The good thing about the staff’s indifference – or what seemed like a good thing to me at the time – was that it meant I was mostly left to do whatever I wanted to do, which, during the school summer holiday when I first went there, was pretty much nothing except lie on my bed staring at the Eminem posters on my walls and trying not to think.
I was – and still am – a huge Céline Dion fan. But when a member of staff heard me playing one of her songs in my room one day, she told me, ‘You’d better not play that out loud if you want to fit in here.’ So after that I used headphones, and got the Eminem posters, not because it was the sort of music I listened to, but because it was what the other kids liked.
Although complaining about rules is something teenagers are expected to do, it’s surprising how scary it is when there are no boundaries at all, or at least none that anyone tries to enforce. So despite having wanted to get away from my family and have a different life, the fact that the kids at the unit drank, smoked – cigarettes and cannabis – and sniffed solvents while the staff didn’t seem to care when they broke the rules made me feel very anxious and unsafe. And perhaps if the curfew that was supposed to be in place had been enforced, I wouldn’t have been subjected to the terrible things that happened while I was living at Denver House.
The other girl who was living there when I arrived was called Abbie. She was 15, but the thick make-up and clothes she wore – mostly tight trousers, low-cut tops and boots – made her look older. Tall, slim and quite good-looking, she seemed confident and sure of herself, and appeared to do pretty much whatever she wanted, including disappearing for days at a time, apparently without any of the staff knowing where she was or asking her any questions when she came back. The few times I saw her during the first couple of weeks she ignored me completely. I could see that the lads were wary of her too, because they behaved differently when she was there, giving her fags whenever she demanded them and doing whatever else she told them to do – ‘Give me this. Fetch me that.’ – without any hesitation.
You don’t make friends in a place like that. You try to get on with people because you have to, and the best you can hope for is that no one actively tries to make your life miserable. So I suppose I was flattered when Abbie knocked on my bedroom door one evening after I’d been living there for about three weeks and asked if I wanted to go to a party with her.
I’d just got back from a miserably unsuccessful visit to see my parents, which I’d only agreed to go on because my social worker kept telling me I should go and see them so that I didn’t lose contact with them. A member of staff had given me a pass for the bus to get there and back, but when I’d rung the bell, my mum had opened the front door and told me, ‘You just don’t get it, do you? We don’t love you and we don’t want you. I don’t know why you’ve come.’
I found out later that she’d told my social worker that’s how she felt, but I was still encouraged to go home. What really hurt on that occasion, however, was knowing that my father and brothers were in the house and must have heard what she said to me, and yet they didn’t make any attempt to see me or say anything to me at all.
After Mum had shut the door in my face, I walked back to the bus stop in floods of tears, feeling rejected and utterly alone. So Abbie’s invitation came at just the right moment, when I needed something to take me out of myself, and I can remember thinking, ‘Don’t blow this, Zoe. This might be your one chance to have a friend here.’
I was a bit worried in case my jeans, trainers, hooded jacket and the cap I’d started wearing all the time so that I didn’t have to look people in the eye would make me look out of place at a party. But they were the only clothes I had, and as Abbie didn’t seem bothered, I followed her down the stairs, out of the front door of Denver House and down the road to where a blue Ford Fiesta was parked with its engine running.
Chapter 7
‘This is Zoe,’ Abbie said as she opened the front passenger door of the car and got in, while I clambered into the back. I don’t know how old I’d have expected her friends to be if I’d had time to think about it. Probably not as old as the three men in the car, who must have been at least twice our ages and, I felt, quite intimidating as I sat there with my shoulders hunched and my hands clasped tightly in my lap, trying to avoid making any physical contact with the man sitting next to me, and wishing I hadn’t come.
The rundown terraced house they drove us to was just a few streets away from the unit, and there was no party going on when we got there. Which was a relief in one way, because it meant I didn’t have to try to think of things to say to a bunch of self-assured people who would think I was stupid. In fact, I didn’t have to think of anything to say to anyone, because the three men joked and talked to each other, and sometimes to Abbie, and only seemed to remember I was there at all when one of them refilled my glass with vodka or handed me a joint.
After a while, when the alcohol and cannabis had just started to dull my senses, the man who had told me his name was Yasir stood up and said, ‘Come with me. I want to show you something.’
‘Me?’ I asked, looking up at him from where I was sitting on the floor leaning against a grimy sofa.
‘Yes, you.’ He smiled at me. ‘Come on. It’s upstairs.’
Maybe my senses had been dulled even more than I’d realised, or maybe it was just the naivety of a 13-year-old schoolgirl that made me feel safe, if a bit awkward, with Abbie’s friends and made me think as I followed Yasir up the stairs that he really was going to show me something.
‘It’s in here,’ he said, opening one of the three closed doors on the landing. I could smell the damp as soon as he turned the handle. But it was only when I stepped inside the room and saw the bare floorboards and stained mattress that I realised I had made a mistake to trust this man I didn’t know.
‘I don’t think …’ I said, taking a step backwards just before he grabbed me by the shoulders, pulled me inside the room and tried to kiss me. I was still more embarrassed than scared as I turned my head away, trying to avoid looking at him as I dodged his kiss. But I started to feel mildly anxious when he attempted to kiss me again, tightening his grip when I started to struggle, so that I couldn’t break free. Then, suddenly, he twisted his fingers in my hair, yanked my head backwards and began to unbutton his trousers. That was when the fear took over and my whole body began to shake uncontrollably.
‘Hey!’ He held me away from him for a moment, without loosening his grip. ‘It’s okay. Don’t worry. Just pretend I’m a doctor and I’m going to make you better.’
I don’t think I could have guessed that the one person I would think about when I was really scared was the person I’d been most frightened of for as long as I could remember. But as the man forced me to my knees, I found myself praying silently, ‘I need you now, Mum. Please, just love me enough to come and rescue me.’ Then, with his fingers still grasping a clump of my hair, he pulled my head back again and tried to force his penis into my mouth. I was panicking and trying to turn away, but he was much stronger than I was and his grip was like a vice clamping my head so that I couldn’t move.
‘Imagine you’re sucking a lollipop,’ he said, his voice perfectly calm as if he was talking to an even younger child than me. ‘You’ll be all right – if you do as I say.’
‘No – please – don’t,’ I pleaded with him. Then he pushed his penis into my mouth and some instinct told me that the only chance I had of keeping myself safe was by doing whatever he told me to do, even though the smell of sweat and urine was making me gag, and I was crying because what he was doing was so horrible and because I thought I was going to choke.
We’d had sex-education classes at school by that time, and I’d seen my dad doing things to my mum when they were both drunk and she was screaming ‘No’. But I was just 13 years old and a virgin, and I didn’t want to lose my virginity to anyone. So when he pushed me down on to the mattress and climbed on top of me so that his weight was crushing my chest and I could
n’t breathe, I became almost hysterical. I was still sobbing and saying silently in my head, ‘Please, Mum, help me,’ when he reached down with one hand, undid the zip on my jeans, then pulled them down with my pants and raped me.
I thought he’d done what he wanted to do and it was all over when Abbie came into the room, laughed, then turned around and walked out again. But when I tried to get up and follow her, he pushed me back down on the mattress again and said, ‘No. I haven’t finished yet.’
A few minutes later, after he’d ejaculated inside me, he got up, stood in the light in the doorway, pulled a dirty handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped himself clean.
It was only when I sat up that I realised he’d removed the trainer from my left foot and taken my left leg out of my jeans and underwear, while leaving everything on the right side in place. I remember being surprised that I hadn’t noticed him doing it. Then the pain kicked in as I tried to stand up, just as he said, coldly, ‘Stay there,’ then walked out of the room.
I was too scared not to do what he told me, but he hadn’t said I couldn’t get dressed, and I was just putting my left foot into my underwear when one of the other men came into the room. I knew what he was going to do even before he dug his bony fingers into my shoulders and forced me back on to the mattress. So I just lay there, rigid with shock and too exhausted to resist, while he pawed at me, because the damage had already been done, and as I was no longer a virgin, what would be the point of struggling and trying to protect myself now?
A few minutes later, after the second man had raped me and ejaculated inside me, he spoke to me for the first time since he’d come into the room, saying, ‘Get dressed and come downstairs with me.’ And because I didn’t want to give him time to change his mind, I tried to ignore the searing pain that seemed to be shooting from my groin to the top of my head and quickly pulled on my pants and jeans.
When we went downstairs and into the living room, Abbie was having some kind of disagreement with Yasir, the first of the two men who’d raped me. They seemed to be arguing about some money she was insisting he owed her, and as I sat down on the floor beside the sofa again, as if nothing had happened, it dawned on me that the money she was demanding was for taking me to the ‘party’.
In a way, understanding the role Abbie had played in what had just been done to me was almost as much of a shock as being raped had been, because it hadn’t even crossed my mind that she might have betrayed me in that way. I don’t know if she had sex with any of the men that night, although I’m sure she’d done so in the past, but I know she really believed they were her friends. So maybe she didn’t realise that they were exploiting her just like she’d exploited me, and quite possibly other girls before and after me. What I haven’t ever been able to understand is how she could do that to any other girl, even one she didn’t know or care about.
She was still arguing with Yasir when the man who hadn’t raped me handed me a glass of vodka and said, ‘Drink that.’ Maybe I looked as traumatised as I felt and he was trying to be ‘nice’, although that’s difficult to believe in the context of what had just happened. Whatever the reason, I was grateful for the drink and for the very slight easing of the tension in my body as I felt it burning the back of my throat, cleansing some of the dirt and disgust that still threatened to choke me.
I was just swallowing the last mouthful of the vodka in my glass when Yasir handed Abbie some money, then phoned for a taxi to take us back to Denver House.
‘Don’t tell anyone about anything that happened tonight,’ Abbie threatened as soon as we were sitting in the back of the taxi. ‘Do you understand? If you breathe a word to any of the staff at the unit, there’ll be really serious consequences.’ And because I was as scared of her as I had been of the men, I agreed to do as she said.
It was about 2 a.m. when the taxi dropped us off outside. Although we could come and go pretty much as we pleased during the day, the door was always locked at night, so Abbie rang the bell. It was a member of staff called Tess who let us in, a very short, slim woman in her late forties who had tightly curled blonde hair and an attitude that normally ranged from cold to indifferent, but who, instead of being angry and shouting at us as I’d expected her to do, responded good-humouredly to Abbie’s cheerful banter.
The waking night office was at the end of the same first-floor corridor my room was on, and as I followed them down the corridor, through the first fire door, past the contact room and up the stairs, I heard Abbie tell Tess, ‘I’m never going to drink with Zoe again. She just can’t hold her liquor,’ and Tess laughed, as if she’d said something really funny. They were still laughing and joking together when we reached the office, where I left them and walked on down the corridor, crying silent tears with every painful step.
When I’d closed the door of my room behind me, I leaned against it for a moment, feeling very frightened and lonely and wondering what to do. Then exhaustion suddenly overwhelmed me, so I took off my clothes and was just pulling on the pyjamas with pictures of teddy bears all over them when I realised I was bleeding.
I hadn’t had many baths during the three weeks I’d been at the unit. For the first few days no one had given me a towel and I was too embarrassed to ask for one, although just the thought of being naked and vulnerable with so many people around – even in a locked bathroom – made me feel sick with anxiety. Now though, I wanted a bath even more than I wanted to sleep, so that I could wash away the blood and the stench of the men who’d raped me.
It seems ridiculous when I think about it now that my confidence was so low I almost didn’t dare go to the waking night office and ask Tess if I could have a bath. But when I did go, she said, ‘No. It’s far too late.’ So I went back to my room and was just turning the handle on the door when a wave of nausea swept over me and I knew I couldn’t go to bed with blood on my legs and someone else’s sweat and semen on my body.
‘Please can I have a bath,’ I asked Tess again when I went back to the office. ‘You see, the thing is, I’ve just started my period and I’m in a real mess.’
‘Well, give yourself a wipe in the sink then,’ she said, sighing as she turned her back on me.
Upstairs again in my room, I cleaned myself up as well as I could using the flannel I’d been given when I arrived at the unit, sobbing because of what had just happened to me and because I had no one to turn to for help or even just a sympathetic word. I can remember wondering why no one ever seemed to realise that I had feelings just like they did, and that having to go to bed covered in blood would make me feel as though I really was less than nothing. Did Tess have a daughter, I wondered just before I fell asleep, and if she did, would she have told her to wipe the blood off her legs with a flannel and go to bed?
When I woke up a few hours later, my first thought was that I might be pregnant. So, as soon as I was dressed, I found a member of staff and told her I needed the morning-after pill. I didn’t explain what had happened – I was even more afraid of Abbie than I was of being pregnant – and after I’d shrugged in answer to the couple of questions she asked me, she shrugged too and said, ‘We’ll have to inform your social worker that you’ve had sex. And, of course, your parents will need to be told.’
At that moment, I think I wished more than I had ever done before that there was someone I could trust and confide in. It was horrible knowing that my first sexual encounter was going to be discussed by people who didn’t care about me and who’d assume I had chosen to have sex at the age of 13. I felt dirty because of what had happened, and I hated the thought that everyone would think it was my fault, when the truth was that the only thing I was guilty of was naivety and being lonely enough to have believed that someone like Abbie would really take me to a party, where maybe I’d make some friends.
By the time my social worker, Valerie, came to the unit later that day, I was so upset I’d decided to risk Abbie’s retribution and tell her what had really happened. I was crying and could feel my cheeks burning with
humiliation as I described what the two men had done to me. But I felt a sense of relief too, knowing that whatever happened next was now the responsibility of an adult who would know what to do because it was her job to look after children like me.
‘I told Abbie I wouldn’t say anything,’ I said, suddenly afraid again of the ‘really serious consequences’ she’d threatened if I breathed a word to anyone. I’d been staring at my feet while I spoke, and when Valerie didn’t say anything for a few seconds, I looked up at her and saw, to my amazement, that she was smiling. ‘Well, Zoe,’ she said at last, ‘you’re never going to be satisfied now with what most girls your age would think was a normal relationship. No heavy petting for you from now on. You’re only going to be happy with full sex.’ Then she laughed.
For a moment, I couldn’t make any sense of what she was saying. I remember thinking, ‘She can’t have listened to a word of what I’ve just told her. She wouldn’t have said something like that if she had.’ I think I was expecting her to say that what had happened to me was wrong, that I had been raped and she was going to have to report it to the police, because it’s a crime to rape someone, and a crime to have sex with a 13-year-old child under any circumstances. It certainly never crossed my mind that she’d laugh and make a joke of it, even if I hadn’t been so obviously distressed.
So hadn’t she been listening? Had she listened but misunderstood? Or was I over-reacting to something that wasn’t actually a big deal because it didn’t matter what happened to kids like me? I was still asking myself those questions when my social worker started singing some lines of a song from the TV programme South Park, which the kids in Denver House used to watch:
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