Array Girl A: Girl A: My Story

Mum spent the journey chatting to the police; I just sat pressed against the door, thinking about it all, wondering what they’d be asking me, wondering whether, having finally got to this point, I’d ruin it all by saying something to the lawyers that stopped it all and would let them all off.

We pulled into the car park at the side of Liverpool Crown Court just before 9 a.m.

Two more police officers met us, both of them in uniform, and they walked with us into the building to a witness waiting room. It was just a plain white room with a window looking out onto the Albert Dock across the road. It felt like being at the doctor’s: sitting in a room, not speaking, while my mum flicked through the magazines on the table.

I didn’t read any of them, either that day or the other four that I went to court. I just sat there, worrying.

Rachel Smith popped in to see me. She didn’t have her gown on then, just a black suit. She was really nice, trying to get me to relax and saying well done for coming forward. As she left to go up to Court 3:1, she turned, smiled and said, ‘Good luck, Hannah. You’ll be fine.’

Mum and I continued to sit there until an usher came to collect me. She took me to the video suite they always use for kids, so you don’t have to actually go into the courtroom. They base it on the age you were at the time things happened to you. So even though I was nineteen by now, I was protected as I would have been at fifteen. It was a relief to know I wouldn’t have to see Daddy and the rest, but it also felt a bit lonely, sitting there with just the court usher and the cameras recording my every move.

The usher checked that the sound was working and that the people in court could see me when it was time. There was silence again for a few moments before I saw the judge, Mr Clifton, appear on the video-link monitor in front of me.

He introduced himself, then said he’d introduce me to Miss Smith. There was a few seconds’ delay while the camera angle was changed in the court, and then I could see her. They’re very careful about what exactly you see as a witness. You never get even a glimpse of the defendants or the press, or even the jurors; just whichever person is speaking to you.

Then it was back to Judge Clifton, who said we were all going to view the video interviews I’d done with the police, back as far as the very first one in August 2008.

This was now four years before, and it was weird to see the image of the fifteen-year-old me appear on the monitor, the date at the top of the screen and the timer reeling off the seconds.

I knew the men would all be watching, and the defence barristers, with their instructing solicitors behind, all taking notes, looking for ways they could try to defend people I knew had no defence. In my own head, I was trying to think beyond the actual words to the way I’d felt that first day, telling the police exactly why I’d blown up at the Balti House, when I’d been wondering all the time whether the detective believed me.

I’d given so much detail in all those interviews that it would take a couple of days to get through them all, and then it would be time for me to be questioned, first by Miss Smith and afterwards by the eleven defence barristers. That was going to be the hardest part. I shuddered at the thought of it, even then, because they were all slick, smart lawyers and I’d be trying to remember things from nearly four years ago. What if they somehow tripped me up? What if at the end of this whole process, Daddy and all the other rapists were set free?

But Mum had been right when she’d hugged me in the waiting room. ‘Just tell the truth, Hannah,’ she’d said. ‘It will be enough, I promise.’

They were tough days. I was fine when Miss Smith took me through all the horrors I’d been through and how trapped I’d felt. But once she’d finished with me and there was a short delay, I started shaking at the thought of how the defence lawyers would try to twist everything I said.

They tried, of course, and there were times I must have looked a real idiot to them, because I just couldn’t remember some of the things they were asking. Like what I’d been wearing on a particular day, what colour a car was, who’d said what. I didn’t even know the men’s proper names. For me, it had always been nicknames; either the names we girls had given them or the names they told us. It was only because Emma had kept so many names and numbers on her phone that the police had been able to link them all up.

I’d been through things so many times before that, actually, I managed to stay pretty calm. I got annoyed with some of their questions, mind, and with the way they’d ask them – all smooth voices, trying to make me feel I could trust them but all the time circling me with their clever words.

The police told me later that Daddy’s barrister, Simon Nichol, is a really nice guy, but he got me to snap when he tried to make out that I’d tried to frame his client by swapping knickers with Emma. ‘What, when she’s about five sizes bigger than me?’ I asked him, to laughter from the court.

On it went, barrister after barrister, all trying to make it look like I was lying or it was mistaken identity. But I wasn’t, and it wasn’t, and they knew it.

The worst part of the whole five days was seeing two of the men who’d raped me in the public areas of the court complex: Cassie stared at me from the end of a corridor, but when I looked back he turned his head, and I started walking away as quickly as I could; then, another day, I saw Immy walking down the stairs. He didn’t see me because Liz shoved me into a doorway so he couldn’t catch sight of me.

Eventually, after all those days of watching tapes and being cross-examined, it was finally over and I was free to go.

The court usher that day was great. She said I’d done brilliantly and should be dead proud of myself. Liz smiled and just hugged me. ‘You were really strong, Hannah – the best witness I’ve ever seen in a case like this. The jury have just got to believe you.’

Dad had come to court that final morning and so joined in all the hugging, before we headed home.

The trial would carry on until May, but for me it was over.

Daddy didn’t do a lot to help himself in court.

At home, I kept hearing stories about him falling out with everyone: the jury, for being white; and the judge, the police and all the girls he’d abused for being racist.

His first tirade from the dock was to complain about the fact that there were no Asian, black or Chinese people on the jury, just twelve white people. There was indeed a conspiracy, he said, but it had nothing to do with him and the rest of the men in the dock. It was a white conspiracy intended to persecute the Asian minority. No white people had been brought to court because if they had, ‘You would not get your all-Asian trial.’

The people in the public gallery loved it. Daddy would sit there for a while, arms folded, a smirk on his face, and everyone in court would know that any minute he was going to kick off.

He managed to put everyone’s back up, and I’m guessing that reflected on the rest of the gang as they gave their own evidence. The media people would gather in little huddles, reflecting on how things were going and how the body language among some of the jury suggested he was going down and maybe taking a lot of the others down with him.

He also managed to fall out with another member of the gang within three weeks of the trial starting.

Cassie liked to pray while he was in the dock. Liz said that normally the sound of him muttering prayers to himself was drowned out by the two women interpreters – one of them specialising in Mirpuri, the other Pashto. But all the chanting eventually got on Daddy’s nerves. He apparently kicked off during a lunch break, just as the defendants were being led away from the dock.