Stolen Girl (21 page)

T
he abuse with Zeb and his circle of friends had gone on for almost two years but now it was no longer my secret to keep. I thought if I continued to keep him happy then he wouldn’t rape Mum. I believed that by having sex with him, I was protecting her. But I was wrong. I came to realise that it wouldn’t make any difference. Zeb never had any intention of raping Mum; all he’d ever wanted to do was turn me into a prostitute. Everything that had happened had been about him and always had been. Rebecca helped me see things clearly for the first time.

This was about control, greed and money. Zeb had raped and abused me for so long I’d become numb, almost used to it. I even believed him when he said that I didn’t matter. I truly believed I was there to be used, abused and thrown away. But Rebecca made me realise I was worth more than that; I could fight Zeb and I was allowed to say no. More importantly, I had the power to stop him from hurting others.

Rebecca left the room to speak to Adrian. Fear gripped me when I imagined Zeb’s face. Suddenly I doubted that I was strong enough to see this through. For a fleeting moment I thought about running out to the street outside. I’d run along roads and streets until I couldn’t run anymore. But then I remembered Donna – the girl at school. She’d spent her life running away from her problems but they always followed her from one school to the next. I didn’t want to be like her, I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life running. Now it was time to stop.

Moments later, Rebecca came back into the room.

‘Adrian has called the police and they want me to go and speak to them.’

I gulped. Police? I thought of the station; it was right next door to the school unit.

‘I’m not going,’ I said, beginning to panic again.

‘You don’t have to, Katie, I’ll tell them everything,’ she explained.

‘But they’ll say it’s my fault – I’ll get into trouble,’ I fretted.

‘Katie,’ Rebecca reassured me. ‘None of this is your fault. You are a child, you’ve done nothing wrong.’

I wanted to believe her but part of me was terrified about what I’d just done. I knew Zeb would kill me when he found out.

Rebecca grabbed her bag, left the room and went to the police station. The longer I sat alone, the more I cringed. She’d be there right now, talking about me. I hated the idea of strangers knowing all about my sex life. What would they think of me? Zeb was right; they’d think I was a slapper.

But more than that, I was terrified of what Zeb, Wadi and Tali would do to me when the police turned up on their doorsteps.

Suddenly, the urge to feel safe and protected overwhelmed me. I grabbed my things, left the room and ran to the street outside. I didn’t stop running until I’d made it home.

I glanced down at my watch – it was 3pm. I’d told Rebecca over two hours ago. It wouldn’t be long before the police arrived.

Mum was in the kitchen cooking as I closed the front door.

‘Katie, is that you?’ she called.

For a second my heart froze – did she know?

‘Good day?’ she asked, popping her head round the doorway to greet me. It was clear she didn’t.

‘Yeah,’ I mumbled. I walked into the front room and sank down onto the sofa. It faced the window. I needed to see – I needed to be prepared. I thought that maybe I could deny everything. The police would ask and I’d tell them I’d made it up. I’d be in trouble but not as much as I would be if this got out. But no, I told myself, there’d been enough lies. Now was time for truth.

My heart was pounding. I put a hand to my chest to steady it but it did no good. It was just two weeks before my sixteenth birthday; what if I got into trouble with the police for having underage sex? What if Zeb blamed me and said I was a prostitute? What if they believed him and not me? He was clever and good at manipulating people. I fretted as all these thoughts raced through my mind. What if he convinced the police it was my fault – that I was just a silly little slag?

My mind raced with different scenarios. I was replaying all the possibilities in my head when I noticed a dark car pull up outside. A man and woman got out but they didn’t look like police officers – they were dressed in ordinary clothes. I heard a knock at the front door but I remained seated, my senses on
full alert. Mum went to the door and answered it and I heard someone say my name.

‘Can we come in?’ a woman asked.

‘What’s this about?’ Mum started to say, but she was interrupted. ‘Can we speak to Katie, please, is she in?’

I stepped out into the hallway and as I did so all three turned to look at me. I felt my face flush.

‘Katie?’ the woman asked.

I looked over at her. She was smartly dressed – I guessed she must be a plain-clothes police officer. I nodded in acknowledgement. I knew why they were there but Mum was baffled. Her eyes flitted between us.

‘Can someone please tell me what on earth is going on?’ she said, her voice tense and nervous.

‘Shall we?’ the man said, gesturing towards the front room.

Once inside, he asked us to take a seat but Mum refused. She was spiky and defensive because she knew they were police officers and she thought I’d done something awful.

‘If you’ve done anything…’ she began, but the woman stopped her.

‘My name is Angela and I’m a female detective,’ she said, looking over at me rather than at Mum. ‘We want to speak to Katie because there’s a group of Asian men and we believe they’ve been hurting your daughter.’

My eyes glanced down at the carpet and I prayed that the ground would open up and swallow me whole. Mum looked at me and then back at Angela. She still didn’t understand.

‘These Asian men…’ Angela continued, ‘…we believe they’ve been having sex with your daughter.’

My face burned. Right then, I wanted to be anywhere else. I couldn’t look up, but I didn’t need to – I could imagine the
horror on Mum’s face. Her defensive body language suddenly disintegrated as she flopped down onto the arm of the chair. The words had just knocked the stuffing clean out of her.

The silence in the room was deafening. I waited for them to say something to me. I waited for the police to arrest me for having sex at just fifteen years old. But they didn’t.

‘I can’t believe it,’ Mum finally said.

‘Katie?
My
Katie? Are you sure?’

I looked up and saw Angela nod her head.

‘We need to speak to your daughter because we need to know what she can tell us. Katie, would that be alright? Can you tell us what’s been happening to you?’

I gulped as my body began to tremble. There was no going back; this was it and I was simply terrified.

‘I…I
can’t
,’ I stammered. ‘I can’t tell you because if I do, they’ll kill me!’

All the pent-up emotion came spilling out and I began to cry. Deep sobs rose up from within me as my body shook with fear.

I didn’t want to tell them what I’d been doing, not in front of Mum. I didn’t want to tell them because I was certain that if I did, Zeb would kill me.

‘They know where I live. I can’t tell you. I can’t because if I do, he’ll kill me.’

The female detective nodded and promised she wouldn’t let anyone harm me.

‘Who is it, Katie? Who is it you’re frightened of?’ she asked. ‘You need to tell us; if you don’t, we can’t help you.’

I realised it was finally time. My secret was out and now it was time to stop running. Time to stop living in fear.

‘They gave me drink – alcohol, and they gave me joints to
smoke. But it’s okay,’ I insisted. ‘It’s okay because it’s normal. They’re my boyfriends – they said they’d look after me…’ But as I heard my own voice I knew how ridiculous this now sounded.

Mum clasped her hand over her mouth in horror. The more she heard, the more she wept.

Slowly, I told them everything. But the more I revealed, the more I realised how very little I actually knew about these men. Yet Zeb and the others knew everything about me. Everything. I’d been abused for almost three years. It started with Sam and then the others but they were all as bad as one another. They were all to blame but I was frightened – scared of what they’d do to me.

‘But I can’t tell you who they are or where they’re from,’ I said, beginning to panic again. It was a lie. I knew where to find them all, but I also knew that if I led the police to their doors, I’d be as good as dead.

The police didn’t believe me. They knew that I knew more than I was letting on.

‘But if I tell you their names then I’m going to die!’ I wailed.

Thankfully, the detectives agreed to leave me alone and give me more time. They realised they wouldn’t get much more out of me that afternoon. They left, but told me they’d return the following morning.

After they’d left Mum could barely look at me. It was as though I’d become a stranger to her. I just wanted her to wrap her arms around me and tell me everything would be okay but she didn’t. Instead, she sat numb and silent in a corner of the room.

Zeb never rang me again. I knew then it was over.

The following day the police came back. They asked me more and more until slowly the whole story unravelled.

‘Katie, none of this is your fault,’ Angela reassured me. ‘We’re here to stop these men from doing this and from hurting anyone else.’

But somewhere in the back of my mind, I still believed I was somehow to blame. I’d been a willing party. I believed they were still my boyfriends.

Angela shook her head when I said it.

‘If they’re your boyfriends then why were they hiding you away? Why did Zeb insist you mustn’t tell anyone about him or the house?’

‘But they love me, they care about me…’ I said, in a bout of misplaced loyalty.

‘If they care about you, why would they give you drugs and alcohol? You’re still a child; they did that so they could abuse you. You were vulnerable and they took advantage,’ Angela insisted.

The fog in my mind cleared. Angela was right, just as Rebecca had been – none of this was my fault.

A few weeks later, I celebrated my sixteenth birthday but with the ongoing police investigation, there was little to be joyful about. Instead the police came to see me at home with a camera. Another female police officer asked me questions but Angela and Rebecca, the counsellor I’d told at school, were there too. Their support helped me greatly.

I answered each and every question as honestly as I could. Thankfully, Mum, Phil and Andrew left the house to give me more privacy.

Mum rang my dad to tell him and, as expected, he was really supportive, although I still wasn’t sure how much he actually knew.

‘I don’t care, Katie,’ he said, wrapping his arms around
me protectively. ‘I’m always here for you whenever you need me.’

The more I told the police about the abuse, the angrier I became. The rage boiled up inside me and came spilling out. To control it and to bring some sort of order back into my life, I upped the self-harm. Now I was harming myself most nights. Whenever the crimson blood stripe appeared across my wrist I’d immediately feel better and more at peace. Self-harm was the only thing I had control over now, the rest of my life was in freefall.

Andrew didn’t really understand at the beginning and blamed me for all the tension in the house. He said he felt ashamed of me.

‘It’s all your fault!’ he screamed one day. Mum was crying again in the kitchen.

‘You got involved with these men – you’re nothing but a dirty slag!’

I hated him for saying it, but then I hated myself even more. How could I have been so stupid?

Phil tried his best to keep out of any arguments. The strain was taking its toll on each and every one of us and slowly, it was destroying us all.

‘Why didn’t you tell me or someone else?’ Mum sobbed one night.

‘I didn’t know how to. You were so wrapped up in your new life that there was no room for me.’

Mum held her hand against her chest as if I’d just stabbed her through the heart. In many ways I had – with words. But part of me wanted to hurt her. I was angry – angry that she hadn’t protected me and angry she hadn’t noticed something was
wrong. But the reality was, it wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t even mine. It was the bastards who’d done this to me. They’d ruined my life and taken everything from me but now they were going to pay.

The police recorded everything I said on tape. Dozens of hours of interviews were burned onto eight DVDs. They would be evidence. Now they had everything, it was time to raid the secret house.

‘
J
ust show us in your own time,’ the officer said gently. I didn’t know the name of the road, but I knew my way to the secret house like the back of my hand.

‘Turn left down here,’ I told him, as the unmarked car indicated and made its way down the familiar old street.

‘It’s just up here – the one with the white door.’

As the car drew close, fear overwhelmed me and I ducked down and curled myself up on the back seat. There was a detective sitting right beside me but I was frightened – I couldn’t believe I was actually doing this.

My fingerprints and DNA had been taken at the time of the interviews. When Angela stuck something inside my mouth, I asked her what it was for.

‘It’s so we can tell if you’ve been inside the house.’

Afterwards, they’d driven me past so I could point out the secret house – only it wasn’t a secret anymore. We didn’t stop
or park up, we just drove straight past. The police didn’t want to do anything that might have drawn attention.

Being so close again brought all the old fears rushing back.

‘What if they hurt me? Zeb knows where I live – he might come to get me,’ I sobbed in a state of panic.

But Angela reassured me.

‘He won’t. You don’t have to be frightened anymore.’

The tears streamed down my face as I realised what a fool I’d been to think that Zeb had ever loved me. He’d just used me. But I’d always been frightened, too scared to tell anyone about him or the secret house. Now, I hated myself for keeping quiet for so long. If only I’d spoken out sooner. The guilt weighed heavy in my heart. I felt angry with myself but I knew I was doing the right thing. Angela cleared her throat and looked at me.

‘We’ve had another girl come forward – she was just twelve years old when the abuse started.’

I felt sick.

‘
Twelve
?’ I repeated.

‘Yes,’ said Angela. ‘She knew the men by different names. However, like you, she pointed out exactly the same house.’

The girl had read about the men’s arrests in the local paper and had telephoned the police to tell them. But she was young and far too frightened to testify against Zeb and the others. I understood her pain. There were probably others out there but they were all too scared to come forward and say what had really happened inside that horrible house.

The investigation rumbled on and the months passed by slowly so, to try and make some kind of sense of the pain and anger I held inside, I kept a diary. The family liaison officer
suggested it – she thought it might help me to write things down. It did.

The police had interviewed each man. Some denied knowing me, but thankfully the police obtained their mobile phone records, which proved otherwise. The depths these bastards would plunge to and the lies they would tell in order to save their own necks were unbelievable.

The more the investigation rumbled on, the more I feared that someone would come to get me; a friend or relative of Zeb’s. I lived with the fear daily.

Finally, after almost two painstaking years, the police told me that six men had been charged, each one accused of using me for sex. There were also different charges of rape and a catalogue of sexual offences – 38 in total.

Unfortunately, police were unable to trace some of the men who’d abused me at the secret house – Hakim, Habis and Jad – all friends of Zeb’s. The police believe as soon as they heard of Zeb’s arrest, the men had fled to Pakistan. There were the others too – the faceless unnamed men in the front room. The ones I believed had gang-raped me. However, the police had little hope of finding them because I didn’t even know their names and could barely remember what they looked like. They were as guilty as Zeb and the others but they had simply vanished off the face of the earth, it seemed.