Array Girl A - Girl A - My Story

I knew that Jane believed me, and that she knew I was only one of dozens of girls being picked off and broken by the gang every night of the week. She thought she’d done the right thing by persuading me to go to the police. She’d coaxed me, reassured me, helped me through it all. And for what? So that the people in suits, and the people with social-work degrees, could throw it back in my face and turn a blind eye to what was going on in my home town. I should have trusted my instincts when I thought it would come to nothing.

I didn’t blame Jane, and for all that I’d lost touch with her now I knew she’d be bitterly disappointed by the decision. She’d feel she had let me down, I knew. But it wasn’t her. It was all the others. I’d told Jane right at the start that no one in any kind of authority would believe me, and now I’d been proved right.

A whole year to decide the case was too shaky. A whole year to decide that it wouldn’t be in the interests of justice to put a gang of paedophile rapists on trial. It was a joke, and it made me weep.

The injustice of the Crown Prosecution Service decision wasn’t lost on some of the detectives involved in the case. One had once hinted to Dad that it might come to this because he’d seen it happen in the past. That same officer came to see him now. He was shaking his head, saying: ‘I don’t believe it. If it had been up to me I would definitely have prosecuted.’

It would ultimately come out that even at that late stage, Greater Manchester Police could have contested the decision, but the top brass decided not to. I’m guessing they didn’t want to upset the CPS. Or that they, just like the lawyers, had decided to take the safe, more politically correct route, rather than face up to the fact that gangs of Asian men were preying on kids like me.

At the time I had no idea they could have appealed, and there was never any talk about it.

All that was left was a deep, impenetrable silence. The whole investigation stopped. Just like that.

I was left feeling devastated and frightened out of my wits. With no trial, there would be no justice. And, worse than that, the gang would feel the police couldn’t touch them and so they’d be free to carry on with an ever-widening pool of victims.

I kept hearing of other girls they were using.

The system had allowed my abusers free to roam, completely beyond the law. I looked down at Chloe, almost for comfort, shuddering at the thought of what the future might bring.

Two days after I was abandoned by the Crown Prosecution Service, Dad drove me to school so I could get my GCSE results. I’d made a huge effort with them, but as I slipped into the hall to learn my fate I really couldn’t be bothered. What did exam results matter now?

Miss Crabtree was there, and she came up to me, really friendly, asking how I was and the baby and what did Chloe weigh? When I showed her a picture of her she gave me a hug and started to well up.

All the GCSE results were in brown envelopes on the stage, and I opened mine with Miss Crabtree. I couldn’t help but smile when I read the sheet inside. I’d got C grades in everything! Not bad for a no-hoper who’d just been dumped back into hell! And it meant I could go to college.

Miss Crabtree was really, really pleased for me. ‘Oh, Hannah,’ she said, and then her voice cracked. She actually started crying, properly crying.

I couldn’t believe that someone was crying for me, crying because I’d done something good. For one of the few times in my life, if only for a moment, I actually felt proud of myself.

Even with the bounce of my GCSE results, the rejection of my case sent me into another downward spiral. It was even worse this time around as I’d started a college course and also had the baby to care for.

I struggled, I really did. I wasn’t breastfeeding Chloe. The nurses at the hospital had given me the usual encouragement but left me to make the final decision. I had decided I didn’t want to. It just didn’t appeal to me. I don’t regret it – I think she’s turned out fine without it – but it did make things more difficult, with sterilising and mixing the formula and everything. Doing all that on your own, as well as nappy changing, bathing, dressing, winding and comforting Chloe, while trying to do my college work, was stressing me out.

Chloe and I stayed at my parents’ home through the autumn and winter and into the new year of 2010 and of course my parents helped out. But Chloe was my ultimate responsibility – the buck stopped with me, and I wanted to get it right.

A couple of weeks into January, I decided I was ready to call in to see Jane at the clinic, and to show Chloe off to her. She was great, and said she looked so like me. I told her I was sorry I’d stopped seeing her.

‘How’s college?’ Jane asked, delicately changing the subject.

‘It’s great,’ I said, jiggling the baby. ‘I’m doing pretty well, too, I think. It’s just tough with this one.’

‘And home?’

It felt as though a cloud passed over my face. While the gang was history now, so was any court case that might have put Daddy and them in prison. Plus, life with my parents was getting more and more stressful again. Dad was always on at me, saying I was living there rent-free, and if I ever went out with my mates both of them would start on at me, accusing me of having sex with people all over the place. It had got to the stage where I could really only speak to my sister, Lizzie.

Jane had been waiting patiently for my reply. ‘It’s pretty rubbish,’ I whispered. ‘I could do with trying to get my own place.’

She said she’d have a word with a woman from Rochdale Connexions, who I’d already spoken to about money and my screwed-up home life.

When we talked about how the case had been thrown out by the CPS, Jane said she was disgusted. She still looked at my file every day, she said, because it reminded her to keep going. She wanted to keep pushing and pushing for me, and not give up.

Jane’s chat with Connexions meant I was put on the waiting list for a place at a single mothers’ housing unit – the same apartment block for young girls that back in 2008 was being targeted by abusers. Sara, Jane’s boss at Crisis Intervention, had told Social Services so in one of her letters, and who knows whether that was still the case when Chloe and I – a fragile, inadequate teenager and her infant daughter – moved in towards the end of June 2010?

At the time I had no idea what potential danger I was in. I was just relieved and I think Mum and Dad were too.

But I wonder now whether I and some of the other girls might have been targeted by the very people who’d abused the 15-year-old me; either them or members of a new gang.

To be honest, there were too many bad memories around Mum and Dad’s place, and I’d liked to have moved away from the Rochdale area altogether. But I didn’t have the money, and the council would only let me move locally.

Close to a park and Rochdale town centre, the housing unit didn’t seem a bad place to be because I was with other young mums trying to cope with things and to try to be independent. Well, not totally independent, because there are staff in the block twenty-four hours a day and CCTV to watch out for anyone kicking off.

There are a dozen flats there, and mine was on the top floor, overlooking a park. It had just the one bedroom for Chloe and me, but that was fine. And at least, unlike the flats on the two lower floors, there were no grilles over the windows.

I had a living room, and they gave me a starter pack to fit out the bathroom, the bedroom and the kitchen: a beige duvet cover with white circles, white sheets, pots and pans, cutlery, towels, toothpaste and shampoo, all of it from Asda. Next to the single bed I put Chloe’s cot; just a cheap one, wooden, from Argos.