstairs. As it turned out, he had been out on an all-weekend bender with his friends. I was mega-annoyed, thinking, You’ve been spending my money from all the crap that I went through and that money was for my benefit in a way. I took him in and he ripped me off.
I did report the matter to the police but once again was told that there wasn’t enough evidence to pursue the matter further. I shrugged it off and thought, Fine, every dog has his day. What comes around goes around. To this day, he has not repaid a penny of the money he stole from me. It may as well have gone down the drain. Gone in a weekend, £1,500 in a weekend. I could understand it if he had something to show for it, but he didn’t, he just spent it all on drink. He denied it and said that I had given him permission to use my account – my word against his.
By this time, my relationship with my mum and dad was so-so. To some small degree, they accepted Colin, but behind closed doors they were saying, ‘We don’t like Colin.’ They were putting on a show.
I believe my dad had said that he liked him because they used to go to the bookies’ together. Colin would just put a couple of quid in the fruit machine because he thinks it is a waste of money, whereas my dad would put £500 in and Colin would be amused by that. ‘Five hundred quid! You must be mad. Five hundred quid in a machine and it pays out something like four hundred. You are nuts, you are losing. No, no, no.’ My dad was a fruit-machine addict, the gambler that would be left with nothing.
The only bit of good news to come out of it was when, out of the blue, in October 2003, Colin received a letter from the Humberside Police about his name being on the Sex Offenders’ Register. Amazingly, common sense prevailed in a letter from PC Longstaff and PC Smales that said, ‘We have been discussing your case for some time in relation to the court placing you on the Sex Offenders’ Register when you were convicted in February this year. After consulting with our legal department and other forces, we have been advised that because you received a conditional discharge you should not have to register.’
Colin had had to go and sign on this register and tell them where he lived and all the rest of it. This was all done in front of the court and the papers had written about it, but the police weren’t prepared to go to the press and say, ‘Fine, we are taking him off this register because we feel he is not a danger.’
To Colin, that letter more than made his day. But then he had had no reason to be labelled with that tag in the first place. Yet Huntley can be the subject of numerous allegations and even then alarm bells didn’t ring.
Colin had been branded a ‘sex offender’ but he shouldn’t have even been on the Sex Offenders’ Register. The police had made another blunder and because of it Colin’s name was sullied in all the newspapers and on the internet. At least it has been disclosed here that they gave him an apology.
13
ABUSE VICTIMS’ TIME BEHIND SCARS
JUST ABOUT EVERY GIRL DREAMS OF HAVING A CHURCH WEDDING. All our trouble behind us – well, sort of – we married on the afternoon of 3 July 2004 at St Peter’s Church, in Humberston, with the Reverend Brian East officiating.
What marred our wedding to some degree were the veiled allegations and threats from certain members of my family before the day, but, all in all, I was relieved to end up in the arms of the man who really cares for me. At long last, we’ll spend our lives together, I told myself.
Of course, we were head over heels in love with each other and had never been so happy. And I don’t think I would be alive
today if it wasn’t for Colin’s normality. There are only a few people that are normal, I’ve decided.
Although Mum and Dad attended the wedding, none of my brothers was invited and, thankfully, none came to offer their blessing. Because of the press interest, we decided not to have a massive gathering. A lot of things were said, but, that aside, it was the best day of my life. There were many emotions running through me as we said our vows and, not surprisingly, I was very nervous, knowing that the world’s press were waiting outside to get a snap of us. Well, just like Hello! fiercely protects its wedding photos, Colin and I somehow managed to sneak to our limousine without any of them actually getting a photo of us. I had now become Mrs Giblin. It was what I had longed for, and the fairytale wedding I had dreamed of was now complete.
This was the first time that I felt loved and cherished. Colin used to say, ‘Nobody will ever touch a hair on your head, because I would be the one hurting them.’ I felt the safest I had been and the most secure. Obviously, it has everything to do with our love and the happiness, but we have developed such a strong bond of unity that nobody could break it, although some evil people keep trying.
Those trying to break the bond are family and ex-friends and people who judge us. While they are wasting their time judging our relationship, it’s really their relationships that are falling to pieces, not ours. We’re not just soul mates and lovers, we’re best friends, and we don’t let anybody come between us.
I know that some people might consider the age difference between Colin and me to be a problem, but I don’t think that age has got anything to do with it. Some people may disagree, but you can’t help who you fall in love with. I could be with somebody who is my age, go through all the trouble and all the things coming out in the press about Huntley and my husband’s finding out about it, and he might not be strong-minded enough to cope.
Hailey's Story--She Was an Eleven-Year-Old Child. He Was Soham Murderer Ian Huntley. This is the Story of How She Survived Page 17