‘I’m too big for you,’ he said, lowering my legs again before putting my hand on his penis and moving it up and down. When he ejaculated all over my fingers and my clothes, I thought I was going to be sick. But he was already cleaning himself up and pulling his stained T-shirt back over his head, so he didn’t even notice that I was retching.
I hated every single soul-destroying sexual experience I ever had, and sometimes, as on that occasion, the man would be so repulsive that just the thought of his clammy skin touching mine made me feel as though I would never be clean again. What upsets me most about that particular occasion though – even today – is that for once I didn’t try to stop him or say no, perhaps because I realised that, although Abbie had gone, nothing in my life was going to change.
Pete and Natalie had an argument in the car on the way back to Denver House that night, and when he suddenly swerved over to the side of the road and put his hands around her throat, I could see that she was as scared of him as I was. It was the early hours of the morning and when he dropped us off just down the road from the unit, we had to ring the bell – as I’d done many times before when I’d been with Abbie. This time, the door was opened by Frances, the woman with the sort of orange-coloured skin that comes from spending too much time on a sun bed, who had come to collect the television from my room the night I’d moved in.
Earlier that day, a nice member of staff called Sue had been on duty and we’d all been messing around giving each other piggybacks. It was good when something like that happened, because everyone would be laughing and acting normally for a while, like you’d expect kids our age to do. Sue must have written something about it in the file that was always handed over to the night-time staff when they came on duty, and as soon as Natalie and I had stepped through the front door, Frances said jovially, ‘What’s all this I’ve been reading about piggybacks? I want one.’
What she should also have read in the file was that I had asked not to be allowed to go out that night. And yet there I was, ringing the doorbell at almost 2 o’clock in the morning, clearly having had a substantial amount to drink. What Frances didn’t know was that I’d just had a prolonged session of sex with a man who was a stranger to me, who I found repulsive, and who hurt me, and that all I wanted to do was crawl into bed, close my eyes and not think about anything for the next five or six hours, until it was time to get up and go to school. So all I was said was, ‘I can’t give you a piggyback. I’ve had a drink and I might drop you.’
‘I’ll give you one.’ Natalie’s tone was as playful as Frances’s had been.
‘No. I want Zoe to do it,’ Frances persisted. ‘I want her to …’
‘Well, if you don’t want one from me, you can just fuck off,’ Natalie shouted over her shoulder as she stormed up the stairs, kicking the panelling as she went.
So then I thought I had to do it. Fortunately, Frances was quite small, but it felt weird to be wearily jogging around the ground floor of Denver House in the early hours of the morning ‘having fun’ and I only managed it for a few minutes before telling her I couldn’t carry her any more.
Somehow, I’d lost the key to my bedroom door while I was out that evening, and when Frances came upstairs to open it for me, she insisted on giving me a piggyback down the corridor. I don’t know why she did it. Perhaps she was just trying to show an interest in me, to make me feel that I had a friend. If so, it was a peculiar way of doing it, and after what had happened to me that night, it just made everything seem surreal, as if ‘normal’ was something that could change almost from minute to minute, depending on whatever some random person decided it should be.
Frances had taken me with her into town to get some shopping for the unit a few days after I’d moved in. I had seen her fly off the handle by that time and threaten some of the lads who were calling her names, so I knew she was quick to anger and hadn’t wanted to go with her, but felt as though I didn’t have any choice. She hadn’t spoken to me at all during the 15-minute walk into town, most of which I spent trying to catch up with her as she marched on ahead of me. I didn’t know why she was being so unfriendly, as if I’d done something wrong. So I was surprised when she said something nice to me a couple of days later. I can’t remember what it was, just that it made me feel special, which I suppose is how I might have felt on the night of the piggybacks if I hadn’t been so tired and distressed.
There were a lot of incidents involving Frances that occurred while I was living at Denver House that made me very confused about whether or not she liked me. Because there were quite a lot of staff members – three or four on duty during the day and three different people at night, one of whom always slept on the premises – it was difficult to get to know any of them, which I suppose is why I wasn’t particularly bothered about winning the approval of most of them. Frances was different though, and I suppose it was at least partly because she bothered to take the time to talk to me that I developed a bit of a crush on her. The problem was, her attitude towards me varied significantly from time to time, for no reason that I could ever guess at.
If you went to your room in the evening when the staff asked you to, the night staff would come in a bit later with a big Tupperware box of biscuits. Like with the clothes and bedding, the first person they took it to could choose the best biscuits – usually chocolate Bourbons and Jaffa Cakes – while the last person had to make do with whatever plain, boring ones were left. One example of how nice Frances sometimes was to me was that when it was her turn to do the biscuit round she would tell me, ‘I always come to you first.’ Or she’d bring me a chocolate Kinder egg or a can of fizzy drink and say, ‘I could get into trouble for doing this. I don’t do it for anyone else, you know,’ which made me feel special, because no one had ever paid me any attention or given me any treats before. Then, on other occasions, she’d say something nasty to me, or tell me she was going to leave Denver House to go and work somewhere else, then seemed to be pleased when I got upset.
I was drinking heavily at that time, saving the £3.50-a-week pocket money and £2 a day I was given for school dinners to buy bottles of strong, cheap cider called Frosty Jacks. Obviously I was too young to buy alcohol myself, so I would stand outside a local store and say, very politely, to someone, ‘Excuse me. Would you mind going into the shop for me, please?’ Sometimes I got it wrong, but I became quite good at picking the right people to ask, mostly young men or women who would come out of the shop a few minutes later and hand me my change together with a carrier bag containing a 3-litre bottle of cider.
On some nights, when Natalie wasn’t around, I would sneak out of the unit with my bottle of cider and my CD player, climb up on to the roof and listen to Céline Dion songs. I was only really able to cry when I was listening to music, and I would sit there with tears streaming down my cheeks thinking about the life I’d had at home and about what was happening to me now. Even though they were very painful thoughts and I felt incredibly lonely, I used to listen to the words of a song like ‘Where is the Love?’, look up at the vast expanse of stars above my head and think, ‘One day I will find someone who loves me and then everything will be different.’
Simplistic as it might sound, listening to those songs was what kept me going while I was at Denver House, because they made me believe that although I might never have a family of my own, I could eventually find someone who would make it possible for me to ‘spread my wings and fly’ and then the future could be very different from the present and the past.
Chapter 9
On one of the nights when Natalie arranged for us to meet a taxi driver outside the unit, he handed her a bottle of cider as we got into the car, then drove to a park where there were already four or five other taxis and at least ten men standing in a group beside them. Natalie had kept the cider bottle to herself, so I hadn’t had a drink before we got there and I was very scared when one of the men tapped on the window and she told me to go with him.
‘I don’t want to,’ I said. �
�Please, Nat, don’t make me go.’ But she just looked at me steadily, her eyes dark with threat, and hissed, ‘Just do what you’re fucking told.’
As soon as I stepped out of the car, the man grabbed my hand and dragged me towards where the other men were standing watching us. Natalie was watching too, from inside the taxi where she couldn’t hear me when I whispered again, ‘Please, Natalie. I don’t want to.’
As we were walking towards the men, they formed a circle on the grass and the man who’d grabbed my hand pushed me into the centre of it, where I was surrounded by a sea of grinning, leering faces. I can remember feeling as if I was trapped in a nightmare as I started turning around, searching for a way out. Then, suddenly, one of the men pushed me from behind, knocking the breath out of me and sending me sprawling on to the grass.
They were still all laughing as I got awkwardly to my feet. Then they started pushing me, their arms reaching out like tentacles to prod and poke me, and when one of them pulled down my trousers there was another ripple of laughter, which got louder and nastier when I reached down to pull them up and a different man yanked them down again, this time taking my underwear with them. I was crying by that time and while some of the men continued to grab at my body, others started pointing at me, saying things in a language I didn’t understand that made everyone laugh even more.
The only slight reprieve I had as I stood there sobbing and trying to cover myself up was when someone pulled the bobble out of my hair and it fell across my face. I couldn’t do anything to stop the men humiliating me, but at least I could no longer see them, and they couldn’t see the shame that was burning my cheeks.
I don’t know what would have happened if something hadn’t spooked them, sending them all scuttling back to their cars. But suddenly Natalie and the taxi driver were standing beside me, telling me to put my clothes on and get in the car.
I was shaking as the taxi driver started the engine, and I felt grateful to Natalie when she handed me the bottle of cider he’d given her earlier. I was swallowing mouthfuls of it between sobbing breaths when I realised the taxi driver was looking at me in the rear-view mirror. Then he laughed and said something to Natalie about me having ‘a jungle down there’, which was a joke they both expanded on, between fits of laughter, as we drove back to the unit, while I concentrated on trying to drink as much of the cider as possible.
I hadn’t drunk enough to stop me wanting to curl up on the back seat of the taxi and die when the driver suddenly turned round and snatched the bottle out of my hands, telling me, ‘I don’t think you deserve to drink this when my friends didn’t get a chance to have fun with you.’ Then he handed it to Natalie.
When we got out of the car outside Denver House, a young woman who had been coming out of the pub a few doors down ran up to me shouting something I couldn’t understand and punched me in the face. I’d never seen her before, so I think she must have mistaken me for someone else, and as Natalie had run off as soon as she started shouting, I just told her I didn’t want any trouble, then walked in the opposite direction, away from the unit, so that I didn’t have to pass the crowd that was gathering outside the pub.
It was Frances who let me in again when I finally got back to Denver House and rang the bell. My eye was already swelling and starting to close, and my hair was all over the place, but instead of asking me what had happened, she sighed and said, ‘I’m really disappointed in you, Zoe. It’s only yourself you’re letting down when you get into a fight.’ Which really hurt, because by that time I cared a lot about what Frances thought of me.
It goes without saying that being raped and sexually abused has a terrible effect on you, both mentally and physically. But although it may not be on the same scale, being humiliated and made to feel like a piece of shit does too. And as I got into bed and pulled the duvet over my head that night, I felt even more desperately alone than I had done on every other night for as long as I could remember.
The next day, Natalie came to my room and gave me a razor, and after standing in the corridor outside the bathroom while I shaved off my pubic hair, she told me to unlock the door and let her in, so that she could check the evidence in the bath.
I sometimes felt like a mime artist while I was living at Denver House, trapped in a glass box that was invisible to everyone else but that seemed very real and inescapable to me. That was just my life though. I hated what was happening to me and I was very afraid that one day I would be taken to a house somewhere and wouldn’t come back. It sounds ridiculous, I know, but despite sometimes seeing Pete take money from the men who raped and abused me, I didn’t realise until some time later that I was being sold.
I had sexual encounters with a lot of men in my town and elsewhere while I was being trafficked and controlled by Pete and Natalie. One man wanted me just to lie there while he masturbated over me, then pulled up my T-shirt and ejaculated on my stomach. Another told me to take off all my clothes and lie on the bed, then he lay down, naked, beside me, put his arms around me and touched my chest. Another forced himself inside me, then lay on top of me for a while without moving, before standing up abruptly and walking out of the room. And there were hundreds more, some of whom I remember and many that I don’t.
One evening, Natalie took me on the bus to a house she said belonged to some friends of hers, who turned out to be two men in their thirties in a house that was just like all the others I’d been to. After we’d had a drink, Natalie went upstairs with one of them, while the other, who said his name was Jayden, came and sat next to me on the sofa and handed me the joint he was smoking. I knew what I had to do by that time, and although I knew, too, that there was no point fighting it, I pulled away when he tried to kiss me, then turned my head to one side when he pushed me back on to the sofa and tried again. I didn’t struggle when he undid my jeans though, or when he took off his trousers, climbed on top of me, then spat on his hand and rubbed it between my legs. Even when I could feel the bile rising into my throat, I just lay there as he pushed himself inside me, praying that it would soon be over.
He had just finished when Natalie came back into the room with the other man, who told us, ‘Jayden and me have got to go and pick something up. You stay here.’ Then they walked out of the house, locking the front door behind them, which didn’t seem to bother Natalie at all, and she called me a baby when I started to get upset. They did come back though, with a bottle of vodka, and after we’d had a glass of it, Natalie said, ‘We’ve got to go. But we’ll be back for the party tomorrow.’
Natalie went straight to her room when we got back to Denver House, but when I saw that my key worker, Susie, was on shift, I decided to tell her what had happened in the hope that she would do something to prevent me having to return to the house the following evening.
I liked Susie and I think she liked me too, particularly after the day when I was passing the dining room and heard some of the lads calling her names. She had brown eyes, shiny black hair and quite dark skin, which I suppose is why they were calling her ‘Paki’, and when I saw that she was very close to tears, I went in and said I’d lost the key to my room, just to give her an excuse to escape. I waited until we were around the corner and halfway down the corridor before I told her that I hadn’t lost my key, and when I asked if she was okay, she burst into tears, thanked me, and gave me a hug.
‘Can you remember where the house was?’ Susie asked me on the evening when I explained about not wanting to go to the party. And when I said that I could, she drove me there and made a note of the address. ‘Finally,’ I thought, just before I fell asleep that night. But, once again, nothing was said about it the next day and no attempt was made to stop us going back there.
When I arrived for the party with Natalie the following evening, the house was full of men drinking and smoking cannabis. She went upstairs with the same man she’d been with the night before, and I was sitting in the living room dreading what was about to happen when the police arrived.
‘I don’t
want to be here,’ I told one of the officers, only daring to say anything because I knew Natalie was out of earshot. ‘I’m 13 and I’m here against my will.’ I was still scared in case one of the men heard me, but I knew the police officers would make sure I was safe. So I was shocked when one of them patted my shoulder and said, ‘Come along now, you don’t want to get these nice men into trouble, do you?’ Then his colleague brought Natalie downstairs and they drove us back to Denver House.
I was still occasionally going home to visit my family. Sometimes, Mum let me in then ignored me, which was a bit depressing but better than being shouted and sworn at, or beaten up, which she also still did. In fact, she batted me so badly one day that Dad had to call the police, who came and took me back to the unit. Even then, the staff kept saying, ‘You should go and visit your mum and dad.’ So I’d try again, and tell myself that at least I had somewhere to go and a connection with the outside world. It didn’t make anything better though, and on one of my visits I stole a bottle containing about a dozen paracetamol from the cupboard in the bathroom and took it back to the unit.
I didn’t know how many would be enough to kill me, and I did want to kill myself; it wasn’t a cry for help. Long before I went to live at Denver House, I’d seen suicide as the ultimate way out and assumed I’d have put an end to it all by the time I was 16. I’d often thought about doing it when I was being bullied and controlled by Abbie, and now that it had all started again with Natalie, it really did seem to be the only way out; the only way I could take back some control instead of worrying every time, ‘Will this be the night that something happens to me? Will this be the night when I don’t return to the unit?’
Trafficked Girl Page 9