Array Girl A - Girl A - My Story

There would be a number of video interviews to get through, in fact. Over the next couple of months, I got into a routine of doing them after I’d dropped Chloe off at nursery. Jane would always be there, supportive, a shoulder to cry on in the rest breaks after I’d given the detail of all those harrowing attacks in such detail it made me cringe.

All the way through, at the back of my mind, was the thought that my abusers deserved what, hopefully, was coming to them. Jane said I was brave, but to be honest I didn’t always feel it, and it still helped to have a drink.

Life was tough, but the crucial difference this time around was that right from the start I felt Susan and the others in her team believed me, and wanted to hear what I had to say. They were immediately sympathetic. I wasn’t some kind of child prostitute wasting their time with made-up stories.

Unbeknown to me, there’d been a huge change in the way the police looked at the sort of abuse and grooming I’d been through. Susan’s investigation had involved just a few girls, me included. Now, it turned out, Greater Manchester Police were going to spend millions of pounds on helping kids like me – and cracking down on the gangs exploiting them. So detectives like Susan were taken into a new, much wider investigation. They called it ‘Operation Span’, though I wouldn’t know that until my involvement in it was over.

Most of the early cases looked at by Operation Span were in Rochdale but, gradually, once more and more detectives knew what they were looking for, the operation would expand. And, in time, other police forces would start to do the same. It was a ball that would keep on rolling.

While Susan was speaking to me, and constantly reassuring me, other detectives were trying to track down some of the ‘newer’ girls who’d been picked up off the street and dumped on the gangs’ production lines. Rochdale Social Services didn’t want to face up to it, but I knew, and eventually the world would know, that virtually all the girls were white and almost all of the men who paid to rape them were Pakistani.

Sometimes the truth hurts. But it’s still the truth.

As for me, I was still confused, still desperately frightened. I was still paranoid about Emma and the others contacting me – I’d hide in the flat and switch my phone off when it got really bad.

With the video interviews, all my memories of the bad times with the gang came flooding back – the pain, the threats, the way they’d pass me around. Then, too, I’d think about the revenge they’d try to take against me if they knew what I was doing.

Even though I didn’t know it at the time, Susan and Jane started to talk to the housing unit and Social Services about how they could help me through the process. They all knew how scared and upset I was, and they set up what I suppose was a safety net to help me through. The police, too, had their own doubts and, unbeknown to me, at least to begin with, they were working behind the scenes to make things a little more bearable for me.

One of the issues they had was that the housing unit was close to the centre of Rochdale, close to where so many things had happened to me, and where so many of my abusers might be lurking. Social Services only seemed to think as far as the town itself; the police thought I’d be safer if I could be found somewhere to live outside the borough.

Little by little, I came to believe that there really would be a trial this time. The only problem was that I was incredibly damaged, and I wondered whether I’d have the strength to stand up to what lay ahead. I still carried with me a huge sense of injustice about being abandoned the first time around, and I was still finding it incredibly hard to do even the normal things in life – like raising my baby and getting on with the college work I hoped would give us a future.

In the end, I suppose I thought that until they were locked away I’d never be free; I’d always be looking over my shoulder, wondering when they’d catch up with me.

No one actually came out and said it, but I could tell that the detectives involved with Operation Span were annoyed with their colleagues who’d dealt with my case before. They kept on saying they were sorry, that the evidence had been there right from the start, and that certain procedures hadn’t been carried out when they should have been – basic things, like collecting the knickers as soon as I’d mentioned them, because in a case like this that sort of thing was crucial.

When they’d picked Daddy up, he totally denied having had sex with me, and yet his DNA was on my knickers. Wasn’t that enough to convince the police? And the CPS lawyers who looked at the file? It would have been more difficult for them if Daddy had said I’d had sex with him willingly, but he hadn’t – he just denied the whole thing.

The Operation Span team had to go through the whole investigation again for themselves, checking and rechecking, testing every single thing that I’d said and that my abusers had said, and reviewing all the forensics.

I’d hear them muttering things like: ‘This should all have been done the first time around,’ and ‘How the hell could they not bring this to court?’ Just like me, they couldn’t believe that the CPS had sent back the file marked ‘No Further Action’.

‘It’s as if they just didn’t want to know,’ hissed one detective. ‘All in all, Hannah, they had your account and they had the forensic proof. It just looks as though they’d all agreed – the police and the CPS – that they didn’t want to pursue it. We can’t believe how shoddy a job it’s been.’

Operation Span was only a couple of weeks old when the police moved in to start arresting more men who’d attacked either me or some of the other girls they’d groomed.

In quick succession they picked up Tariq, Cassie, Saj, Car Zero and Tiger.

Billy didn’t know it then, but he’d be next on the list. He was the one Roxanne thought she was in love with. She’d got pregnant by him, but he’d persuaded her to have an abortion. The police checked all the medical records, traced the remains of the foetus and sent them away for forensic tests. The results proved that Billy had been the father, and he was arrested as soon as the report came back from the lab.

There was one glitch, however, and that was over Aarif. He was arrested, he was questioned, but after being allowed out on bail he went home, packed his bags, and caught a flight to Pakistan. As far as I know he’s still there – until the day police can perhaps track him down and bring him back to finally face trial.

The rest of that winter, 2010 into 2011, was a nightmare for everyone involved with me: my family, the police, social workers, Jane, and the people at the housing unit. And me, of course.

Things had started to get on top of me again. Badly. I felt like I was in a recurring nightmare, with everything from all that time ago bubbling up again.

Locked inside my flat, terrified in case others in the gang came for me, I was heading straight back down the spiral, no matter what Jane or Susan did to try to keep me afloat.

The first time I tried to kill myself is a blur now. I know it was just into the new year, and that I was still conscious when the ambulance arrived, but after that your guess is as good as mine.

Afterwards, staff at the housing unit said I’d locked myself in the flat, and that three litres of cider had turned me mental and aggressive. The night staff shouted at the door for a few minutes, before deciding they had no option but to break in. One went to check on Chloe, lifting her, still asleep, out of her cot and taking her downstairs. The others piled in on me. Restraint they call it, but I needed it.