Array Girl A - Girl A - My Story

I’d told the police about Emma and how she’d organised it all with Daddy and Immy, so I thought they’d investigate her. But as far as I know they didn’t – and that meant she could just go on doing what she’d been doing, only with different men instead of Daddy, and with Tariq now mostly pulling the strings.

From that point on, it just got worse. It would happen most days, with up to five different men in a day. And not even just in one house or one flat: I’d be taken to one house, then another, then a third. It might be Rochdale one night, Bradford the next, or Nelson or Oldham.

Wherever I was taken, there was a set routine, in which they’d give me alcohol to get me drunk and then come at me, one after the other, until they’d had enough of me. Then I’d be taken back to Harry’s to await the next call.

In the flats and houses where I’d be taken, I’d feel I was looking down on myself: lying there, huddled and crying, naked from the waist down, with Emma bringing in a new man every time the previous one had finished with me. She would be laughing. It was still all just a joke to her.

Maybe it was the trauma of it all, but I felt myself losing track of what was normal. Lying spread-eagled on a bed so a succession of men could abuse me just became routine. I became used to it, I suppose. I stopped feeling disgusted, and felt it was almost a challenge – a challenge to see if I could somehow cope with the pain and humiliation, no matter how many men Emma made me sleep with. I tried to convince myself that just by coping with the sheer numbers I was becoming stronger. It was a way to make things seem better than they were: I could feel my mind and all my thought processes distorting. It was like an illness.

With Emma around me 24/7, I began to sense I was being brainwashed. At Harry’s place, she’d even use her hold over me to get me to do chores. Whereas at home with Mum and Dad, I’d resisted, here I felt I had to do as she told me. She knew I had no money to pay rent, or to buy food, so she’d come down in the mornings and tell me what to do. If I didn’t, she said she’d get Harry to chuck me out.

The softest she ever appeared were the times she’d sit on the loo seat while I was bathing and chat about some of the men she planned to take me to later.

‘You’ll be OK with him cos he’s good looking,’ she might say. ‘So it won’t be as bad and you won’t have to mess up by being a mard ass.’

The fifteen-year-old me didn’t even know that what she was doing was a crime. All the time it was happening, I never thought of it as such. I didn’t know about ‘grooming’ – where grown-ups become friends with children so they can have sex with them. I knew it was wrong, but I didn’t know that what the men were doing to me, and what Emma was arranging for them to do to me, was against the law. I didn’t know there was a name for it. I just knew that if I resisted, they would come and get me. I could see Tariq and Emma getting money for what was happening to me, but I couldn’t see a way of stopping it.

Emma was pimping me like a prostitute in a niche market, a prostitute for paedophiles. She had such control that she didn’t even need to pay me. She could just hawk me around, night after night, and charge them for raping me in their seedy flats.

I came to realise that Emma had recruited me to something evil, but it was something I couldn’t fight off. The crucial thing for her was that I’d fallen into the trap of going to live at Harry’s place. Once I was there, she immediately knew she could use me and convince me there was no escape. She was powerful enough on her own, but with Daddy, and then Tariq, behind her, she seemed to me to be invincible.

I’d become a piece of merchandise for her to sell. She was constantly checking on me to make sure I’d always obey: I was so submissive towards her that I’d even find myself apologising to her whenever I burst into tears.

So much of her hardness had come from what I sensed was being born into a family that didn’t care for her. None of them had had a job in generations, and her mum wasn’t bothered whether she stayed with her or at Harry’s. Emma used to have one of her little sisters over for a couple of nights a week, and their mum would drop her off. Sometimes she’d stay for tea. I’d be sitting there, thinking: Surely she must know what her daughter’s up to?

But if she did, she didn’t seem to care.

My depression and desperation were made deeper by the fact that going to the police had made no difference to my life whatsoever. The disclosures I’d given, together with the long and detailed video interview, were now a distant memory and looked like a huge, sick joke. There was no rescue. There was no protection. I’ve already told them , I thought, but I’m still here and it’s still happening to me . I was once again beyond rescue – and pretty much beyond reason.

There was only Emma and the gang.

I turned to the only refuge I could find – alcohol. At first Emma had used the vodka to make me more malleable; now it was me who was desperate for its raw edge, drinking it as quickly as I could to numb the horrors of each night, and hope they would stay somewhere near the surface rather than searing a path into my soul.

I’d sometimes be so drunk that I’d forget where I’d been or precisely how many paedophiles had forced themselves on me. Only the jagged pain I’d feel the next morning would remind me of the abuse I’d suffered.

September brought with it the start of the new school term – the year I was supposed to be doing my GCSEs.

Visits to Mum and Dad’s were becoming more infrequent, but the day before school started I went home to collect my uniform. As usual, I felt they didn’t really want me around, so I only stayed for a few minutes.

There’d be no lift to the school gates from Dad. Instead, I caught the bus from Harry’s place with Ricky and Hayley’s old flame, Wayne. Emma was still in bed as we set off.

It seemed so strange to see the boys in school uniform again, and even stranger when we got to school. Hayley was there, and we said hi, but it was different. Everyone else seemed so happy and so normal. All I could think was, None of these kids has any idea what’s happened to me these summer holidays .

And how could they know? How could they even guess? For them there might have been a bit of teenage fumbling; for me, it had been first one rape in a bedroom over a takeaway, and after that so many more that I’d actually lost count. Forty? Fifty? I had no idea. All I knew was that my life was ruined and there was no way I could ever fit in somewhere that was so achingly, wonderfully normal.

The first lesson of term was Art, and I sat at the back next to Wayne. He lived around the corner from Harry’s place, and because he was there so often, he’d got to know how Emma was using me.

Away from Ricky now, and far enough away from the other kids in the class to whisper unheard as he drew, he started to try and help me.

‘You’ve got to tell someone, Hannah,’ he said, leaning towards me. ‘Tell one of the teachers and they’ll sort it out. They’ll get you away from Emma, honest they will.’ He looked up to check the teacher wasn’t looking, then continued: ‘You act like she’s your mate, but she’s not. She’s just a fat bitch and she’s using you, Hannah. You’ve got to get away.’

Somewhere inside I felt myself trying to respond, trying to understand the sense of what he was saying, but I couldn’t. I just wiped away a tear and carried on drawing.

He kept on at me for the entire lesson, telling me I was a victim and that if I could tell someone it would all be over. ‘All those men need locking up, Hannah. Go on, tell someone.’ All I could find to say in reply was a petulant: ‘You just don’t understand! Now leave me alone.’