Array Girl A - Girl A - My Story

‘I don’t know,’ I said again. And then I opened up just enough to give him an insight into the way I’d been groomed.

‘Emma kept telling me to go,’ I said. ‘She kept telling me “They’re dangerous.” When I kept refusing, she’d threaten me. She used to say she’d tell my mum and dad. That she’d get me battered.’

I gave John a list of the men who’d attacked me, and then he wanted me to tell him about each specific incident.

I knew I couldn’t.

‘There’s too many,’ I said. ‘Tariq would just tell the two of us who we were sleeping with, and then he’d send us off. Afterwards he’d collect all the money. Usually we just had to give them a blow job and then lie down and let them do it,’ I said.

Then I took a deep breath and said, ‘If we were on our period they used to tell us to do it up the bum.’ I told John I hated it, that it had really hurt, but that they used to tell me that I had to do it.

John asked gently: ‘Did they take steps to make it not painful for you?’

I shook my head, then forced myself to speak. ‘No,’ I whispered. ‘They’d just slam it in.’

He asked me to rate how much it hurt me on a scale of nought to ten.

‘I don’t know… seven? eight?’ My head lowered, I started to shake. I felt my hair fall over my face. But I went on. ‘At first it was, like, really painful, but after they’d done it a few times it didn’t hurt as much.’

If I thought telling him that was bad enough, there was more trauma to come: John wanted to go through the number of times each of them had attacked me, and how.

‘Aarif?’ he asked.

‘Every time we went there,’ I replied.

‘Up the bum?’

‘Eight or something.’

‘Megamuncher?’

‘About twice, because Emma always used to go with him.’

‘Joe?’

‘About six times or something.’

‘Anally?’

‘I think it was just once.’

He asked about Cassie. How often with him?

‘Lots of times,’ I said. ‘About twenty, thirty times because he used to pick us up in the car as well.’

‘And anally?’

‘I can’t remember.’

‘Saj?’

‘About ten times.’

‘Anally?’

‘About three times.’

My head stayed down.

They let me have a break so that I could get some food with Jane. I started off telling her how embarrassed I’d been about some of the questions I’d had to answer, and then I told her that Emma and Roxanne had started to hang around with a girl called Nadine, who went to Roxanne’s school.

‘I’ve mentioned her to you before,’ I said. ‘She already does it – I’ve seen her at the houses I’ve been to. Her best friend does it as well, but Nadine’s involved with loads of Pakistanis. She tells Roxanne how much she loves them.’ I knew it would be more information for Jane to pass along, more evidence to build a case against these men.

Just before I went back into the room, Jane told me to carry on being honest with the police. That’s what I did, but they didn’t ask me many more questions – and there was nothing about Nadine.

The interview over, as we drove away I told Jane how at the main interview in August, once the tapes had been switched off, John had asked me if I’d done it for the money. He had also said this time he didn’t believe me when I said I was scared of Emma.

Jane was furious. ‘How dare he?’ she said. ‘It’s disgusting that he would say that – even if he didn’t believe you, which obviously he should! That’s no way to treat a girl who’s been through what you’d been through.’

I was truly grateful to her, but the memory of how my stomach and heart had both dropped the instant he’d spoken came flooding back. I wondered whether it was all going to happen again – that despite overcoming my fear, and choking on every word I’d spoken as I’d recalled the horrors I’d been through, the police still wouldn’t believe me.

Was it going to be a rerun of what had gone on before when I told the police about Daddy? That I’d be dismissed and ignored by the very people who should be helping me?

Then what? Emma and the gang would drag me and my unborn child back into their dark world.

For all that I’d done my best to help the police, I was still living a double life. With the gang all still free, all still able to hurt me, I had to make it look to them that everything was normal: as normal as it could be in this world of theirs. I was trying desperately hard to find an escape route from Emma and the gang, but I was terrified they’d guess that I’d gone to the police again – just as I’d done in August.

And so it was that I felt I had no option but to allow Emma to give me to the gang the very same day I’d done the second video interview. I’d managed to talk to the police about Tariq and lots of others, but I couldn’t resist her threats that night. So immediately I was back in the worst of danger. This was rock bottom.

Perhaps even more dangerous than this, Social Services’ intensive support team closed their case on me that same day. They said Anne, my social worker, had told them that as far as she was concerned, I wasn’t at any more risk. Mary, from intensive support, said it was felt I had enough support from Crisis Intervention, and that in the future I’d also have Maternity Services. I could get back in touch with the intensive support team if I ever felt I needed them.

Miss Crabtree, my teacher, told Jane she was disgusted with the decision and very worried about the safety of both me and my baby.

For me, it felt as though every last flame of ambition to fight my attackers had been extinguished. What was the point? There was no escape. There would never be any escape.

I really can’t remember now, but one of the people I may have told the police about during that interview was Parvez. Or maybe he just came later – with so much happening to me, I simply couldn’t keep track of it all.

Emma introduced him to me as another of her ‘boyfriends’. By then, I’d learned that a guy she thought of as a boyfriend was actually just one of the gang she actually fancied.

We only went to his flat a few times. He’d sleep with Emma, and Roxanne or I would have to sleep with the other guy there. I slept with Parvez once. After that, he said he just wanted Roxanne because she was more into it; he thought she actually enjoyed it.

This didn’t stop her helping me to rob him one night – or at least try to. We’d been at his flat and Emma had rung a taxi to take us on to someone else’s house. Roxanne and I didn’t want to go so, just as we were leaving, I grabbed his wallet and we ran off.

We got out of the flat OK, but he caught up with us in the road. He slapped me in the face and took his wallet back. A minute later, Emma arrived in the taxi she’d booked, laughing at us.

Not getting away with the money meant Roxanne and I had to go with her, otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to get home. I think we went on to Billy’s house.

Either way, I was to have to tell Jane about Parvez for one very important reason.

Towards the end of January, the various agencies in Heywood and Rochdale – the police, the social workers, and Crisis Intervention – suddenly had something very worrying to concentrate on; something else that should have alerted each and every one of them to the increasing power of the gang.

On or around 26 January, two local girls had gone missing from home. A girl called Ruth had just vanished, and Paige had not come home after telling her family she was going babysitting.

Jane was really worried, and asked me if I knew anything that might help. We met in the Asda café again.