Array Girl A - Girl A - My Story

Some nights, when Mum and Dad would ask the police or Social Services to get me away from Harry’s place, the police might turn up, but they’d just put me in a van and dump me back at home. They never seemed to care whether I was OK, whether the gang had any hold on me. There was never any, ‘Look, sweetheart, if these people threaten you again, you’ve got to come to us.’

At first I had thought the police were like my parents, thinking it was only Daddy and Immy who were involved. But then I remembered telling them about being attacked by the other men as well, and about Emma, and how it all worked.

I felt betrayed by them, as though after all I’d been through I was just a joke to be laughed at – by the gang, the police, by Social Services. I was locked into the life Emma and the gang were forcing on me. Part of me told me it was my own fault for keeping on going back: I should have had more courage, or strength, or just common sense. I should have told someone rather than waiting for somebody to rescue me. But Emma had that hold over me and wasn’t about to let me go.

From that point on, I sank to a new level of despair. I was effectively owned by a gang who felt they were immune to justice.

For their part, the police either knew I was still being abused or should have guessed. They’d called at Harry’s place for the underwear they needed for forensics, and I’d told them how Emma had been controlling me for the gang. They also knew, as the autumn wore on and I remained at Harry’s place, that I was still massively at risk, because my parents would ring them in despair to ask them to bring me back from there. They’d do it, but, as I said, they never did anything to make me stay at home – or sit me down and ask why I was doing it. The police were the ones investigating Daddy over the rape, so surely they should have taken more of an interest in me? After all, I was the victim and the main witness.

And so the days rolled on. Some days we’d go back to Emma’s so I could change out of my school uniform, but other times we’d go straight to wherever Tariq and Emma had agreed to meet the gang. People have said since that kids shouldn’t be out that late, all indignant, thinking these things always happen at night. But this was in daylight, three o’clock in the afternoon, with me being picked up still in my uniform to be taken to God knows where, straight from the school gates.

If I did get a chance to change, I’d wear a tracksuit or jeans and a T-shirt. I deliberately dressed down, knowing that whatever I wore, it wouldn’t matter. My clothes came off anyway.

Emma would be trying to hurry me as I got changed, though sometimes she’d wait in the car for me outside Harry’s, chatting with Tariq while I got ready. Normally it would take about two minutes: no make-up, no hair do, not even the Poundshop powder I used as foundation when I could afford it. Anything not to encourage them.

Once I was ready, we’d get back into the taxi and I’d be driven to Rochdale, Oldham or wherever. I never went anywhere on my own; Emma was always there.

As soon as we got to where we were headed, I’d know what was coming and try to get it over with so I could go home. I’d go onto autopilot.

Sometimes we’d go to a place and stay there for a few hours while a succession of different men came to have their so-called fun. Other times we’d go somewhere, stay a short time, go back to Harry’s place, and then there’d be another phone call to her mobile and we’d be picked up again to go somewhere else. It could be anywhere, just as long as they were getting paid and Emma was getting paid both for what she was doing and for selling me.

Escort girls want to do it – and have the choice to do it – and Emma, by then, it seemed, wanted to do it. But for me it was rape, because I didn’t want to do it.

I knew from magazines that girls from other countries were trafficked into Britain for sex, and that they might end up in brothels, unable to escape. These stories were quite high profile. But what about this story, that was happening to me? What was happening here was still trafficking, except there were no air fares to pay, no girls to pay. Domestic trafficking, as the police call it. And you still couldn’t escape because of what they’d do to you. It was ruthless and evil, and they didn’t care whether they were destroying the lives of kids like me.

I think if they were threatening me now, I wouldn’t believe it – at least not the worst of it. But at fifteen, I thought they were totally invincible and totally beyond the reach of the law. So when they said they’d burn my parents’ house down, beat the shit out of me or my parents, and rape my sisters, I believed them. And, as a kid, once you’ve convinced yourself that they’ll do what they say, they don’t need to keep repeating themselves: you see the threat in their eyes every time they look at you. It doesn’t go away.

With the men, it was always brutal, always at the most basic level that sex can be. They were animals. They didn’t bother with anything that might make it easier for me; nothing like using a lubricant. They were prepared to hurt me because all they wanted was what they’d paid for. I just had to suffer the pain. By then I wasn’t bleeding or anything any more, but because up to six men a night were raping me, one after the other, I’d often feel terribly sore inside.

They knew we weren’t prostitutes because they could have found those for themselves. They needed this specialised market that people like Daddy and Tariq, in their separate gangs, had carved out for them to enjoy: the forbidden market in which they could turn up at a stranger’s flat or house, violate an under-age girl – a white girl – and then go back to their wives as if nothing had happened.

I’m guessing that they’d see a prostitute as dirty and disgusting, but a young girl as clean, innocent and somehow pure. It must have been a turn-on for them – it was a turn-on for them, as some of them asked for even younger girls than me, younger even than Roxanne at thirteen.

I still can’t understand how they could be turned on by a sobbing child who was indifferent to them. A prostitute will put on a show if she knows that if she does she may get more money. And she’ll play an active part in it, again because of the money. But when they attacked me, it was just a kid taking her leggings and knickers off with everything else still on, lying there on the bed and looking at the wall while they did it. No conversation, just Tariq having told them, ‘She’s young and tight,’ and giving them a price.

Where was the fun in that for these men? Maybe it’s the power, the control. There’s no power with a prostitute, but there is with a child, even if she could just as easily be your daughter.

It was one huge circle of activity, a bit like when you throw a stone into the middle of a lake and the ripples keep going out towards the edges. Obviously there are paedophiles from all races, but almost all those who attacked me were Pakistani. I’ve heard since that white paedophiles operate mostly on their own. To my knowledge they don’t usually do what these guys did: ring their mates and say, ‘We’ve got a fourteen-year-old here, come on round.’

It’s almost as if they don’t see it as wrong. There were so many of them, all friends, or friends of friends, all passing on numbers to each other so they could have sex with a young white girl. They’d think it was normal to go to someone else’s house, walk into a room where three schoolgirls were being plied with drink, and then a few minutes later force them to have sex.

Some of them, and men like them, had been going through the same vile ritual for years.