Читать книгу Violated: A Shocking and Harrowing Survival Story From the Notorious Rotherham Abuse Scandal - Sarah Wilson, Sarah Wilson - Страница 10

After the night in the school playground, I sensed I’d be seeing a lot more of Amir and Rahim – and I was right. When I finally left primary school in the summer of 2003, you’d have thought I’d have been glad to see the back of it. But ironically, I ended up spending more time there than ever before.

I’d hated every minute of what Rahim had made me do to him that night in the playground, and as the long summer holidays stretched out in front of me, I thought hanging around with him and Amir every day would be torture.

But then, something strange happened. It started to be okay and I kind of enjoyed myself.

I didn’t have a phone, so I’d usually arrange to meet Nadine at the playground in the afternoon and the men would join us shortly afterwards. We’d sit in the deserted playground and drink and smoke for hours on end. When we were with Amir and Rahim, they often paid for the alcohol and cigarettes, meaning Nadine didn’t even have to steal from anyone.

Gradually, Amir and Rahim started to introduce us to their friends. Lots of them drove taxis, so they’d park up near the playground and we’d all pile into the cars. It sounds silly now, of course, but I was only eleven and I thought it was really cool to be out late and in a car, as Mum didn’t have one at the time. There was always plenty of booze and fags to go around, and sometimes even some weed too.

With every free cigarette and bottle of cider they gave me, the sense of foreboding I’d had that night in the playground began to ebb away. Some guys drank and smoked with us, but even the ones who didn’t were happy to treat us to whatever we wanted. It all seemed a bit too good to be true. They bought Nadine and me all this stuff and they never asked for anything in return. Rahim had made me give him another blow job one night, which was horrible, but even he wasn’t hassling me to do anything any more. I just thought he and his mates were a bit daft, really, wasting their money on kids like us. If anything, we were taking advantage of them. I said this to Nadine once and she just shrugged.

‘It’s their choice,’ she replied. If they were up for buying us loads of stuff, I wasn’t going to complain.

I just wanted to be friends with the men. They might have been cool, but they were still dead old. Nadine was different, of course. Most nights, she’d disappear into a taxi with one of the guys and I’d watch the windows get all steamed up while I sat drinking and smoking in another car. Sometimes it was Amir, but she’d go off with his mates too. No one seemed to mind too much, and she loved telling me all about what she’d been up to as we walked home.

Everyone was just really chilled out, having a good time.

‘This is right good,’ I said to Nadine.

‘I know, right?’ she replied. ‘Told you Amir and his mates were sound.’

As well as our trips to the school playground, we’d also meet the guys in Ferham Park, and soon they were taking us to house parties. The houses were really basic – some didn’t even have proper furniture, but we barely noticed. We were too busy having fun – hanging out, drinking, smoking weed and listening to music. The people there were mainly men their age, almost all from Asian families, but there were other girls too, some even as young as me, and soon we were all the best of friends. One girl, Hayley, was always chilling with the gang, and she never seemed to have a curfew.

‘My dad doesn’t give a shit what time I come home,’ she said. ‘You should stay at mine sometime and we can stay out all night. It’ll be a laugh.’

I was definitely tempted. Two of the other girls, Jade and Leah, were always round at Hayley’s. It sounded fun, if a little chaotic – a bit like Elaine’s old house had been like. I was coming in later every night, usually drunk or high on weed, sometimes both. Mum was getting more and more anxious, but I thought she was just being uptight and trying to stop my fun. She always wanted to know where I was and who I was with. One night, Nadine and I were chilling in a taxi outside the school with Amir and two of his mates, when the clock in the car told me it was gone midnight.

‘It’s five past twelve,’ I whispered to Nadine. ‘My mum is so going to kick off.’

‘Let’s stay out,’ she said. ‘It’ll be a laugh.’

I didn’t need to be asked twice. Half an hour later, Amir’s taxi-driver mate had to go on a hire and we all split up, but instead of walking home, Nadine and I decided to camp out in a hut at the bottom of the playground.

‘I wonder what everyone will say when they realise we’ve run away from home?’ she said. I just giggled, thinking it was all a big adventure. I didn’t realise that Mum was beside herself and had already called the police to report me missing.

The police didn’t track us down, but when we went home the next afternoon Mum was chalk-white and looked like she hadn’t slept in days. She threw her arms around me and started crying, but before long she was giving me a massive lecture and ranting about how worried she’d been. I just zoned out.

A few weeks later, I started at Kimberworth Comprehensive School. I don’t remember much about the first day because I was really hungover, but I think the teachers had already decided I was a bit of a nuisance before the bell sounded for hometime. I couldn’t be bothered in any of my classes and I was really cheeky to most of the teachers. On the plus side, it was nothing like primary school. No one dared bully me. I thought I was really hard, and I wasn’t scared of anyone.

It was around this time that I first tried cocaine. Nadine and I had gone to a house party with Amir and some of his mates. One guy, Omar, had me in the kitchen alone when he produced a bag of white powder from his pocket. I knew what it was straight away because I’d seen Elaine with it so many times. I thought he was going to take it himself, so I was surprised when he pressed it into my hand.

‘Take this,’ he said. ‘You’ll love it.’

Smoking weed was one thing, but cocaine was a whole different story and, for all my rebelliousness, the idea of trying it scared me a bit.

‘I’m not sure –’ I began.

‘Honestly, Sarah,’ Omar said, cutting me off. ‘It’s amazing. The best buzz ever.’

I held the packet in my hands for a few seconds, studying it closely.

‘I’ll try it later,’ I told him. I thought he might insist I take it there and then, but he didn’t. He just rested his hand on the small of my back for what seemed like a fraction of a second too long and flashed me a smile that made me feel a bit strange.

I hid the cocaine in the pocket of my tracksuit bottoms and told myself I’d get rid of it. But the next night, just before I’d arranged to meet Nadine, I found it in my pocket. I’d been watching TV with Laura – by this point we’d swapped the The Powerpuff Girls for Tracy Beaker or My Parents Are Aliens – when she announced that she was going out with her friends. Mum was in another room and I was in our bedroom. I could hear my heart thudding as I emptied the white powder onto my chest of drawers, not quite knowing exactly what would happen if Mum walked in. It gave me a strange sort of thrill, imagining her reaction.

I didn’t have any banknotes so I snorted it straight off the wooden surface. I had a whole gram and it took me four attempts to finish it. Within seconds, I felt a strange rush of energy and euphoria, like nothing I’d ever experienced before. I didn’t feel paranoid like when I’d tried the bong at Elaine’s. Instead, I was on top of the world.

Omar was right. Cocaine was amazing. From that moment I was hooked.

The feeling lasted for around an hour. As soon as it started to wear off I wanted more, but I had no idea how much drugs cost or where to get them. Luckily, Omar and some of the other guys always had something on them. I only had to ask, and sometimes I didn’t even need to do that. Soon, I’d tried ecstasy and amphetamines too. I’d take anything I could get my hands on, anything that they offered to me.

If I’d been a nightmare for my teachers before, I was even worse now. Most mornings I’d either still be on an untouchable high or bang in the middle of a crushing comedown. If I’d taken cocaine, I’d be wiped out and just want to sleep, but the withdrawal from amphetamines – or ‘phet’, as we called it – made me so aggressive I’d want to fight anyone who so much as looked at me the wrong way. It didn’t take me long to get excluded, when I battered a girl in my class. Now, I can’t even remember who she was or why she’d annoyed me. I was in trouble so much that incidents like these just all merged into one. I should have been ashamed of myself, but I was just delighted to get a few days off school, especially when Nadine agreed to wag some classes so we could hang out together. She didn’t go to the same school as me, but we’d meet in Ferham Park as soon as our parents left for work.

Mum didn’t know I was taking drugs, but by now she was aware that I was drinking and smoking all the time and she could see me spiralling out of control. It must have been like watching a car crash in slow motion, but I honestly felt like I was having the time of my life. I was completely and utterly oblivious to the fact that a gang of predatory paedophiles was slowly tightening its grip on my life, getting me hooked on the booze and drugs I couldn’t buy for myself. The booze and drugs that I would soon rely on them for.

In Ferham, nothing stays secret for long, and Mum heard on the grapevine that Nadine and I were hanging around with guys twice our age. One night, not long after my twelfth birthday, we were standing with Amir and Rahim at the bottom of Psalters Lane when I saw her tearing down the hill like a woman possessed. She went straight for Amir, and I wanted the ground to swallow me up when she pushed him up against a wall by his throat.

‘What do you think you’re doing, hanging around with my daughter?’ she spat. ‘Do you know she’s only twelve years old?’

I thought I might die on the spot, and I could feel the blood rush to my cheeks as I waited for Amir’s reaction.

‘Who, Sarah?’ he smirked. ‘What are you talking about? She’s fifteen.’

‘You’re sick, you are!’ Mum said, shaking her head. ‘Anyone can see she’s just a kid.’

Mum screamed abuse at Amir and Rahim for a few minutes, but they both laughed in her face. Dejected, she finally let Amir go. She ordered me to come home with her but I stayed rooted to the spot, refusing to move. I could see the tears in her eyes as she shook her head at me and began to walk off. I think she assumed I would follow her. I didn’t.

‘That’s not my mum,’ I told Amir. ‘What a fucking psycho. I’ve never seen her before in my life.’

‘She’s mental,’ Amir said. He was still laughing. ‘I thought she was going to fucking strangle me.’

‘I can’t believe she’s going about telling people I’m twelve,’ I went on. ‘What a weirdo.’

Amir and Rahim knew I was lying but it suited everyone to keep pretending I was fifteen, so that’s what we did.

Nadine and I had already run away from home a few times when Amir and Rahim suggested they come with us. I was pissed off at Mum because she’d given me another lecture about my drinking. We decided to camp out behind the Aldi supermarket, less than a mile from Ferham. We were having a great laugh, taking drugs and drinking cider, when Nadine and the guys had an idea.

‘I bet my mum has called the police,’ Nadine said. ‘We should pretend we’ve been kidnapped and ask them for ransom money.’

At first I thought she was joking, but Amir and Rahim were getting onboard with the plan and suddenly it was all happening. Now, I’m deeply ashamed that we put our parents through such trauma, but at the time it seemed like the best idea ever. We were swept up in the moment, high on drugs and drunk on cider. What could go wrong? It was just a laugh, wasn’t it? So Amir phoned both our families and demanded they pay £12,000 if they wanted to see us alive again. Nadine and I got so caught up in the drama that we were screaming in the background for effect. I’d even started spending the ransom money in my head, forgetting that Mum would never have that kind of cash going spare. Except, while other girls my age might have fantasised about buying lots of clothes and make-up, I was thinking of splashing out on loads of expensive drugs and having a huge party with dozens of taxi drivers in their thirties.

At twelve.

Poor Mum genuinely thought my life was in danger. Amir told her he’d kill us on the spot if she called the police, so she organised a huge search party of her own. Loads of her friends were trawling South Yorkshire in their cars, desperate for some clues as to where we might be. We eventually walked home a few nights later because we’d got fed up of sleeping rough. Mum looked even worse than she had done all the other times I’d run away. She hadn’t slept in days and her eyes were red and blotchy from crying. Now, I feel terrible, but back then I was just glad she had no energy left to give me a massive telling off.

By this point, we were well known to all of Amir and Rahim’s friends, and a few nights later this really old guy pulled up in a car beside Nadine and me when we were walking near Ferham Park. I’d had loads of weed and I was really quite stoned. There were three younger guys in the car already but the old man told us to get in. He must have been about seventy, maybe even older. I’d seen one of the guys in the car before, but the old man was a total stranger. He had such a strong Pakistani accent that I could hardly make out what he was saying, but he mentioned Amir’s name and I think he was telling Nadine he’d buy us booze. For the first time in months, I felt uneasy. It was one thing chilling with Amir’s mates in their taxis outside the school, but I didn’t recognise this man and he didn’t say where he was taking us. I opened my mouth to protest, but Nadine literally shoved me into the back seat.

We were driving around for what felt like ages when the old guy dropped two of the younger men off at a house in an estate I didn’t recognise. I hoped he’d take us back to Ferham, but he kept driving, chatting away to the man in the passenger seat in what I later realised was Punjabi, one of the main languages spoken in Pakistan.

‘This is weird,’ I said to Nadine. ‘Who is this guy? He’s ancient.’

‘Calm down. He knows Amir,’ she replied. ‘He says he’ll give us some vodka and then he’ll pay for our taxi home.’

‘Can’t we just ask him to take us home now?’ I said. The weed had gone to my head and I could feel the familiar fear and paranoia clouding my brain.

‘Oh, Sarah, shut up,’ she snapped. ‘We’re just going to chill with them – no big deal.’

In the end, the men took us to a grubby-looking Indian-style takeaway at the other end of Rotherham. The walls were yellow and dirty, and a stale cooking smell filled my nostrils. I later discovered it was coming from the ghee, a type of butter used to cook curries. I thought I might throw up because I was so stoned. I was probably drunk too. There weren’t any customers in the front of the shop but the old man led us downstairs into the basement, his younger mate following silently behind us. It was dark and horrible and smelled even worse than the main part of the shop because it was so damp and cold.

A wave of nausea washed over me as my eyes began to focus. In the centre of the poorly lit room was a really old telly, the kind that comes with a video instead of a DVD player. On the screen there were three or four naked bodies writhing around, making all sorts of weird noises. Suddenly, it dawned on me: this sick old man, old enough to be my granddad, wanted us to watch a porn film with him. Even thinking of it now makes me shudder.

I tried to turn away from the screen but this time I knew I was going to be sick for real. The horrible video had tipped me over the edge. I bolted back upstairs as fast as I could. The old man and Nadine were shouting behind me, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. I burst out of the front door and I’d just made it onto the street when I threw up everywhere.

There was another Asian takeaway just across the road, and I could see one of the workers staring at me as I vomited on the street, but I was too out of it to be embarrassed. All I could think was: how can Amir hang around with these weirdos? And why would he tell them to pick us up when we didn’t even know them?

The man in the takeaway across the road was trying to make eye contact with me but I couldn’t hold his gaze because I felt so dizzy. I started to wonder if he often saw young girls like me out on the street, fleeing from the horrible basement.

‘What the fuck was that all about?’

I became aware of Nadine’s voice behind me, and I turned round to see her huge frame towering over me, her red face contorted with anger. But before I could answer her, the young man in the other takeaway was making his way over to us.

‘You all right there, girls?’ he asked. He was smiling and looked friendly. He was way older than us, of course, but at least he wasn’t a pensioner.

‘Just not feeling too good,’ I replied.

‘Why don’t you come over to our shop and we’ll give you some food?’ he suggested. ‘That might make you feel better.’

I looked to Nadine and she nodded. ‘Yeah, okay then,’ she said.

‘Cool,’ our new friend said. ‘We’ll get you something to eat then we’ll give you some money for a taxi home.’

The man didn’t tell us his name but I didn’t really care. I just wanted an excuse to get away from the old guy and his basement, so I didn’t ask any questions. The shop was quite cramped but he took us through to the back and gave us a chicken kebab and some chips. It was only when I started eating that I realised how hungry I was. I must have been really shovelling the food into my mouth because I was getting through it even faster than Nadine.

‘Someone’s got the munchies,’ she said, raising an eyebrow.

Once we’d finished eating, Nadine asked the man for some taxi money like he’d promised.

‘It’s in my flat,’ he told us. ‘Come with me. I won’t be long.’

The flat was only a couple of streets away. It had a little red door, and before he’d turned the key to let us in I could hear voices, male voices, speaking in a language we didn’t understand. It wasn’t Punjabi but the accents sounded Asian. The door to the living room was slightly ajar, and there were four men sitting on the floor, laughing and talking. I was still wasted, so I’m not sure how old they were, but they were all at least twenty-five.

I was sure the man from the new takeaway could hear my heart hammering in my chest as he locked us in. I’d thought he was a kind stranger, a sort of Good Samaritan who’d decided to rescue us from the creepy old man and his porn video, but now he seemed just as scary and weird as they had.

‘So, what are you girls going to do for us, then?’ he asked. He wasn’t smiling any more.

We didn’t have to ask what he meant. He started going on and on about the free food, how he’d given it to us for nothing and now he and his friends wanted us to pay them back, but the words wouldn’t register because my mind was racing so fast, wondering how on earth this was happening because it was never part of the deal that these men would get anything in return.

‘No,’ I said, as firmly as I could, but my voice had started to tremble.

‘No?’ the man echoed. ‘But how will you get home if we don’t give you the money for a taxi?’

Suddenly, I was screaming. Nadine was shaking me, trying to get me to shut up, but even if I’d wanted to be quiet I wouldn’t have been able to close my mouth. My screams were getting louder and louder, and the man was beginning to look worried, telling me to stop, but nothing would work. Eventually, he unlocked the door, shoving us out into the cold night. I think he was scared the neighbours might hear.

Nadine and I didn’t know what to do – we were at the other side of town and I was in no state to walk all the way home. Nadine had no credit left on her mobile, so we legged it down the street away from the flat and kept running onto the main road. I sped up as we passed the first takeaway, just in case the old guy was still lurking around. We reached a payphone halfway down the street and Nadine stopped in her tracks, panting furiously.

‘This is what happens when you act like that,’ she said, fishing a few 10p pieces from the pocket of her jeans. ‘They leave you in the middle of nowhere.’

I tried to ignore the anger in her voice. ‘Who are you phoning?’ I asked.

‘Just this sex chat-up line. I always phone it when I’m stranded.’

‘How does that work?’

‘Oh, I just tell some idiot I’ll give him a blow job and then he comes out in his car to get me.’ Nadine said this as if it was the most natural thing in the world, the obvious solution to the problem. ‘Always works, sad fuckers.’

There were two payphones, back to back, so I picked up the receiver on the second one and began to dial. Catching sight of me, Nadine put her hand over the mouthpiece and shot me one of her looks that always chilled me to the bone.

‘You’d better not be ringing the coppers, Sarah,’ she said. ‘Seriously. I’ll fucking kill you.’

But it was too late.