Array Girl A - Girl A - My Story

Daddy must have worked out that he was one of the ones the jury thought was guilty. He wasn’t stupid, after all. The next time the jurors came in, he seized the moment, shouting: ‘I don’t want this biased jury. You are a biased judge. You are a racist bastard. You bastard!’

The security guards grabbed him, pushed his arms to his sides and forced him out of the dock and towards the cells. Billy decided he’d had enough, too. He shouted something about a BNP jury and walked out of the dock without needing to be restrained.

The jury finally came back with all their verdicts – all of them unanimous – on 8 May.

But while Daddy and the others stood in the dock at Liverpool Crown Court, sweating, fidgeting, not knowing where to look, I was at the park with Chloe.

She was on the swings, giggling, the comfort blanket she’d once so desperately needed just resting on the buggy nearby – now back to being just an accessory, something more for warmth than for comfort.

When my phone rang, a sixth sense told me what the call would be about. I had to fumble in my pocket for it, nearly cutting the caller off, but just managing not to.

It was Susan. From the moment she said ‘Hi’, I could tell she was smiling. And then I could hear the excitement in her voice as she rushed on: ‘They’ve all been found guilty, Hannah. All the ones involved with you have been convicted. Daddy, Tariq, Billy – all of them.’

She went on to say that a couple of the defendants had been cleared, but I wasn’t taking it in.

Guilty!

I was shocked and elated at the same time. In some dark corner of my mind, I’d still been so worried that they’d get away with it. I just hadn’t counted on this: that after nearly four years of doubt and betrayal, a jury of ordinary people had seen through the gang’s lies and recognised that I was telling the truth. The heartache, the pain; the terrifying, degrading memories would never go away – they were branded onto my soul. But at least now I had justice. They’d thought they were above the law, unstoppable, free to pick up kids like me as if they were pieces of meat on a butcher’s slab. And all the time they were doing it, in all those back streets and dark country lanes, the rest of the world had been looking away.

I’d never even caught a glimpse of them, but I knew that those twelve ordinary, wonderful people in the Liverpool jury had done what so many others hadn’t done in the past: they’d believed me. And in doing that, they’d set me free.

At the age of nineteen, having been raped so many times I couldn’t even begin to count them, I had my life back.

Daddy and Tariq, and Billy and Saj, all of them, were going to be sentenced the next day, and from then on they’d never be able to get to me again. I’d be free.

Until this perfect moment, I’d convinced myself that they’d somehow find a way to get out of it, or that the jury would decide that the other girls and I were lying.

I suppose I’d tried to steel myself for that. I’d imagined them all smiling as they were cleared, and then smirking as they walked out of the dock, slapping each other on the back, out into the lifts with their solicitors, and down to the revolving door and away past the lines of police officers.

But no, each and every one of the men who’d attacked me left the court complex that day in handcuffs, knowing their days as paedophile abusers and traffickers were over, and that they’d know in the morning just how many years they’d be spending behind bars.

All the men who’d attacked me had seen me distraught and in tears often enough, but even though a part of me would have liked to have seen them sentenced, I knew I couldn’t have faced it. I’d seen enough of them in the months they’d controlled me, pawing at me on their cheap, dirty beds or on the floors of empty houses.

So, to keep myself busy the next day, I caught the bus into Heywood and went shopping in Morrison’s, crossing the road by the Balti House with its angel clock and heading past the spot where Daddy had forced me into his car those four years ago.

My dad had said he’d pick me up after I had finished, and so I was outside, waiting for him, near where the taxis park, with Chloe sitting on the wall, eating chocolate. There was a line of cabs there that day and it was there that I heard one of the drivers say to the woman he was picking up: ‘Have you heard about them from Heywood? One of them got nineteen years.’

Nineteen years .

That was all I heard before the driver shut the door on his fare, got behind the wheel and drove away past the petrol pumps.

Nineteen years.

I assumed it was Daddy, but I wasn’t sure. Nineteen years. I’d never imagined any of them would get that long. I thought it would be five years max. I stood there in the car park, three bags of shopping in front of me, fighting back tears.

A few moments later my phone rang, and it was Susan. ‘Hi, Hannah,’ she said. I asked her if it was true, and if it was Daddy who’d got the nineteen years. ‘Yes,’ she said, and then she went through the session with me.

The judge had called my fifty-nine-year-old rapist by a name I’d never heard before – Shabir Ahmed – and told him he was ‘an unpleasant and hypocritical bully’. He made a point of saying he’d given me to Immy as a birthday ‘treat’.

Six of the gang became the first in Britain to be convicted of sex trafficking – Daddy, Tariq, Saj, Billy, Cassie and Hammy. All of them had their real names read out, but until I read them in the papers the next day I’d only ever known them by the nicknames they’d used to stay safe.

Daddy, or Shabir Ahmed, was given nineteen years for rape, trafficking and conspiracy to have sex with a child. The child, of course, was me.

The jury also convicted him of carrying out a sexual assault on the girl called Shauna at around the same time he was telling me how beautiful I was and how he’d given me a treat.

He didn’t know it then, but by the end of the year he’d have another three years to serve – for all his attacks on Lanika.

Tariq, real name Abdul Aziz, aged forty-one and married with three children, was cleared of two counts of rape involving Leah but got nine years for both conspiracy and trafficking me and all the other girls in his empire.

Saj, or Mohammed Sajid, thirty-five, got twelve years for trafficking, conspiracy and having sex with Alicia when she was thirteen. Once he’s served his sentence, it looks as though he’ll be heading back to Pakistan – there’s a deportation order waiting for him at the prison gates.

Billy, or Adil Khan, forty-two, married with a child, claimed he’d only ever met up with his mates to play cards or watch cricket. He denied even knowing Roxanne, let alone getting her pregnant when she was thirteen. ‘How could I get her pregnant if I never saw her before?’ he told the police. Forensic tests on her aborted foetus had proved otherwise. He got eight years.

Cassie, or Abdul Rauf, forty-three, who’d always wanted to kiss me, turned out to be something special. When he wasn’t driving a taxi, often for the gang, he was giving up his spare time to teach religious studies at his local mosque. He liked to wave goodbye to his wife and five kids in the mornings, before collecting Emma and me and taking us to Ashworth Valley for perverted sex. I heard he’d be on the school run later on the same days. Despite this, he only affirmed in the witness box rather than swearing on the Koran. He got six years.

Hammy, or Hamid Safi, twenty-two, wasn’t involved with me. But it turned out he’d only recently sneaked into Britain from Afghanistan when he’d started trafficking some of the other girls. He’ll be deported, too, once he’s served his four-year sentence.