by Holly Archer
I heard from a friend that Lily Brown is a recovering drug addict, battling to regain custody of the children she lost to her addiction. Needless to say, she never really got £17,000. Maria, the girl Kev used to replace me, is HIV positive.
Thankfully, my relationship with my family hasn’t been ripped apart by what happened to me. I know that many other girls haven’t been so fortunate. For a long time, I believe Mum blamed herself for not noticing, and the dynamic of our relationship was a bit strange. I also resented her a little for not picking up on the signs, even though I’d gone out of my way to hide what was happening. But now, we’ve started to come to terms with what happened. We don’t talk about it all that much, but Mum is there for me in lots of other ways. She’s the first person I call if I need someone to help with Charlotte and I know she’s just round the corner if I have to call on her for any reason.
Liam has struggled to accept what has happened to me, as I imagine any brother would, but I’m more open with my sisters and we’re all still close.
There are times when I still struggle to understand what I’ve been through. Even now, when I think of Beaver, I find it hard to accept he groomed me, abused me and tried to sell me. I know what he did was wrong, but it’s a struggle. Psychiatrists might suggest I suffer from a form of Stockholm syndrome, where a hostage feels sympathy towards their captors.
It’s even taken me a long time to accept that I wasn’t at fault for the worst rapes, or that they were rapes at all. So many people told me I was a slag and a dirty bitch and a prostitute that I believed them.
After a lot of counselling and soul-searching I have come to realise I wasn’t any of those things. My counsellors helped me see that I was lured into a world I was too naive to understand, and was taken advantage of in the most merciless way. Now I know I wasn’t a child prostitute. There’s no such thing; only children who have been horrifically sexually abused and a price put on their heads.
Of course, it’s undeniable that the majority of men who abused me were Asian, or born in the UK to Asian parents. I’ve been courted by lots of racist people, who want to use what happened to me as an excuse to hate an entire continent of people, but I refuse to be a pawn for the far right. There are so many complex cultural issues which could have contributed to what happened to me, but all I know is that when a teenage girl is being pinned to a bed by a whole gang of men, each taking it in turns to violently rape her, the colour of their skin is the last thing on her mind. When I tried to explain this to an activist from the English Defence League, he replied that he hoped my abusers raped my daughter, too. While we have to do our best to understand the reasons for the abuse that I suffered, hating people because of where they come from won’t help. It only makes us more bitter and more full of hate and how can we ever work together to find the solution then?
People also ask if I want to see my abusers face justice for what they did to me; if I’ll ever go back to the police and ask them to reopen my case. The answer is, I’m not sure. A trial would take up so much of my time and energy, and with a young family it’s hard to imagine going back to that dark place. I’d have to relive every detail of those awful years that almost cost me my life, taking to the witness stand and having bigshot defence barristers call me a liar, as Andy or Mr Khan or Beaver, or any one of the scores of men I was sold to, smirked in the dock. Part of me feels like they’ve already stolen so much of my life that I can’t bear it. I don’t want my children to see my tear-stained face when I come home from court every day, shaking with horror as the images of those years flash through my mind once more. I know better than most how precious childhood is, and how children should never have to feel that fear and confusion. Could they cope with my nightmares and my flashbacks? Could I?
But I’ll never say never, because there might come a day when I change my mind. Right now, all I can do is let these evil men sweat as they wake up every day and wait for that knock at the door. I hope they feel just as scared as I did when they took without asking what should have been the most carefree days of my life.
When I walk past them in the street, I still feel my stomach flutter and my heart pound, but I hold my head high and look them straight in the eye. Most are like the rich Chinese man, in that they look at the ground and pretend I’m not there. They know as well as I do that one phone call to the police could cause their whole life to implode. Most have wives, children and jobs, businesses even, and they’d never recover from the shame their behaviour would bring on their families, if the world were to know.
Back then they thought they were untouchable. They thought no one listened to girls like me. They thought the whole world shared their opinion, that we were worthless little slags, but the tide is turning now. All over the country, the men who did these unthinkable things are seeing their sordid deeds catch up with them, be it in Telford or Rochdale or Rotherham or Oxford. It would only take one call to get the ball rolling again, and I have the power to make it.
Only time will tell if I do pick up the phone. They’ll just have to wait to see if I do, and I hope the many sleepless nights they will have along the way will cause them to reflect on what they did. I hope they feel ashamed of what they put me through and I hope the guilt eats them up inside. Because if it doesn’t they don’t have a shred of humanity in their body.
But no matter how they feel now, they haven’t broken me like they thought they might. I’m still here. I have children, a loving partner, and a rewarding career fighting this evil. I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to stop this from happening to other children because I want the world to be a better and safer place for my own.
It’s been a long journey, but I’m not just a victim, now. I’m also a survivor. And, unlike my innocence, that is something they can never, ever take away from me.
Acknowledgements
I’d like to thank everyone who helped make this book a reality: Jack Falber of Medavia; Clare Hulton, my literary agent, and Kerri Sharp, my editor at Simon & Schuster UK.
I’d also like to thank my family for their continued love and support. I’m also grateful to everyone at Axis Counselling in Telford and the officers who investigated my case.
First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2016
A CBS COMPANY
Copyright © 2016 by Holly Archer
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
All rights reserved.
The right of Holly Archer to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
Simon & Schuster UK Ltd
1st Floor
222 Gray’s Inn Road
London WC1X 8HB
www.simonandschuster.co.uk
Simon & Schuster Australia, Sydney
Simon & Schuster India, New Delhi
The author and publishers have made all reasonable efforts to contact copyright-holders for permission, and apologise for any omissions or errors in the form of credits given. Corrections may be made to future printings.
While this book gives a faithful account of the author’s experiences, names and some details have been changed to protect the identity and privacy of certain individuals. Holly Archer is a pseudonym.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-4711-5702-8
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-4711-5703-5
Typeset in the UK by M Rules
Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
Simon & Schuster UK Ltd are committed to sourcing paper that is made from wood grown in sustainable forests and support the Forest Stewardship Council, the leading international forest certification organisation. Our books displaying the FSC logo are printed on FSC certified paper.
p;