Array Girl A - Girl A - My Story

Saj was in traditional Asian clothes with baggy trousers. It was all either white or light blue.

He tried to take my leggings off for me, but I did it myself because I didn’t want him touching me. Then he put a condom on and started. He was doing it really slowly, which filled me with revulsion because I just wanted it to be over with. Doing it slow like that, it’s like the way you’d do it with your boyfriend or something – something loving.

I just shut my eyes, and thought, Hurry up, hurry up and get it over with . Times like this had become more of a mental torture than a physical one. I could deal with what was happening to my body, but in my head I just felt disgusted: sex is supposed to be with someone you love or, if not, then at least someone you want to be with, even if it’s lust.

Above me, Saj was saying that he really liked me and that he wanted me to stay overnight. God, I could never do that! I couldn’t cope with lying next to some creature like that for an entire night.

He kept trying to persuade me, saying he had enough money to pay Emma. I just kept saying no, and that I’d have to let Tariq know and he wouldn’t allow it.

When he’d finished, Emma brought Aarif into the room and said I’d have to sleep with him as well. I was crying again by now, saying, ‘No, I want to go home. I’ve done it now, can you take me home?’

Emma said, ‘You can’t just go with Saj and not Aarif when he’s here as well.’ But she then tried to appease him by saying he could have Roxanne. He moaned about it because for all that she was only thirteen, Roxanne was almost as big as Emma then. Eventually, though, he agreed to go into the bedroom with her.

It was Aarif who took us back to Morrison’s car park, and from there, almost immediately, we were picked up by Tiger. Billy was with him in the car. As we sped away towards Safeer’s place, Emma told me we had to go with them because I’d only slept with one person that night. Unbelievably, I found myself wondering if I would have been safer staying the night with Saj.

They’d given us a bottle of vodka, and even though the journey couldn’t have taken much longer than ten minutes, I tried to drink as much as I could. As ever, I knew that if I was drunk I wouldn’t feel as bad afterwards: it was always worse when I was sober, as I had been with Saj. The vodka was making me feel sick, but I kept forcing it down so I could get drunk.

Safeer’s ‘girlfriend’ sat with us in the living room in an awkward silence. We’d been there for maybe ten minutes before Emma told Roxanne to go into the bathroom with Tiger and give him a blow job.

I assume that was what she started doing, but after only a short time, Roxanne came out and said Tiger wanted to speak to Emma. They had a hushed conversation before Emma came to me and told me I had to go into the bathroom and finish him off. He didn’t like Roxanne: she was too fat.

Emma pushed me through the doorway but once I’d got there, trapped and shaking, I told him I didn’t want to do it. He laughed at me, and then started trying to have sex with me but he decided the room was too cramped for that, so he ordered me to do what Roxanne had started. When it was over, he got up and left. I just sat there, staring at the wall, half-drunk, completely violated, angry that I’d had to do something Roxanne was supposed to have done. And then feeling guilty because I’d dared have that thought.

Safeer’s ‘girlfriend’ stayed in the living room the whole time. I guess for her it was normal, and besides, maybe it was her turn later. I never saw her again.

As the days wore on, I began to wonder about Jane. She clearly wasn’t stupid, and I sensed she was becoming suspicious. She’d seen the way Emma behaved around me, and she must have wondered why I was so quiet and seemingly under her thumb.

I didn’t give it that much thought, though, because my retreat into alcohol was pretty much complete by the middle of November 2008: even on the days and nights that I wasn’t being abused – which wasn’t many – I’d try to drink myself into oblivion so I could forget.

Jane came in to see me at school on a Wednesday, midway through November. She was there partly to explain that I’d been referred to Childcare Services, because everyone was worried for me.

We began talking about drinking, and I let slip that when I was drunk I’d do things I’d never even think about doing when I was sober.

‘I’ll sleep with anyone when I’m drunk,’ I said. It was meant to be a joke, but Jane latched on to it and the conversation went deeper: a lot deeper.

I suddenly found myself telling her how controlling Emma was, and how she’d deliberately get me drunk so she could take advantage of me and make money from me. She’d take me to meet men who’d then sleep with me. And she’d rarely let me have a mobile phone, partly because she wanted to control me and partly because she was paranoid about me having the men’s numbers for myself. As if I’d want to.

At one point Jane looked up and asked: ‘Did you ever see money changing hands?’

I nodded. Emma always had at least £60 on her at any one time, I said, and I’d seen her force Roxanne to sleep with a man. Emma got £20 for it, and she gave Roxanne a fiver.

It was a day for confessions, and for the rest of that meeting I couldn’t help but confide in her, as maybe I should have done a long time before. I suppose I saw it as my only chance. I told her a lot about what I’d been going through, and how, for all that Emma and Roxanne seemed to enjoy what they were doing, I always felt scarred and damaged. And how I wanted it to end so that I could have my life back.

The one thing I didn’t tell her about was Courtney’s involvement in it all. I thought she’d been attacked, but I wasn’t sure.

Sitting there with Jane, I told her that despite all that was going on in my own life I’d made a new friend at school. Her name was Robyn, and she was the sort of girl who right from the start would try her best to look after me. Fat chance, but Jane still smiled. I said I felt ashamed about what was happening to me, and that I didn’t want any of the other kids at school to find out.

It reminded me of Harry’s house. ‘There’s sick graffiti about me on the walls outside,’ I said. ‘And in one of the bedrooms… it’s like it’s been written about someone else, someone I’ve never met.’

But of course, I had.

While I was with Jane that day, she got me to fill in some forms about relationships and respect. The first page was called, ‘My life as a young woman in Rochdale’, and after that came some headings where she asked me to give her answers. This is how I filled it in:

Something nice: Hanging around with mates

Something horrible: School

My mates: Robyn

How do I spend my time: Drinking and going out

Where do I go: Friends’ houses

What do I do: Party

What do I want to do in the future: Be rich

What risks have I taken: Loads

After that, she wanted me to make a list under two headings: ‘Good things about being a girl’ and ‘Bad things about being a girl’.

In the first column I wrote down the usual suspects: Boys, make-up, getting hair done and shopping .

In the second I wrote:

Losing your virginity, periods, having a baby, responsibility, being used, being in love, vulnerability .

I thought we were finished, but then she asked me to do one more of the things she did with kids like me. ‘Perfect Partners’, she called it, and I had to describe the sort of lad I dreamed about.

Looking back, I think she was trying to make me think about Jake (she still didn’t know he hadn’t been a real, proper boyfriend). She said she wanted it to be all about respect: how you’d look at the qualities a lad had to offer and aim for someone with good ones, because that would make you feel good about yourself and good about life.