Array Girl A - Girl A - My Story

Drama over, they saw the empty packets of paracetamol and called an ambulance. It hadn’t just been cider, either. There was also an empty bottle of Calpol on the sofa. As if anyone tries to commit suicide with Calpol!

For good measure, apparently, I’d cut my wrists; which explains the jagged little scars I still carry there today.

I spent that night in hospital, while Chloe was driven off to Mum and Dad’s place in the back of a social worker’s car. Nobody visited me in hospital that night, not even my parents. They couldn’t bear to. They were livid with me because I’d done it with Chloe helpless in her cot. And me, as I came round – I couldn’t believe I’d abandoned her like that.

Once I’d been discharged, I headed home from the hospital in a taxi. Mum and Dad gave me the cold shoulder, thinking I was just attention-seeking. Or, simply not knowing how to cope in this situation; this new turn of events. Chloe, though, ran to me as I came through the door.

As she snuggled into my shoulder I thought, What they hell have I done? I’ll never do that again. It’s just not fair to let her grow up without her mum .

After that, I was sent to the hospital in Manchester where I’d been born. This time, though, it was for counselling about the abuse that had made me try to kill myself.

It didn’t do me any good, however, not then. And, back at the housing unit, I was still so paranoid about Emma and the others contacting me that I was still getting drunk all the time.

A few weeks later, I got a final warning. Any more trouble, the staff said, and I’d be out and homeless. But they always said that to girls and nothing ever seemed to happen.

For weeks after that, the police had to file a whole series of reports on the trouble they said I was causing: with my mum, with friends, or the people at the housing unit. Then there was the self-harming. It was always when I was drunk, which was pretty much every night.

The drinking was the worst of my problems, as it exacerbated my paranoia. I felt really low for a lot of the time and was prescribed anti-depressants. Most nights, and sometimes days, I settled for my own anti-depressant: a couple of litres of White Star.

I spent my eighteenth birthday just getting drunk in the flat with a few friends. Mum and Dad, still despairing of me but still trying to reach out, had given me £20. It probably went on cider.

Worse, I couldn’t be bothered to go to college much, and my tutor there started to worry about me. Amazingly, I was still on track to pass the course, but only if I started turning up more often.

The police were still trying to help so I’d be in some kind of fit state to give evidence when the case came to court, but it was tough. And Rochdale Social Services weren’t a lot of help.

At one point, the head of targeted services, Steve Garner, was asked to give me extra support. His department promptly sent along the two social workers I hated the most. One of them, Anne, came back later, asking me a million questions about Chloe’s paternity. I was so angry I wanted to throw her out. It all just added to the pressure, but Rochdale Social Services didn’t seem to see it that way. Another time, when professionals met to talk about me in February as the police and Crisis Intervention had said they wanted to give me maximum support because they knew how messed up I was, Social Services didn’t even bother to turn up.

It didn’t seem to matter to them that I’d been a child at the time I’d been abused by the gang, and that emotionally I was still just a kid. They had ignored all the warnings about me while it was going on; now they were washing their hands of me again. They didn’t seem to be able to see me and Chloe as a unit, and that if they helped to sort me out, they’d be sorting things out for her, too.

Jane was still keeping closely in touch with me, though, and every so often the police would ring and say, ‘We’ve got some more, Hannah. Are you okay to come in?’

On 21 February I went to a VIPER parade and identified six men out of eight. It was so difficult, though, because I’d not seen them all for so long. The two who got off must have been thanking their lucky stars.

Most of them had been identified initially from the descriptions I’d given the police – descriptions of their features, their characteristics, the cars they drove, the places they visited or lived. After that, they were put under surveillance, and finally they were picked up.

The police had finally managed to tease some of the information from me in 2011. Some of it, though, went as far back as the earlier, pre-Span investigation of 2008 and 2009.

Three days after that latest VIPER I met up with Susan to do another video interview. I can still remember sitting there in my pink cardigan and the usual black leggings, arms wrapped around my middle, shaking sometimes as the police interviewer, Steph, asked me dozens and dozens of questions.

It was good that it was another woman. She started off by telling me there was nothing I could say that would shock her; I just had to try my best to remember all the details. ‘I understand it may be embarrassing,’ she said, ‘but you can tell me anything.’

My head was down, trying to avoid the cameras I knew were filming me. ‘Look, it’s nothing to be embarrassed about,’ she was saying. ‘You were fifteen, you’re eighteen now. You learn as you grow older, don’t you?’

Yes , I thought. Looking back, I’d been so stupid, so naïve.

I was on the verge of tears as I took her through the way the abuse had started after I’d moved into Harry’s house, the way Emma had taken me to the Balti House, and how Daddy had raped me. It was part of the deal, he’d said. He bought me things; I should give him things. I’d felt so scared.

‘He said, “We’re friends, we do things for each other.” I didn’t want to because he was old, but I didn’t want to say no because I didn’t want to look soft to Emma. I just tried to laugh it off.’

Steph leaned forward and asked: ‘What were you scared of?’

‘Sleeping with him,’ I said.

‘Why?’

‘Because it’s disgusting.’

I told Steph how I’d hoped Emma would come in and save me, but she hadn’t, and Daddy had started pulling at my pants and I had started trying to look at the wall.

‘Could he see the tears?’ asked Steph.

I couldn’t speak. I just nodded.

We moved on to the time Daddy gave me to Immy as his treat, and how he had told me that in his country, it was tradition for men to have sex with girls as young as eleven.

What had I thought of that? asked Steph. ‘I don’t even know what I was thinking,’ I said. ‘I was stupid.’

‘How do you feel about it now?’

‘Bad.’

‘What do you think about Daddy doing this?’

‘I think it’s sick.’

I said to Steph that I’d been too scared to fight Immy off; scared of Emma because I was living with her and because she was so threatening.

‘She’d have battered me,’ I said. ‘At first she was nice, but then it changed. I didn’t like her any more but I couldn’t get away from her.’

There had been a time when Chef had been touching me from behind. Wiping away tears, I said: ‘Emma told me to let him carry on, but I told him to stop and he stopped’.

A few minutes later Emma had gone upstairs with him. It was the time he’d paid her £20 to let him go down on her. Afterwards, she’d joked about maybe telling someone what had happened. It really was a joke because I don’t think she’d ever have said anything, but he didn’t take it that way. He went wild, grabbing a kitchen knife and waving it at us, screaming, ‘If you tell anyone, I’ll kill you two bitches!’