Array Girl A - Girl A - My Story

As the questions went on, it felt as though Steph was trying to help me understand how I’d grown up in those three years, and that at eighteen I would have just fought them all off and run away. But, back then, my abusers – whether white, Asian, all of them – knew I was vulnerable and isolated, and that I believed all their threats.

Who could I have told about it? she asked.

I welled up. ‘I couldn’t have told any of those in the house, in Harry’s place. If I’d told my dad, he’d probably have gone mad at me. I couldn’t get away.’

Steph asked me if I had spoken to anyone about it. I mentioned Jane, and Steph asked me if anything had changed as a result. I told her no – we both knew how slowly these things happened. But the questions still went on.

I told how Daddy had just kept bringing people to have sex with me, and sometimes he’d give me money to make sure I stayed quiet.

‘That’s what he used to do. Get people to have sex with me in the places.’

‘So why would he do that? What would he gain from doing that?’

‘Maybe he was getting money as well,’ I said slowly.

A few moments later, to my relief, the interview ended. When the tape and the cameras had been switched off, I looked up at Steph and said: ‘There’s lots of stuff I could have done, wasn’t there? I could have rung the police. I could have stood up for myself. But at the time…’

She smiled at me sympathetically. I left it there. It had all been said.

When I did the next video interview with her, on 1 March, I told her about some of the other girls I’d seen at different houses, about Daddy’s threats to kill me, and how I just got used to being made to sleep with all those men.

‘How did you think it could finish?’ she asked.

‘I thought it would finish after I told the police about Daddy,’ I said, biting my nails. ‘But it didn’t.’

We talked about the mattress they kept at the Balti House so they could sleep with the under-age girls. Me, Emma, Roxanne, whoever else went there.

I gave her a list of names, counting them off on my fingers. ‘I don’t know if they’ve all slept with them, but probably,’ I said.

‘When you’d reported to the police once you’d been arrested at the Balti House for smashing the counter, what did you expect to happen?’

‘I thought it would stop.’

‘What actually happened? How come it didn’t stop?’

‘Because Emma got different men instead of them.’

Once Daddy and Immy had been interviewed, I had thought it would stop. But, of course, Emma just went out and found another ‘ringleader’.

‘What did you think about the fact that it had clearly stopped with these men you’ve spoken about, but then started again with different ones?’

I wasn’t even bothered any more, I said. She wondered what I meant. ‘Because it was happening every day, so I didn’t bother any more. I didn’t feel anything about it. It had been going on for so long. At first I felt dead bad and dead horrible, but then I didn’t feel anything any more.’

Steph glanced up from her notes. ‘So basically, you’ve come to the police, you’ve told us about these men, but what you’re saying is that because Emma’s got different men that’s why it continued with different men?’ I simply nodded and Steph continued.

‘When Daddy’s been arrested, you’ve been interviewed. What’s happened in relation to where you’ve been living?

‘I carried on living at Harry’s,’ I replied.

‘What’s happened with your relationship with Mum and Dad?’

I shrugged and explained that nothing had changed. Steph asked why.

‘Because they’ve said it was my own fault for keeping going back,’ I explained. ‘So I didn’t want to live there any more.’

Steph kept on pressing, kept on trying to make me understand the child I’d been; the victim I’d been. ‘What do you think about your parents saying it’s your fault?’ she asked.

I felt a twinge of guilt. ‘Well, it is a bit,’ I whispered. ‘It was my fault for not standing up for myself… and I carried on going.’

I tried my best to explain why; that I was scared, that I felt I had no escape and that Harry and Emma respectively provided me with the food and money I needed to get by. Steph moved the conversation on to the abuse.

I said that Aarif had always been the one to go first with us at his flat. I didn’t know why, I said; it just happened that way, no matter how many other men were there. I told Steph how he would rape me and then call the next one through. I’d just let them do it, all the time looking at the wall and hoping it would end soon.

I told her it was him who had first raped me anally. ‘I told him not to put it there. He said he wouldn’t, but then he did…

‘It hurt. I started shouting, telling him to get off me and shouting for Emma. I felt angry and upset because I didn’t want to sleep with him anyway, never mind that.’

The next one to rape me that way was Aarif’s cousin, Saj, I said. By now I was in tears, but she kept on asking me questions, trying to get the detail the jury would need to hear. I knew it was important, but I couldn’t help but feel humiliated.

‘I thought at first he would just do it normal,’ I said.

‘How come it’s not been normal?’

‘Because Emma’s told him I was on my period.’

Steph could see I was distressed, but she kept going, saying she’d just ask me these few more questions and that would be it for the day.

‘He asked me if I was on my period,’ I sobbed. ‘I said no, but he shouted for Emma and she picked up my knickers to show him the pad and the blood. Then he just told me to bend over.’

‘How did you feel about that?’

‘I didn’t want to do it. I wanted to go home.’

‘What did you say to him?’

‘Nothing. There was no point.’

I told her it had hurt, and she asked how he could tell he was hurting me.

At this point I couldn’t help it: my face cracked, and the tears fell down towards my top. ‘I was scrunching up my face,’ I whispered.

I was back in the video suite again a week later, recalling how Joe from Jo Baxi’s Taxis had been friends with Cassie, and that they’d go to Aarif’s flat together: if one was there, the other would be.

I said how we’d all just sit there for a couple of hours until the other girls and I were dead drunk. That’s when they’d say we had to sleep with them.

Steph asked what I would have wanted to happen if I’d had a choice.

‘Stop,’ I said.

‘Why would you want them to stop?’

‘Because I didn’t like it. I thought it was wrong.’

‘Why did you think it was wrong?’

‘Because they’re old and I was only young.’

I thought of how I knew they’d come and find me if I refused to do what they wanted, and how Emma would batter me because she was such a thug. All of it was because of her, and all the time it was happening I just never thought it would stop.

Towards the end Steph asked: ‘How did you cope?’

‘Most of the time I would get drunk so when it happened I wouldn’t feel as bad.’

‘How do you feel about yourself now?’

I fought back tears, my head down, a hand covering my face.

‘I feel horrible about myself,’ I said in a whisper. ‘That I didn’t do anything to stop going.’

Steph was trying to explore the whole issue of me hating the way some of them would touch me – as though they meant it, as though I was special to them.

‘It’s because it’s more intimate,’ I mumbled, head down, not wanting to say the word. ‘If they just had sex with me, it felt like nothing. I didn’t have to…’

And then the dam burst. ‘Because I don’t want them to feel my “puddy” or touch my body because I don’t like them!’