Hailey's Story--She Was an Eleven-Year-Old Child. He Was Soham Murderer Ian Huntley. This is the Story of How She Survived (8 page)

In a burst of dry tears, I blubbered at him, ‘What will that do?'

With an air of chilling menace, Huntley hurriedly spoke his instructions. ‘All you will do, right, is either pass out or black out for five or ten minutes. Let me do what I want to do to you and then you will wake up and you will be fine.'

‘If that's the easy way,' I asked, ‘what's the hard way? Because I might die if you press there. What happens if you don't mean to kill me but I don't wake up?'

Huntley seemed to think he was giving me a choice when, in fact, the option was either to succumb to being blacked out or to carry on struggling. Then, after a short time, he rasped, ‘The hard way is, if you
don't
fucking let me do it, I will put my fingers there anyway, and I will press real hard there. And if I press so hard, you
will
die and I
will
do what I want to do to you anyway!'

On hearing what was likely to happen to me, I unleashed a stream of tears, along with a heart-rending plea, ‘Please, I just want to go home. I don't want you to do it, please. I just want to go home.'

Little by little, I was backing away from him towards
the fence, but he was still only feet away from me. It seemed that, for every step back I took, he inched closer towards me in this continuing bizarre dance of the predator and his prey. As he did so, he leaned forward, stooping over me. He was breaching the invisible barrier around me, the barrier we all have around us. Once more I was feeling very uncomfortable, yet I was powerless to stop him.

Huntley was inches away from me and my skin crawled. I renewed my grip on my tracksuit bottoms. I was becoming increasingly scared because he kept putting his hand near my neck. I was frantically thinking, He's just going to press it or something and I'm going to drop dead. I didn't know what happened if someone pressed behind your ears, and he was trying to do that to me.

When you get cold or you see something eerie, the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end. Well, that's how I would feel for another hour, as I kept up my unrelenting plea to be allowed to go home.

Huntley had gone from feigning putting his hands behind my ears to slowly running his fingers through my hair again, and each time his hand passed my ear I would let out an audible gasp as I thought, He's going to kill me. At that time I thought someone just had to press the area and you would drop down dead. With every terrifying pass of his hand, I thought I was in the shadow of death. Fear swept through me each time and
I would pull my head away from his evil touch. I remember thinking, Don't touch it there, because I might die. It had stuck in my head when he said I could die if he pressed just a bit too hard.

I remember feeling a bit queasy as I rasped again, ‘Oh, please, Ian, I just want to go home; my mum is going to kill me. I'm going to be late for my tea and she knows that I'm going to be with you. Please, just let me go home.'

And then a determined look came across his face and, without any hesitation, he moved my hands away and did it to me again: he pushed his fingers into my vagina. He actually made contact with it from inside my tracksuit bottoms. He had been gripping the top of my trousers and forcing them into my belly. I didn't know these invasive procedures were all just so that he could have his moment of glory.

In his state of excitement, he gulped down air and kept growling, ‘Move your hands away, move your hands away.'

All the while I kept on begging him, ‘Oh, please. Please, Ian, don't. It's going to hurt. Please, no.'

Without an ounce of compassion he kept going, telling me, ‘No, it's not going to hurt. Just let me do it.'

I was wailing now, ‘Please, Ian, don't. I'm going to be late home and I have got to go home for tea.'

If I kept saying that, he might let me go, I thought. I knew what he was trying to do was wrong. I didn't
know what the details of the wrongness of it were, but I knew instinctively that something was wrong about it because
nothing like this
had ever happened to me before. And I didn't know when, if or how it was going to end.

By now Huntley's hand was crawling around inside my knickers and it made contact with my flesh again. In total he did it about four or five times. Every time he inserted his fingers into my private parts, he stopped and pulled away a little bit when I started crying, ‘Please, stop it, it's hurting me.'

Then his manner became cajoling. ‘Don't be silly. Don't be silly.'

I noticed now that, when I started crying, he pulled away and stopped doing it for a while. Then I dried my eyes, tried to gather myself and started hoping and praying that he might let me go home in a minute. No sooner had I thought that then he started the cycle all over again and then I started crying and he pulled away a little bit and he would stop. Each time he fingered my vagina, it went on for up to five minutes. During the attack and afterwards he repeatedly mentioned putting his fingers behind my ears and pressing.

Then, after he had done the same sexual act to me yet again, I managed to stand up on the bottom ledge of the fence and I looked over and started screaming to the men drilling the road, ‘Help me.'

I was waving one arm frantically because Huntley
was holding the other. And I was yelling in blind panic, ‘Please, help me. Come over here!' It was then that I realised my cries were falling on literally deaf ears, as the guys drilling the road were wearing ear defenders. I think they were yellow or red.

I could see lots of workmen, but they couldn't hear my calls or see my arm waving desperately. That was when Huntley put his hands around my waist and pulled me down out of sight of anyone on the other side of the fence. Then he undid my trousers again and carried out another sexual assault, the same as before. He was still in a state of arousal, although he hadn't exposed himself to me.

With the clatter of the pneumatic drills, I couldn't hear the babble coming out of Huntley's mouth; I could just see his lips moving. As he drew closer to me, my head was in bits, but I remember the sickly smell of his breath, diluted a little by my own heavy, anxious breathing.

Looking back, the odd thing is that Huntley didn't expose his penis or fondle himself. What he was doing to me was a perverse thing for his own mental gratification. This was maybe something he would run through his head at another time; perhaps even now when he is behind bars. There was no physical gratification for him, other than the pleasure of abusing me. He was deriving a feeling of power from the control he exerted over me. He was feeding
himself what he most needed, that sense of power, and getting off on it.

Not long after that, he finally agreed to let me go home. I don't know if this was because I told him I had arranged to meet my mum at the pub that we were behind, but, as I look back on it now, I have the feeling that it might have been entirely due to Huntley's lust having been sated, rather than a response to my constant sobbing and pleading.

When we eventually walked out of the orchard, he threatened me when he raised the subject I was already worried about. ‘Well, you can go home but, if you tell anybody, I'll kill you.'

I was petrified and barely managed to stammer my reply, ‘No, no. No, I won't. I won't tell anyone. I promise.'

Of course, my reasons for not wanting to tell anyone about what Huntley had done to me were entirely different from how he saw it. Obviously, he wanted to avoid being put behind bars. I wanted to avoid my mum finding out that I had disobeyed her strict orders not to leave the street without first letting her know or getting her permission to do so.

I remember with exhausted relief the feeling of liberation that ran through me as I walked out of the orchard. If I can get back home in time, I thought, I won't have to face a scolding from Mum for leaving the sanctuary of the street. But what if, while Huntley was abusing me, Katie Webber had called at my home to see
where I was for our planned visit into town? Mum's rage didn't bear thinking about! My head was in pieces, but I was distracted from my thoughts as I noticed how empty the place was; the crowd of drinkers from two hours earlier had dispersed.

As we retraced our steps back the way we'd come, I was in such a state of severe shock that I said very little. The madness in Huntley's eyes had melted away; the
cruellooking
predator of minutes earlier was now looking more like his former self. At that point, I was able to think a little more clearly, and my thoughts were of my mum frantically looking left and right down the street for me.

I was startled out of this dismal vision by the sound of Huntley's voice repeating what he had said earlier, this time his voice more pleading than demanding, ‘Don't tell anybody; make sure you don't speak to anybody about it.'

Because of his earlier threat to kill me, I promised again not to tell anyone. Although I was out in the open again, that threat hung over me like a widow's veil.

We carried on walking and arrived back at the field near the school grounds, where I spotted something that gave me hope. It was an old Vauxhall Cavalier, or at least that sort of shape of car. I thought it was the caretaker's and all sorts of jumbled and muddled thoughts ran through my mind. What made me think it was the caretaker's car was because he was often at the school tidying up on a Saturday.

At the thought of this, my muggy head began to clear even more, my eyesight, blurred from crying, began to improve and my survival instinct was kicking in. Halfway across the field I made my move. I ran into the school grounds, leaving Huntley standing there.

In retrospect, knowing what happened to Holly and Jessica when Huntley was a school caretaker, cold shivers of panic run up and down my spine every time I think about how I made a run for it across that field of hope. I believe that my survival may have caused Huntley to murder Holly and Jessica. He knew that they could promise him all he wanted, but that in the end they would do as I had done… escape and eventually tell of what happened.

I was just one witness against Huntley, but Holly and Jessica were two witnesses. He knew that, if they escaped his evil clutches, all would be made known to the police. In exactly the same way as I went knocking on his caravan door, they too went calling on him like lambs to the slaughter. It was as though the
sick-minded
Huntley was gifted all three of us for his own perverse pleasure.

After a short sprint, I reached what was known as the school's ‘quiet area', where there was a tranquil pond for schoolchildren to sit beside. In desperation I looked around for the caretaker, but he wasn't in sight. However, it dawned on me that there were some CCTV cameras around the school that would save me.
By now Huntley, as quick as a greyhound, had dashed after me and was on my tracks!

Near by were the doors to the gym, so I ran there, but I ended up doing a bad job at hiding. The best I could do was just stand near the doors, puffing and panting and shaking with fright. If that wasn't bad enough, the fear of God ran through me as I heard Huntley's ruthless voice booming out, and it was getting worryingly closer. The caretaker has got to be around here somewhere, I told myself in desperation.

‘Fucking come here!' Huntley yelled.

When he cornered me, I dared to give him a fleeting glance and, sure enough, what I suspected had happened. The calm demeanour that had briefly returned had now vanished and his face was devoid of any compassion. His evil persona had resurfaced. Maybe my darting away had set him off. Maybe I should have kept the calm demeanour of a lost and helpless girl about me. I don't know.

Now Huntley's fury was increased tenfold. I had dared to defy the control he was obsessed with and this time his eyes had more of a faraway look about them than the crazy look of earlier. His face, darkly friendly at times, had become a brooding mask of malevolence and brutality as he announced loudly and coldly, ‘Now I'm going to do it to you again.'

The thought of death once more flashed before my eyes. As the nightmare at his hands in the orchard came
flooding back to me, again I found myself begging, ‘No, Ian, please don't. Please don't.'

I grasped at one final straw of hope that I might bring Huntley back from the brink when I warned him, ‘There are CCTV cameras watching you. Don't!'

As he looked about him, he shattered any hope I had of escape by hissing, ‘Oh, don't worry about it, they're fake. They're not real.'

There were quite a few cameras, pointing outwards from the classroom, directly at us, but he didn't care: he was too much in the grip of sexual desire to give a second thought to the consequences. I think that, even if someone had come across him while he was in that state, he would have continued to pursue what he wanted.

‘Please, Ian, just let me go home,' I cried out.

Earlier, in the orchard, my screams seemed to work, but now they were useless. Deaf to my begging and pleading, he sexually assaulted me yet again.

My rainbow thoughts of being tucked up in the warmth of my bed were soon snow-covered and I started to cry again. He seemed to be regaining some grip of himself when he told me to stop, but I had a lump in my throat and I was finding it hard to bring it to an end. My eyes were red and started stinging. After so much crying there were hardly any tears left.

Any hopes I had of Huntley ceasing his attack on me were shattered when he said, ‘This is the last time that I will do it to you.'

It was a prospect that I had been barely able to imagine a few moments earlier, and it brought mixed feelings of relief and revulsion.

But then, as his hands roved over my body, he calmly demanded, ‘Just let me do it one more time.'

I weakly croaked, ‘Oh, please. No!'

Regardless of my pleading and trying to reason with him, he went berserk and continued to stoke up his lust by forcing his fingers inside my most intimate place.