by Holly Archer
Contents
Prologue
1. Carefree Days
2. Ali
3. How Do They Know Who I Am?
4. Mr Khan
5. Kev
6. Innocence Lost
7. Into the Trap
8. Bought and Sold
9. Secret Slave
10. Beaver
11. Mouldy Rooms and More Men
12. Omar
13. Betrayed
14. Who Can I Trust?
15. Two Blue Lines
16. The Worst Night
17. Rock Bottom
18. Escape
19. Moving On
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Prologue
As the room slowly slid into focus, all I could make out was a sea of faces around me. They were grinning, laughing, mocking me, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. I felt like I was drowning, gasping for air as my lungs filled with water.
They’d only bought me one drink but somehow I’d blacked out on the way here, zoning in and out of consciousness as they carried my limp body from the car and dumped me on the filthy mattress.
Now I was naked.
I couldn’t quite lift my head to check where they’d left my clothes and I could feel the panic rising in my throat. My limbs were like jelly but, if I concentrated really hard, I could move my leg just a little to kick out in protest. As I did, I felt a hand collide with my face. One of the men grabbed me by the shoulders.
‘The more you kick off,’ he said, ‘the longer it’ll take.’
So I had no choice.
I had no choice, as a group of strange men, some old enough to be my dad, pinned my arms and legs to the horrible, rotten, bare mattress they’d laid me on against my will. One by one they climbed on top of me and did the unthinkable, as the sights of the filthy damp room swam before my eyes and tears streamed down my face.
I’m not sure how many of them there were. There could have been eight, possibly nine. All I know is that by the time the last of them was on top of me, groping at my chest with his wrinkly hands, the smell of stale cigarettes on his breath, the feeling in my legs was beginning to return and the searing pain down below had started to take hold.
When they’d finally finished, I was able to stumble from the mattress and into the bathroom, where I wrapped myself in a tiny towel. Without a second thought for my modesty or the blood that gushed down my legs, I made for the door and fell, screaming, into the night.
I was barely sixteen the night I was brutally gang-raped.
It sounds shocking, of course, but it wasn’t the first time I’d been seized by strange men and violated in the most horrific way imaginable. Far from it. For me, sexual abuse was a daily reality. My teenage years were punctuated by rape and beatings, as I was passed around paedophiles like a piece of meat.
Why did I do it? you might ask. Why didn’t I say no? Why didn’t I just go home? If only it was that easy. They owned me. If I tried to hide, they’d find me. If I tried to resist, they’d hound me with phone calls, beat me until I was black and blue and threaten to tell my mum I was a prostitute.
And if that didn’t work?
‘If you don’t do what we tell you,’ they’d say, voices always hushed, ‘we’ll come for your sisters.’
I was trapped but, for a long time, I thought it was my fault. I believed them when they called me a slut and told me how worthless I was. I even believed I was a prostitute because they’d sometimes chuck me a few quid after they’d raped me.
Now, of course, I know there’s no way I could have been a prostitute because I was a child – an abused child. Even if I’d wanted to sleep with all of these disgusting men, I wasn’t capable of making that choice because I was too young.
None of this was my fault, but it’s taken me a long time to realise that. It’s been a painful journey, but I’ve finally come to accept I wasn’t to blame.
This is my story. My story of how I never gave my consent.
1
Carefree Days
My childhood was about as normal and carefree as you could imagine.
I was born in the sprawling market town of Telford on an unremarkable spring day in the late eighties. My home lay in Shropshire, near the Welsh border, off the newly built M54 motorway, about thirty miles from Birmingham. I was the third child for my mum, Karen, and my dad, Joe, coming along a few years after Gemma, my older sister, and Liam, my older brother.
A few days later, Mum and Dad were allowed to take me home to their three-bedroomed, semi-detached house. There wasn’t much to the district itself. The high street had a few shops and pubs, but the surrounding area was really pretty: lots of woodland and countryside – trees and fields and rolling hills. I suppose part of the attraction was that nothing really happened there, or so everyone thought. A nice place to raise children, you might think.
Like many places in the Midlands, Telford had become home to a scattering of immigrants throughout the latter part of the twentieth century. Asians, mostly, from Pakistan and China, but also some from Bangladesh. New convenience shops and exotic restaurants and takeaways gradually started to pop up in parts of the town.
Some of the Asian families were really strict. Many didn’t let their children drink or stay out late and most had to have an arranged marriage to someone chosen by their parents. That’s not to say some didn’t bend the rules, sneaking off to the pub or getting with a secret English girlfriend.
Of course, there were a few small-minded people who ranted about how they were coming from all sorts of places to steal everyone’s jobs, but to be honest I think they were few and far between. Mum and Dad, and most people they knew, were happy to live and let live. They were much more preoccupied with our little family and making ends meet with three demanding children under the age of five.
I guess I was lucky that I was too young to realise my parents’ relationship was already starting to sour by the time I came along. I’m not sure quite what went wrong – perhaps they’d met when they were too young and the pressure of raising three young children was all too much. But when I was just two, they decided to divorce.
I suppose my earliest memories are among the few negative thoughts I have when I remember my childhood, but they’re hazy, just snapshots of Mum and Dad arguing and Mum taking us kids to stay at Nan and Granddad’s for a few weeks. By the time we returned, Dad was gone. He spent a few weeks sleeping on friends’ sofas, before getting a little flat. I can’t really remember much, but my siblings said he seemed a little down for a while, before he picked himself up and dusted himself off.
Life went on. We stayed with Mum during the week and visited Dad at the weekends, though he was only down the road, so we could see him whenever we liked.
Things were quite simple back in the early nineties. No one had an iPad or an Xbox, but it didn’t seem to matter. As a toddler, I loved sitting in Mum’s back garden, watching ladybirds scuttle across the slabs. I was mesmerised by them and I’d often pick them up and stare at them before they wriggled out of my hands. One day, though, curiosity got the better of me and I decided to drop one in a huge puddle that had gathered close to Mum’s back door. Of course it drowned and I felt awful. The poor ladybird!
As we got older, Gemma became motherly towards Liam and me. She’d always try to make the rules and tell us what to do, especially at the weekend when we were at Dad’s. Liam and I didn’t like this one bit, and we ganged up on her. We had a little pack of marbles and we’d hit them really hard against the wall, so they would rebound and hit her legs. She’d cry, and we’d laugh our heads off. Normal sibling stuff, of course, but now I feel terrible, as Gemma and I are so close.
It was a
round this time I started school. Although I was boisterous and lively around my siblings, at school I was quite shy. At first I found the whole experience a little overwhelming. I struggled to keep up with my classmates because I couldn’t see the blackboard properly and, while my peers managed to grasp the letters of the alphabet with ease, I kept mixing mine up. I was scared to ask for help in case the teacher shouted at me, so I struggled in silence.
By this time, Mum had met a new man named Phil. I don’t really remember the first time he came round, or how he was introduced to us. I just remember him being there. Unlike a lot of kids in our position, we didn’t view him as a threat or an outsider. We took to him immediately, mainly because he was a bit of a joker. His favourite trick was to attach a Barbie or an Action Man doll to a washing line, which he’d hang from my bedroom window, and we’d watch as it slid to the ground.
‘It’s the death slide!’ I’d giggle. ‘Do it again, Phil!’
When we were at Mum’s, we lived for the outdoors. We’d go into the woods for long walks, giggling as we skipped over branches and stones and listening to the chatter of the birds overhead. When autumn came, we’d gather conkers and nuts, all competing to see who could collect the most.
One of the places we loved to walk was the Wrekin, a big hill about five miles west of Telford. As we clambered to the top, our little jackets zipped up to our necks, we thought we’d climbed the highest mountain in the world. The views from the top, granted, are pretty stunning – you can see as many as seventeen counties on a clear day, well into Wales and beyond. Back then, we thought we could just about see the whole world. Now when I think of the Wrekin my memories are far less joyful and innocent – but that would all come much later.
Back then, when I thought of the future, I only thought of nice things. Mum hadn’t worked until us kids all went off to school, but by now she had a little shop job and there was a bit more money to go around. Phil worked in a local factory and together they managed to save up enough to take us to Majorca for a week. None of us had ever been on a plane before and we were so excited you’d have thought we were flying to the moon. We could hardly sit still in our seats!
I was captivated by the air hostesses. They were so composed and calm and the smile never left their perfectly made-up faces. Of course, they were just doing their job, but I thought they looked like they were having the time of their lives.
‘Imagine if you got to go on a plane every single day,’ I whispered to Liam. ‘How cool would that be?’
From that moment on, I decided I wanted to be an air hostess as soon as I left school. I’d spend hours dreaming of all the glamorous locations I’d jet off to and all the exciting people I’d meet.
It wasn’t long before Mum and Phil decided to get married. I guess I was pleased, because I liked Phil, but I wasn’t happy when they announced the date and it was the day before my eighth birthday. They’d met on that day a few years previously and they’d decided it would be nice to have their wedding on the anniversary. Like most children, I wasn’t pleased at the idea of my thunder being stolen.
‘That’s not fair!’ I huffed. ‘You’ll be obsessed with your wedding and you’ll forget all about my birthday. I can’t believe you’re doing this to me.’
Mum rolled her eyes. ‘Of course we won’t forget about your birthday, Holly,’ she replied, as patiently as she could. ‘You’ll get all of your presents in the morning, as usual. And you and Gemma will get to be bridesmaids. I’m going to make you a beautiful dress. How does that sound?’
I folded my arms, refusing to wipe the frown from my face as I weighed up the deal on the table.
‘And,’ Mum added, ‘Phil and I have agreed you can each bring a friend.’
With that I relaxed slightly as I mulled over who I would invite. Although I was still struggling with my schoolwork, I had come out of my shell a little and made some friends. I couldn’t decide if I should invite Joanna, my best friend from my class, or Carly, a girl I’d met playing football in the street with Liam. Carly was often round our way because her gran looked after her. In the end I decided on Joanna. Carly was nice, but Joanna was just a bit cooler. I knew some of the other kids laughed at Carly because she was a bit chubby, and her mum still did her hair in these really embarrassing long, blonde plaits that stretched all the way down to her waist.
Mind you, I was carrying a bit of puppy fat myself – not that I cared much for my appearance. As I was a bit of a tomboy, I thought I looked stupid in my bridesmaid’s dress. It was cream with pink roses and a big pink bow and it made me feel all itchy and uncomfortable. Mum was really proud of it but I felt like an idiot and couldn’t wait to get back into my tracksuit.
I suppose I started to think more about how I looked around Year Five. I was only nine but my boobs had started to come on. I developed quicker than the other girls in my class, but I hated my new womanly body with a passion. It didn’t seem to fit me, as I still felt like a timid little girl. Some of my classmates were desperate to wear a bra and start their periods, and talked about it non-stop, but I just felt embarrassed, so I hid my chest under baggy T-shirts and jumpers as I’d always done, hoping no one would notice any difference.
It was an intense time, as Mum had started to notice I wasn’t keeping up with my schoolwork. She couldn’t understand why I seemed bright and articulate when I spoke but my written work was poor. I was miles behind Gemma and Liam, who were both top of the class. Eventually she got my eyes tested and I got glasses. It was a big relief, as I could finally see the blackboard when we were doing sums and spelling, but it still didn’t solve the problem completely. After a few tests, I was diagnosed with a mild form of dyslexia.
I’ve always had a determined streak and, once I set my mind to something, I usually refuse to stop until I’ve made it happen. I decided I was going to catch up with my schoolwork as quickly as I could, and I enlisted Gemma’s help as she was great at spelling and seemed so much cleverer than me. She agreed to help me, but she certainly showed me some tough love. Every Saturday, when we went to Dad’s, I had to learn to spell a new word.
‘Today, your word is junior,’ she said, one afternoon, as we sat on the floor, pencil poised in my hand. ‘Come on, write it down. J-U-N-I-O-R.’
I did as I was told, carefully forming each letter with my pencil.
‘OK, give me that,’ she said, snatching my notebook from me and ripping the page from it. ‘Now, do it yourself.’
‘Spell it myself?’ I said. ‘But it’s really hard, I can’t . . .’
‘Yes, you can,’ Gemma insisted. ‘If you can’t spell it by dinner, you’re not having any.’
My mouth fell open in shock, but I did as I was told. Of course, Dad would never have denied me my dinner because I couldn’t spell a certain word, but I wasn’t taking any chances. It took me dozens of attempts, but I finally got it.
After that, I sort of got back on track with my schoolwork and my teachers even began to tell Mum that I was clever, which made me feel a little better, especially as it would soon be time to start secondary school. In preparation for this milestone, most of the girls in my class had started to experiment with make-up and nail varnish. Although I looked more grown-up than most of them, with my already noticeable bust, I didn’t care a jot about looking glamorous – quite the opposite. I was still hiding my curves underneath baggy tracksuits and I preferred to spend my evenings playing football with Liam and his mates than painting my nails and staring at the mirror. I couldn’t imagine anything more boring.
It sounds a bit cheesy, but back then our evenings were like something out of a storybook: big neighbourhood football matches that went on for hours and hours until the sun started to set and we were called in by our parents, exhausted and splattered with mud, but completely content. Joanna and the girls in my class didn’t much like playing football, but Carly always came along. All of the kids who played were great mates back then and it seemed inconceivable that any of us could come to any harm
in our tight-knit community.
But just before I started secondary, my world was turned on its head – or so it seemed. Mum sat us all down and explained we were going to have a little brother or sister. While Liam and Gemma took the news of her pregnancy in their stride, I was far from impressed. As the baby of the family, I viewed it almost as a slight. Phil had no biological children and he and Mum longed to have a baby together, but I couldn’t accept that.
‘Am I not enough for you?’ I wailed, melodramatically, as I stomped off to my room.
Mum came upstairs to try to talk things through with me, but I was having none of it. She already had three children. In my book, to want a fourth was plain greedy.
When baby Lauren came along a few months later, things did change a little. I had to admit she was really cute, but even as a baby she was quite independent. Unlike most kids, she didn’t need attention constantly and, sometimes, she didn’t want us older kids to pick her up, and that really grated on me. Now, of course, I see that she was just a baby but it didn’t stop me resenting her a little. Frustrated that we weren’t Mum’s sole focus, I’d spend more and more time outside playing with Liam and Carly and our mates.
‘How’s your little sister?’ Carly would ask.
‘Boring,’ I’d say with a shrug. ‘She doesn’t do anything.’
Thankfully, by the time Mum became pregnant with my youngest sister, Amy, I’d matured slightly. By this time, I was twelve. Amy and I bonded as soon as she was born and I’d rush home from school to kiss and cuddle her and play games. As much as I loved Lauren, I felt a real connection with Amy and, from day one, I was super-protective of her. I just couldn’t bear the idea that anyone could hurt her, or that she’d come to any harm.
Sometimes Mum would let me wheel Amy’s buggy around Telford when we went shopping and I’d just about burst with pride. By the time I was thirteen, I guess I looked a little bit older, because of my boobs and my maturing body. Often people would coo over Amy before stopping in their tracks and hesitantly asking if she was my daughter.