Array Girl A - Girl A - My Story

The girl who’d become the bane of their lives – they had never understood the hold Emma had over me, and had never seen why I kept going back to Harry’s place – was legally over the age of consent, and so they closed the file on me. Despite still being a child in need, from now on, in their eyes, I would just be another wayward, dysfunctional girl making the wrong life choices and ‘hanging around with the wrong crowd’.

So when Jane put the call in to Social Services on 17 February, Anne, my social worker, wouldn’t even speak to her. The case was closed, she told a colleague, and Jane would have to contact the referral officer. My dad got the same treatment a bit later on. ‘I rang her, but she wouldn’t accept my call,’ he said. Rochdale Council had officially washed its hands of me.

For days after my return home, to my shame, the house was filled with the sound of terrible rows; most of them between me and my mum. She still didn’t see me as a victim, and nor did Dad, because Social Services had never told them what was really going on. And, of course, I hadn’t either. So in all those rows I was told time after time that I was a slag and that I disgusted them.

I still felt I was living a nightmare, but coming home did at least one huge thing for me: it finally ended the long cycle of abuse. From that point on, I never went back to the gang, and, instead, my mind focused – or tried to focus – on one day bringing them all to justice.

For Emma, too, there was a change, because although she didn’t know it yet, she had lost the girl she’d recruited for the gang seven months earlier. She would have to use other victims. At the time, I didn’t actually realise that would be the case – I was still just relieved to be away from her. It was only later that I would come to realise what my escape meant – another girl’s imprisonment.

I’d never speak to Emma again and yet, bizarrely, in those final weeks with her at Harry’s house, and sometimes later, much later, I felt a connection with her in some sick, weird sort of a way.

For all that she was evil and skewed, she was perhaps the only person in the world who knew the hell that I’d been through: I can only guess she had been through it herself when Carla had first taken her on. The twist was that I think she got a buzz from then doing it to me. And, once I’d escaped, girls like Paige – who wouldn’t, or couldn’t break away – and Nadine.

After a couple of weeks, things became a bit easier at home. In fact, the house itself became a bit of a sanctuary. For a time, Emma and Tariq would come up onto the estate and drive around. They’d park up behind my parents’ house and try to get me to go out. But I resisted. Finally, in my own head, it was over.

My parents never knew, but Tariq even kept the house under surveillance for a while. There were many times I’d peek out from my bedroom window and see his taxi, car 40, parked outside. Sometimes Emma would be with him; she’d even call my mobile. I’d keep changing my sim card, but each time, somehow, she’d find me.

They also followed me when I was out of the house. The first time it happened I’d been out shopping and was on my way home. Tariq shouted, ‘Hannah!’ and I recognised his voice straight away. I thought, Oh my God, I’m going to get shot or something . I got back to the house as quickly as I could, my heart beating. Mum and Dad were at home, completely oblivious to it. For a long time I wouldn’t go out on my own.

Time went on and we were into March. I was about to set off for school one morning when Dad took a call on his mobile.

I could hear a man’s voice at the other end of the line. It sounded like one of the detectives I’d spoken to.

‘Wow,’ said Dad, then, ‘that’s great news.’ He broke off for a moment. ‘Hannah,’ he said. ‘They’ve arrested Harry.’

Yes, it was great news. It turned out that Harry, once a father figure to me, later a disgusting paedophile, had opened his front door in his boxer shorts to find two plainclothes officers standing there. By all accounts, he had gone quietly, knowing, I hope, that his days of sick perversion were over. While I was walking to school that frosty March morning, Harry, finally dressed in crumpled jeans, a cheap checked shirt and off-white, slip-on shoes, was being led into a police station by a detective trying desperately to hide her smile.

He would be there a long time because he had a lot of questions to answer. And this time he wasn’t dealing with kids.

I had to eat dinner on my own that day because I couldn’t see any of my friends around, like Robyn or Hayley – the Hayley I suspected had been abused by the gang along with me. But it didn’t matter because I still felt good. I felt safer than I’d done for ages.

And it got better – some time after that, the police moved in to question Emma.

Knowing this was strangely difficult for me. How could I explain to myself, let alone them, that in the darkest days I’d begun to see her as my only friend, as if I was bound to her by the secret we shared about the men she took me to? But the ties between us had loosened, and now, realising this, and knowing that she was being interviewed, I actually felt a new wave of freedom wash over me.

It made me feel as good as the day Harry was arrested.

There was yet more news. The police called to ask me to identify someone who knew Daddy from the Balti House – this was on the same day I heard they were questioning people from the halal meat shop. I’d been taken there with Emma, Roxanne and sometimes Paige. It was suddenly all coming together, and I felt great that it seemed they were all being rounded up.

The forensic tests, however, weren’t as simple as the police had first thought. They’d sent away my knickers for testing back in August, but then asked for a second test – and these weren’t finished until 18 March.

The results blew away Daddy’s alibi. All this time he had been saying that the only reason they’d found his DNA on my knickers was that Emma and I had swapped after the two of them had had sex and that she had consented to the sex. But they never did have sex – at least, not as far as I know.

The second test proved beyond doubt that Emma hadn’t worn those knickers. When the police put this new evidence to him, Daddy couldn’t give them an answer. He just told them he had nothing else to say.

It seemed that, just like me over all those months, he had nowhere else to run. I thought a date for his trial would be just around the corner.

My parents were really supporting me now, and I began to daydream about the sort of future that other sixteen-year-olds take for granted: going to college and maybe, just maybe, university. Except that I would soon have a baby to look after. Despite that, I decided to make a real effort with school now. Miss Crabtree will be shocked , I thought.

Emma remained a threat, though, as she still sometimes came onto the estate and, one time, to the back of the house with a girl who’d started coming to the house, Taliah. She had tried to get my sister to get me to go out, but I wouldn’t. Sometimes, when I looked out of my bedroom window, I could see Emma standing at the corner and Taliah a bit further down the street. It was chilling.

Unfortunately, just when the bond between me and Jane seemed to be at its best, it began to unravel.

‘We’re going on a family day out to a theme park,’ I told her one day, oblivious to the fact that I was about to cross a line with my rescuer. ‘The BNP have organised it.’

She looked at me, aghast. ‘Sorry, Hannah,’ she said, as if she hadn’t quite heard properly. ‘The BNP?’