Trafficked Girl

by Zoe Patterson

  One evening when Frances was on waking night duty, I was lying in my bed, listening to music on my headphones and watching the shadows on the ceiling, when she came bursting into my room and started pacing up and down, saying, ‘I can’t do this any more. You’re going to get me into trouble.’

  ‘Can’t do what?’ I asked anxiously. ‘What have I done?’ But she just threw her hands up in the air dramatically and said again, ‘I just can’t do it,’ then walked out of my room, leaving me to wonder what was wrong with me that made me do whatever it was I’d done to upset the one person who was nice to me. Because she was nice to me, some of the time, and I was desperately anxious not to lose her friendship, even though I hated it when she made jokes at my expense, which she often did, or asked me in a mocking voice, ‘Ooh, have you got a boyfriend then, Zoe?’ Which was particularly embarrassing and hurtful when she knew I was being trafficked and abused on a regular basis.

  It wasn’t until years later that I realised I didn’t do anything to upset Frances, and that perhaps the main reason why I was so distressed and confused by her behaviour towards me was because it was similar to the way my mother had always treated me – although Frances never beat me and my mother never said anything nice to me. What was the same, however, was the way I was always trying to work out what I’d done wrong, when the truth was I hadn’t done anything at all and it was their own ‘issues’ that made them want to control and manipulate a little girl who was so obviously anxious to please them so that they’d like, or love, her.

  What I also discovered later was that I wasn’t the only girl Frances manipulated. In fact, a girl who came to the unit for a while not very long after Abbie left got in touch with me a few years ago and said that while she was living at Denver House, she’d had ‘a relationship’ with Frances. I knew Frances was married and had three children, and she often used to talk about the problems she was having with one of them. But maybe she was struggling with her own sexuality at the time, and for some reason it made her feel better about herself to use the crush I had on her to make me feel worse. Because I knew by that time that I was gay.

  I’d actually realised when I was ten, although because I didn’t know anything about sex or sexuality at that age, I didn’t understand what it meant. I did understand it by the time I went to Denver House, however, and I knew I had to keep it a secret, because everyone in a place like that pretends – to themselves and to everyone else – that they’re ‘normal’ and tough and not to be messed with, and it isn’t a good idea to give anyone a reason even to suspect that you might be ‘different’ in any way. That’s why I hated it whenever Frances asked me in front of the other kids if I had a boyfriend, then laughed when I blushed and stared at my feet. Because not only did she know about all the horrible things that were happening to me, I think she also knew I was gay, and was just amusing herself by playing games with me.

  Perhaps it’s something to do with the human spirit in general, or maybe I was born with some sort of innate optimism that has persisted – sometimes almost imperceptibly – even during periods when I couldn’t have dredged up a single memory of a positive experience. Whatever the reason, and despite – or perhaps because of – everything that was happening at Denver House, I always held on to the belief that one day I would meet someone special. That was what I was waiting for and sometimes, when I hit rock bottom like I did after my brother Ben told me not to call him again, it was the only thing that stopped me taking my own life.

  You don’t think of yourself as a kid when you are one, but when I look back on it now, I realise that we were all just kids trying to get by in whatever way we could. And the one thing we had in common – even the aggressive kids who didn’t seem to give a shit what anyone thought about them – was that we were trying to deal with the fact that no one cared about us or expected us to do or achieve anything good.

  Things should be different now that it’s mandatory for the staff in children’s homes to have at least a Level 2 NVQ in Health and Social Care. At that time, however, someone like Des, for example, could go straight from his job as a kitchen fitter to working at Denver House. So perhaps it wasn’t surprising that it often felt as though we didn’t matter to anyone – after all, not even our own families wanted us – and that the staff were just there to contain us until we were old enough to be dumped back into society and expected to look after ourselves.

  There was one night when things kicked off really badly – which happened quite a lot, particularly with the lads – and a kid ended up having to go to hospital because a window was slammed shut on his finger. One member of staff called Julie, who was a nice woman in her early fifties, was really shaken up about it and I can remember her saying to me, ‘I only do this job part-time to earn some money to pay for my fags.’

  ‘Yeah, but you’re all right,’ I told her. ‘You actually listen.’

  I don’t think she said anything more at the time, but when I bumped into her four or five years later she told me, ‘I’m glad I’ve seen you, Zoe. I wanted to say thank you. I was going to quit the job and walk out that night, but what you said made me stay.’ So I was glad I’d seen her too, because I couldn’t believe that something I’d said had had an effect on someone else’s life like that, and it made me feel really good. She was an exception though, and there were several occasions when members of staff aggravated situations that could have been dealt with and contained and made them into something much bigger and scarier than they might otherwise have been.

  Most of the teasing and minor incidents of bullying that were part of living somewhere like Denver House didn’t really mean anything, and I didn’t have any problems with any of the kids there, except for Natalie of course, and she pretty much left me alone as long as I did what I was told. The only thing that really scared me was someone kicking off, because sometimes the kids just seemed to lose control, and then you didn’t know what they might do. So I was very frightened the night a member of staff overreacted to a very minor incident and ended up triggering what almost amounted to a riot.

  I’d had a huge row with Natalie earlier that evening, because I’d finally stood up for myself and refused to go with her to be picked up by Pete. I was just leaving the office when she’d come to find me and she’d had Debbie with her, the girl I’d gone out on a limb for after I’d seen the look of fear on her face when she was picking up clothes from Natalie’s bedroom floor. Although I knew Natalie had started taking Debbie out to meet men, we’d never gone at the same time – until now apparently – and I think it was seeing the crushed, defeated expression on Debbie’s face that gave me the courage to say I couldn’t go.

  Unlike some of the other kids in the unit, Natalie’s aggression wasn’t just bravado, or a front to make her seem tougher than she was really was. I’d met her mum – an intimidating woman with spiky blonde hair and numerous tattoos and body piercings – so I knew she came from a tough family. In fact, on one of the couple of occasions her mum came to visit Natalie at the unit, she said she liked the cap I was wearing and that she wanted it, and it didn’t even cross my mind not to whip it off my head immediately and hand it to her.

  So it was the first time I had ever stood up to Natalie, and I don’t know whether I’d have had the nerve to do it again on any other night, or if I’d have been so brave that night if we hadn’t been standing near the open door of the office. Natalie obviously didn’t care that the members of staff who were in the office at the time had heard her say to me, ‘Oh, there you are. I’ve been looking for you. Come on. It’s time to go.’ But she must have realised that threatening me when I refused would have been a step too far, because she just shot me a look that said quite clearly, ‘Just you wait. You’ll pay for this,’ then put her hand on Debbie’s shoulder and almost shoved her out of the front door.

  I liked Debbie. Whenever Natalie wasn’t around – which wasn’t often, unfortunately – we used to sneak off together to buy some cider, then find a derelict building or
some other sheltered and deserted spot where we could sit and drink it. We didn’t ever talk about what happened when Natalie took us out with her. We just chatted about stuff that didn’t matter and tried to shut out the real world for a couple of hours and feel like normal kids our age must feel. So I felt really bad for her, and guilty about the fact that she was having to go with Natalie after I’d got out of it. I was angry too, because if the members of staff in the office had heard what was going on right outside the door, why hadn’t they said anything or tried to intervene? Why had they let Natalie take another young girl who had been placed in their care to meet men who would do things to her that would hurt her physically and psychologically, and very probably ruin the rest of her life?

  I think the reason I stood up to Natalie that evening was because the suicidal thoughts I’d been having for some time had recently become all-consuming. So if I was going to kill myself anyway, her threats lost a lot of their power. My courage evaporated as soon as I got up to my room, however, and after sitting on my bed for a while, imagining what Natalie would do to me when she got back later that night, I decided to run away.

  There was a woman called Kath, who lived with her teenage daughter just a few streets away from Denver House and who used to let us drink at her house – sometimes as a ‘reward’ when some of the lads shoplifted alcohol for her. That’s where I went that evening, and after getting drunk with Kath and her daughter, she let me stay the night.

  It wouldn’t have been difficult for Natalie to guess where I’d be – she knew I didn’t have anywhere else to go – and the next morning she came looking for me. Fortunately, we saw her walking up the front path and ran into the hallway, where Kath opened the cupboard under the stairs, pushed aside some boxes with her foot to create a space just big enough for me crawl into, and said, ‘Quick! Hide in here.’

  I was so scared I was crying as I sat there, clutching my knees to my chest and biting my lip so that I didn’t make any sound as Kath opened the front door.

  ‘She’s here, isn’t she?’ I heard Natalie say.

  ‘No. Who?’ Kath asked.

  I had to stifle a sob when Natalie answered aggressively, ‘Zoe. I know she’s here, Kath. There’s no point pretending she isn’t.’

  ‘No, Zoe isn’t here.’ Kath’s casual indifference sounded convincing. ‘I haven’t seen her for a few days.’

  ‘Well, if you do,’ Natalie said, with slightly less certainty now, ‘tell her to watch her back, because when I find her – and I will find her – I’m going to beat her up.’

  I was shaking as I crawled out of the cupboard and followed Kath and her daughter into the kitchen, where she handed me a can of lager. I stayed with them, drinking, for the rest of the day, but I knew I couldn’t hide for ever, and as I had nowhere else to go, I returned to the unit that evening, dreading the prospect of having to face Natalie and very frightened of what she was going to do to me.

  Chapter 12

  I could hear people shouting and the sound of breaking glass before I’d even turned the corner into the street where the unit was, and by the time I got there all hell was breaking loose.

  I found out later that one of the lads had refused to leave the pool room when he was told to, and Des – the member of staff who had spoken to Yvonne after the incident in the kitchen – had exacerbated the situation by dragging him out from under the pool table, giving him some bad carpet burns in the process, and then forcefully restraining him.

  I don’t know whether the boy had been doing something that justified Des’s reaction, but it wouldn’t have been the first time a member of staff’s response was often out of all proportion to what had happened. Instead of calming things down, they sometimes seemed to exacerbate relatively minor situations, which then ended up with other kids getting angry too. Apparently, that’s what had happened that night, only this time it resulted in uproar and the staff locking themselves in the office. It wasn’t my fight though, and I was scared. So I crept up to my room, packed some stuff into my school bag, and walked out.

  I was just approaching the car park when I saw Natalie. She was with a bunch of lads who were smashing the windows of Des’s car, and I was just wondering if I could sneak past without her seeing me when she turned around. My heart was thudding and she was starting to walk towards me when a member of staff put his head out of the office window and shouted, ‘The police are on their way.’

  ‘I’ll deal with you later,’ Natalie said. Then she joined all the other kids who had started running off in every direction, while I walked across the car park and out on to the street.

  It was the middle of the night and about a 40-minute walk to my parents’ house, but I didn’t have anywhere else to go. So I set off in the darkness, frightened of my own shadow whenever I walked under a street light, and tried not to think about where I had just come from or where I was going.

  I must have been about halfway home when Frances drove past me. Des, the member of staff whose car windows had just been smashed, was sitting in the passenger seat beside her but didn’t see me, and she just raised her hand in acknowledgement, then continued on her way.

  After Dad stopped working and Mum started drinking even more than she’d done before, she slept downstairs every night, and because I knew she’d probably still be up and in the kitchen, I walked down the side of the house and knocked on the back door. I don’t remember what she said when she opened it and saw me standing there, just that it was something nasty that made me even more anxious because I thought she might not let me in. But she did, and after telling her what had happened, I was asking if I could come back and live at home when Dad came into the kitchen, and before she had a chance to say anything, he said, ‘Yeah, you can stay. I’ll ring them in the morning and tell them you’ll be living here from now on.’ So she just shrugged and turned her back on us.

  I hadn’t ever stayed overnight at my parents’ house since I’d left there more than a year ago, and my bedroom was exactly as it had been, except that the bed had been made, using the same, unwashed, sheets. But at least I could go to sleep knowing that Natalie wasn’t going to knock on my door and beat me up.

  The next morning, Dad walked down to the phone box at the end of the street and told someone at Denver House that I wasn’t going back. A couple of days later, horrible Yvonne came to the house to drop off the rest of my stuff and tell me, with spiteful satisfaction, ‘You do know that that’s it now. You can’t change your mind, whatever happens.’ I’d been feeling bad enough already, and didn’t need to be reminded that I was now trapped at home without any options.

  It wasn’t until some time later that I even thought to wonder why social services allowed me to go back home after the investigation that had been carried out more than a year earlier had resulted in a decision being made that it was an ‘unsafe place’ for me to live and that I should remain in care until I was 18. Perhaps I slipped through the net for some reason. Or maybe they thought, as my mum did, that I was a problem they could do without, which is what I suspected when I did realise that they’d done the wrong thing.

  I think I was a bit surprised when Mum just seemed to accept that I was back and treated me pretty much the way she’d always done, except that she hit me a bit less often than she used to do before I went away. Unfortunately, she played mind games instead, which in some ways were even more damaging.

  She still gave me whisky and cola to take to school every day. My teachers knew I was drinking and sometimes one of them would ask me, ‘Have you drunk anything this morning?’ And when I said that I had, she’d tell me, ‘Well, try not to have any more till dinner time.’ I suppose she didn’t know what else to say. But it wasn’t as easy as that. Even after I went home, I was still being trafficked, mostly to places in and around Birmingham, and however many times I told my parents about what was happening, my father just said horrible things to me like, ‘What you need is a big black dick inside you.’

  Also, thanks to Mum’s c
arefully orchestrated manipulation, I was even more afraid than before of waking up one night to find Dad standing by my bed, particularly after she told me one day, ‘I saw your dad in your bedroom this morning when you were at school. I couldn’t work out what he was doing at first. Then I realised he was sniffing your underwear. You should start arranging the things in your drawers so that you’ll be able to tell if he’s been touching them.’ And when I went up to my room to check as soon as I got home from school the next day, I found that she was right and things had been moved.

  Although I didn’t realise it at the time, Mum was using my fear of Dad to manipulate me, and after she’d done everything she could think of to make me afraid to go to sleep at night, she started saying things like, ‘You could just push him down the stairs when he’s drunk. It would be like an accident.’ I think now that it was all part of some distorted plan she had to get rid of him, and potentially me too, because she could then have said I’d done it deliberately because I was afraid of him sexually abusing me. But although I was afraid of him, he was still my dad, and I had no desire at all to see him dead, any more than I wished the same fate for my mum, who really had been abusing me, physically and mentally, for as long as I could remember.

  The reality of living at home again was even more horrible than I’d expected it to be. In fact, the only positive aspect – or at least it seemed positive to me at the time – was that Mum bought whisky for me. Self-harming helped a bit too, and when Mum found out what I was doing, she took a knife out of the drawer in the kitchen, sharpened it, then thrust it into my hand saying, ‘If you’re going to do it, why not do a proper job?’

  I knew what she was saying, that rather than just making cuts on my arms and legs I should kill myself. It was something I thought about almost constantly anyway. But when I took the knife up to my room, I just ran its razor-sharp blade across the skin of my legs and arms, while Mum stayed downstairs in the kitchen, probably hoping I was doing something ‘right’ at last.