Array Girl A - Girl A - My Story

Jane met up with me again the following week, in her office, after I’d had time to think about Emma and how she’d controlled me over all these months.

‘She’s a lot bigger than me,’ I began, timidly. ‘And she scares me. It’s like she gives me this look, and if I don’t do what she says I know she’ll batter me. That’s how she got me, and that’s how she got me to go with her to all those men. And once it started, I’ve not been able to stop it.’

I told Jane how betrayed I’d felt by the first police investigation, but then, through my tears, I made the decision I never thought I’d make: I suddenly blurted out, ‘I’ll do it. I’ll talk to the police again.’

And then, still doubting what I’d just said, and still wondering whether I’d really go through with it, I added, ‘But only if I can tell it to you first.’

For the next two hours she sat there at her desk taking notes while I poured my heart out to her, in the sort of detail that made me cringe, and probably her, too. But she kept reassuring me that it would be fine and that I was doing the right thing. When I told her I felt like a prostitute, she said ‘No, you’re a child who’s been sexually abused and exploited.’

Maybe I found it easier to speak to Jane, or maybe the police weren’t asking me the right questions.

I gave her as much of an insight as I dared into what was happening to me and some of the other girls, and how Emma was operating.

I told her about the time a girl called Alesha slept with two Asian men when she went out with Emma, and had had to go to hospital.

‘How do you know that?’ she asked.

‘Emma and Jake both told me,’ I replied.

I couldn’t bring myself to tell her what Harry was making me do whenever I was alone with him, but I whispered: ‘It’s not just with the Asians she’s doing things – and the same with Roxanne.

‘Both of them keep giving Harry blow jobs, you know, when they’re skint. She and Emma just laugh about what they do with Harry. They don’t see it as wrong.’ I paused, then continued, ‘And with the Asian men, both of them love the sex. On the way home, they’ll say it was good. They never seem to feel the way I feel…’

I trailed off, but then added: ‘It always makes me feel so sick. I hate it. I always turn my face away.’

She’d filled nearly seven pages by the time we’d got to the end. Each of them was A4, lined, filled with names and addresses, and the accounts of what the men had done to me.

Together, they made it clear that the gang was still out there, still attacking me and other girls, whether it was in Rochdale or Heywood or beyond.

I signed every page to say that what Jane had written was true. She made us both a cup of tea then – to calm us down, I think. It had been an emotional time.

‘Will I have to stand up in court?’ I asked, sipping tea.

‘It’s very unlikely,’ she said. ‘But the important thing is that you’ve been brave enough to get this far. I’m sure it will get easier now.’

Through all this trauma, the baby grew inside me, innocently oblivious to the fact that it would be born to a mother who felt that she was totally inadequate and completely incapable of looking after it.

The statement Jane had taken down for me was dated 14 January. Just over a week later, on 22 January 2009, after she’d passed on copies to both Social Services and the police, I was on my way to do another video interview with detectives.

Jane came with me to the police station. She was driving, and for most of the journey we were pretty quiet: me, pensive, wondering how on earth it would all go; her, I sensed, equally nervous, anxious to get me there before I changed my mind.

Which, in my still-fragmented state, I was always likely to do.

Walking into the police station, however, my mind switched on to what I was about to go through. I realised I was terrified.

Jane waited outside while I went into the interview room. It was John again. He ushered me – a thin street kid in grey turned-up jeans, a low white top, dark chequered jacket and flat black shoes – into the same room. You still wouldn’t have known I was pregnant: I looked far too young and, anyway, the still-tiny bump was hidden by my top. My hair was short, but a strand of it sometimes flopped over onto my cheek until I’d brush it away. I sat on the sofa, my legs crossed, biting my lip.

John started with some small talk, thinking it would put me at my ease: ‘What have you been doing since I last saw you?’ he asked. ‘Anything good?’

‘Not really,’ I said, thinking, If only he knew! ‘I’m not allowed at Harry’s house to see Emma,’ I said simply. And yes, I was still at school, though I hadn’t been going for a month because I was pregnant.

‘What have you been doing with yourself? Sitting around at home?’

Mostly, I said, or going out sometimes.

What we both knew was that the ‘going out’ had been with members of a gang of paedophiles.

It wasn’t the easiest start to an interview. But it was a relief when he told me I wouldn’t have to talk about Daddy.

I told him how I’d been switched from Daddy’s control to Tariq’s, how he’d already started picking me and Emma up before the main police interview I’d done the previous August.

I’d seen him in the Balti House ages before, near the end of what had been going on with Daddy. He’d come in one night and just started talking to us. I think Daddy already knew him.

‘He asked us if we wanted to come to Tasty Bites later, and the next day Emma just said, “Tariq’s picking us up today.” It just started there. At first he’d take us for a drive, then to Aarif’s. He drove a silver minibus for Eagle Taxis. It’s car 40, the airport one with a picture of a plane on the side.’

John asked: ‘How does Tariq know you’re prepared to sleep with men?’

‘Emma sorted it out,’ I said. ‘In his car, he’d talk about anything. What have you been doing? Where do you live? Who do you live with? How old are you? We told him we were both fifteen.’

I recalled the time at Tasty Bites where about half a dozen of the men had been trying to persuade Emma, Paige and me to drink their vodka, and asking me whether I’d have sex with them. It was the time Emma had given me £2 to go home. Later, I told John, her fabulous boyfriend was talking about the money he got for us. I asked Emma what he was on about, and she replied: ‘Don’t you know? He gets paid for us shagging people.’

John looked up from the papers he was shuffling in his lap and asked quietly, ‘Why did you do it, Hannah?’

‘I don’t know,’ I replied. ‘I felt scared of Emma, and scared of Tariq as well. Because I’ve seen what he’s done to Emma and what he says to her.’

I didn’t tell him, but I was thinking of the times I’d seen the two of them together, and how, for all her ‘strength’, all her control, Emma was actually subservient to Tariq – a bit like I was with her. It was as if she was really scared of him and had met her match. Tariq had an aura about him that said ‘Don’t mess with me.’ Emma did as well, of course, but at the end of the day she was still only five months older than me. To him, she was just a kid; a fat, difficult, lumbering kid, but still only a kid. A kid he was using, just as she was using me.

Lost in thought, I dragged myself back to the real world: a police station a million light years from ‘Disturbia’ and gangs and Harry’s house. John was asking another question. I forced myself to focus.

‘Why go back to Tasty Bites?’ he was asking. ‘Why go back with those other men, given what you’d been through before?’