Читать книгу Violated: A Shocking and Harrowing Survival Story From the Notorious Rotherham Abuse Scandal - Sarah Wilson, Sarah Wilson - Страница 7

As I’d imagined, going back to Ferham Primary School wasn’t exactly a barrel of laughs. I’d barely walked back through the door when I caught sight of Jenny, one of the bullies from my old class. She smirked as her eyes travelled towards my feet. I was wearing a pair of Hi-Tec trainers Mum had worked really hard to buy me, but I suspected they’d attract a nasty comment as they weren’t Nike or Adidas.

‘Hey, Sarah!’ she hollered across the playground. ‘Still can’t afford decent trainers, then?’

I felt my face flush scarlet as I told her to shut up. Over the next few days, the misery continued. I felt so lonely. One day, Carolyn spat in my food at lunch, and they were constantly pulling my hair. I’d feel someone yank on my ponytail then I’d turn round to see the three of them sniggering. Sometimes the rest of the class would join in, too.

The teachers just pretended not to notice.

A little while later, a new show came on ITV and everyone in the class was watching it. It was called Pop Idol and it featured lots of up-and-coming singers who competed against each other to win a record deal. One of the favourites to win was a teenager called Gareth Gates. Loads of the girls in my class really fancied him, but like me he had a slight gap between his two front teeth.

‘Jenny,’ Anna said loudly enough for most of the class to hear. ‘Don’t you think Sarah looks like Gareth Gates?’

The familiar sound of sniggering filled the air as I silently burned with rage and humiliation. For the next few weeks most people refused to call me Sarah. Instead, Jenny, Carolyn, Anna and lots of their friends simply called me Gareth.

I was convinced my teacher, Mrs Cunningham, must have heard them taunting me, but she never told them off and it seemed so unfair. One day, Anna called me Gareth again and I’d had enough. I turned round in my chair to see lots of my classmates laughing into their jotters.

‘Shut the fuck up!’ I hissed.

‘What did you just say, Sarah?’ Mrs Cunningham asked, eyes wide with fury.

‘It’s not my fault!’ I replied, voice shaking with rage. ‘They keep calling me Gareth Gates.’

‘I will not tolerate swearing in my class,’ she said coldly. ‘Go to the headteacher’s office now.’

These girls – and some of the boys – had been picking on me for years, but now I was the one in trouble. It didn’t make any sense and it just seemed so unfair. I’d had enough. I didn’t know how the bullying was going to stop if no one was protecting me – how could it ever get any better? I lost it. Something inside me just snapped.

‘You’re a fucking slag,’ I spat back. The words had barely formed in my brain and even I was surprised I’d said them out loud. Mrs Cunningham’s mouth fell open in shock and I could hear my classmates both gasping and tittering in amusement. But I didn’t want to apologise. I just stood there staring at my teacher while she tried to figure out what to do with me. If she’d done her job properly and told the other kids off in the first place, none of this would have happened. Eventually, she marched me round to the headteacher’s office herself and I was excluded for two days.

Perhaps I should have been disappointed in myself. I hated school and it was a good way to have a couple of days off. None of the kids I knew saw an exclusion as a punishment – quite the opposite.

Of course, Mum wasn’t too happy when she picked me up, but she wasn’t as mad as I thought she’d be. I’d always been a nice girl and this was pretty out of character, so I think she knew something was up.

‘Sarah, are you being picked on at school?’ she asked me that evening.

‘No,’ I snapped back. ‘Just leave it, Mum.’

And that was that. I just didn’t want to talk about it. Luckily, I had made one new friend since I’d come back to Psalters Lane. Her name was Lynsey and she lived on our road. She went to another primary school a few streets away and she didn’t know anyone who bullied me. She was around the same age as me and she was a laugh. We’d muck about together on the street and it was so lovely to have a friend. One day she asked me to come and help her babysit for a family friend.

‘Her name is Elaine,’ she explained. ‘She’s nice.’

Elaine lived around fifteen minutes away from Ferham and, as we walked there, Lynsey told me that she had two children, aged three and one.

‘They’re dead cute,’ she went on. ‘I help watch them most nights, though. Elaine’s always out.’

I thought that was a bit strange: why did Elaine go out every night and leave her kids with a girl who was still at primary school? I figured that maybe she worked in a pub like Mum, but it still seemed a weird thing to do when her children were so young.

But the second I walked into Elaine’s house I could tell she was nothing like Mum. It was absolutely filthy and no place for kids. It wasn’t just the fact that the floors were littered with junk and the pots were piled high in the kitchen sink – after all, everyone leaves things lying around from time to time – it just looked like it hadn’t had a proper clean in years. There was mould growing on the walls and all of the surfaces were grimy and dirty. It smelt damp and horrible.

Elaine must have been in her late teens, early twenties at most, but to me she looked ancient. She was standing in the living room smoking when we walked in, wearing a creased vest top and faded blue jeans. Her face was lined with tiredness, as if she hadn’t slept in days. Her limp brown hair was scraped back into a harsh ponytail and there were huge dark circles under her eyes.

‘All right, Lynsey,’ she said casually. The youngest child – Josh, I discovered – was screaming in the background, while his older sister Kylie was stamping her feet loudly. Elaine didn’t take much notice. ‘You still okay to babysit tonight?’

‘Yeah, sure,’ said Lynsey, over the noise of the kids. ‘This is Sarah.’

‘All right?’ Elaine said, but I could tell she wasn’t really in the mood to make conversation.

Kylie and Josh were still shouting in the background, crying out for attention, but it was like Elaine couldn’t hear them. Eventually, Lynsey picked Josh up and tried to comfort him, but I wasn’t paying attention to them any more. Instead, I watched transfixed as Elaine took a crumpled tenner and a bag of white powder from her pocket. She emptied the white powder onto her grubby coffee table, which was already littered with fag ends that no one had bothered to clean up. Then she rolled up the tenner and started to snort the powder through it. I genuinely had no idea what was going on, but it looked a bit ridiculous so I had to stifle a giggle.

I left Elaine’s early that night, but the next evening Lynsey invited me back and I asked Mum if I could stay out a bit later. Elaine’s house was horrible and dirty, but something made me want to go back. At last I had a friend, and it was really nice to be able to hang out with someone my own age who seemed to like me. As we walked back up the hill the next night, I asked Lynsey what the white powder was.

She looked uncomfortable. ‘I think it’s a drug,’ she replied.

‘A drug?’ I echoed.

‘Yeah, cocaine,’ Lynsey said. ‘But she only takes it sometimes.’

When we got to the house Elaine was getting ready to go out, and she looked a lot different from the dishevelled woman I’d met the day before. Gone were the creased vest top and faded jeans; now she was wearing a tight black dress and high-heeled boots which came all the way up to her knee. Her hair was down and it looked like she’d washed it. She’d also put on some bright-red lipstick.

‘I’m off,’ she said. ‘See you later.’

I soon discovered that Lynsey often wasn’t alone when Elaine was out. Elaine had a little cousin called David, who was fourteen. He used to come round too, and he’d bring all his mates. I quickly realised that Elaine’s was a bit of a dosshouse. Now, as a mother myself, I’m horrified that young children – babies, even – were allowed anywhere near a place like that, but at the time I wasn’t thinking about it; I was just fascinated at how totally different it was from my own home, my own way of life.

There were around six teenage boys sitting cross-legged on the floor when I walked into the living room – Elaine only had one couch and it was totally falling apart, with holes where the stuffing oozed out – and there were lots of strange-looking green leaves on the table. One of David’s mates was sucking on a big, gold thing that looked like a pipe.

‘Ever tried a bong?’ he asked me, without introducing himself. ‘Have a shot. You’ll love it.’

‘A what?’ I said.

‘It’s weed,’ Lynsey whispered.

I’d heard people talking about weed before, but I had no idea what it would do to my body if I took it. But David’s friend handed the bong to Lynsey and she inhaled deeply, giggling a little nervously. Then, she passed it to me. I could feel my heart hammering in my chest. What would Mum do if she found out I’d taken drugs – me, a nine-year-old girl? She’d go absolutely spare, of course. But as I’d always been an outcast at school, the idea of having cool, older friends appealed to me. I wanted to fit in so, although I was too young to even know what I was doing, I took the bong from Lynsey and, palms sweaty, I breathed in.

I spluttered as the fumes entered my lungs, and the older boys started to laugh, but I kept going as I didn’t want to lose face. After I’d taken a few puffs, I passed the bong back but my brain was already starting to feel a bit fuzzy. A few minutes later, the room was spinning and I started to retch. Bile was rising in my throat, as if I was going to be sick, but nothing else would come.

‘Lynsey,’ I said, tugging on the sleeve of her hoodie. ‘Lynsey, I feel really weird.’

‘Relax,’ she replied. ‘It’s just ’cause it’s your first time.’

‘No,’ I said, making no attempt to hide the desperation in my voice. ‘No, you don’t get it. I think there’s something wrong with me.’

Overhearing us, David asked what was wrong.

‘What have you just given me?’ I asked. By now, I was almost in tears. ‘I feel really sick.’

I couldn’t understand why David and his mates were laughing, and it only made me more scared. The tears which had been threatening to fall now began to spill down my face, but still the boys didn’t take any notice.

‘What’s going on?’ I sobbed. ‘What are you going to do to me?’

‘Now you’ve tried weed, you’ll not be allowed to go home,’ David said.

My throat tightened with panic. ‘What?’ I stammered.

‘You won’t even get to say bye to your mum,’ said the boy who had given me the bong. He still hadn’t told me his name.

‘The doctors are on their way to get you now,’ David went on. ‘They’re coming to pick you up.’

Of course, none of this made sense, and my brain felt so cloudy that I convinced myself the boys were telling the truth. And anyway, I was only nine. The thought of never seeing my mum again was really frightening, and in my mind at that moment it could easily have been true. I could feel the terror rising in my chest but I was powerless to stop it. My weak heart was racing and tears were streaming down my face. I no longer knew who was saying what; all I knew was that I needed to get out of Elaine’s, and fast, and get home to Mum before all of these horrible people took me away to God knows where.

I let out a shrill scream, but it was like the noise had come from someone else’s body, not mine. Lynsey was looking at the ground – I think she felt a bit bad for me – but the boys were hooting and howling with laughter. I sprang to my feet, really terrified now, and raced to the front door, but David got there before me, blocking it with his body.

‘You can’t leave, Sarah,’ he said. ‘The doctors are coming, remember? They’re going to lock you up with all the crazy people.’

Fear and paranoia flooded my body as I tried to wrestle with him, but it was no use: I was a little nine-year-old girl, barely reaching his chest, and he was a fourteen-year-old boy, with the body of a man.

‘Please, let me out!’ I begged him. ‘Please let me go home to my mum!’

The corners of David’s mouth were turning up, as if he was trying not to giggle, but I didn’t see – I was still dizzy. I ran back into the living room where Lynsey was still sitting on the floor. She had the bong in her hands. Suddenly, I felt like I was going to be sick, as if it was really happening this time. My stomach was churning violently and I ran to the corner of the room, retching loudly.

‘Look!’ David shouted. ‘She’s going to whitey!’

He and his mates started whooping with laughter again. As my stomach settled, I turned back round to face David.

‘Please, can I go?’ I whispered.

‘What did I tell you?’ he replied. ‘Doctors are on their way.’

Helpless, I turned to Lynsey. ‘Lynsey, they won’t let me out!’ I cried. ‘Lynsey, you need to help me! Call the police!’

The boys thought this was hilarious, but Lynsey shot David an uneasy glance and I could tell he was starting to feel a bit mean.

‘Calm down,’ he said. ‘We’re only messing.’

I still felt shaky when I got home, but luckily Mum wasn’t there. She’d started working shifts at a local pub and Mark had been left in charge of us. I got myself a glass of water and climbed into bed. Laura was already fast asleep at the other side of the room. But a few minutes later, I knew I was going to be sick – or ‘whitey’, as the boys had called it – for real. I ran into the bathroom and threw up, praying Mark hadn’t heard.

The next morning, I still felt edgy and paranoid, and I was convinced Mum would guess straight away what I’d been up to, but she’d come in late from work and she was tired and busy, chattering away to me about school and whether or not I needed my PE kit that day.

I’d hated the weed. It was horrible, plus the boys that hung around at Elaine’s didn’t seem very nice. But despite that, when Lynsey asked me back a few nights later, for some reason I said yes. I guess it was something to do, and being with Lynsey made me feel like I belonged somewhere. I needed that, now I was back to having no friends at school.

‘God, you were so stoned the other night,’ Lynsey said as we walked to Elaine’s. ‘I thought you were going to whitey everywhere.’

‘I did when I got in,’ I admitted. ‘It was horrible.’

‘You’ll get used to it,’ Lynsey said. ‘I was dead paranoid the first time, too, but now it’s just a laugh.’

Gradually, the boys stopped taking the piss out of me, but they kept giving me weed. I suppose they were only really kids themselves and they didn’t see it as a big deal. For the next year and a half, Lynsey and I spent lots of our free time at Elaine’s. She was my only real friend and I felt safe with her, safe even in that house, despite all the crazy stuff that went on there. It was an escape from being so lonely at school and at home. At last I had somewhere to go with someone who actually wanted to spend time with me.

It wasn’t long before I started smoking fags, too. It was just the done thing at Elaine’s, plus she would sometimes give us some for free as a ‘treat’ for watching the kids when she was out. I suppose it should have been obvious to me that she was working as a prostitute. After all, not many single, teenage mums can afford to buy cocaine like it’s going out of fashion. But I’d just turned ten at that point and I didn’t even really know what a prostitute was. I just thought Elaine was always busy with her mates or working the odd shift in a pub here and there. It was only years later, when I got talking to a girl who knew her, that I found out what was really going on when she disappeared in her short dresses and high-heeled boots.

In the summer of 2002, just before I started Year 6, Lynsey and I also started drinking. Sometimes the boys we knew from Elaine’s would take us down to Ferham Park and buy a couple of bottles of cheap cider. For all that my first experience with weed had been horrible, I loved getting drunk from the start. As soon as the cider hit my bloodstream it gave me a bit of a buzz. For the first time in my life I was loud and confident, and even David and his mates thought I was a laugh. At least I think they did – I’m still not quite sure if they were still laughing at me. Of course, I always drank a bit too much and I’d often end up throwing up in the bushes, but I didn’t really care. It was all in the name of good fun, right?

Sometimes Elaine would buy us cider too, if we agreed to the odd chore or to stay an hour or so longer with the kids. She knew what age we were but she needed something to bribe us with, and it seemed the easiest way of getting us to do her a favour here and there. Mostly, she was all right, but sometimes she could have a right temper on her. I suppose it was because of all the drugs she took, but back then I just thought she was really moody. One day, she asked me to wash some pots for her. It seemed a bit pointless, because the house was a total tip and I never saw her cook much, but I agreed anyway as I wanted her to buy me some booze when she went to the shop. I was scrubbing them for ages and I thought they looked much better, as they’d really been minging before, but when Elaine came in to inspect them she began hurling them against the wall.

‘You stupid bitch!’ she thundered. ‘You can’t even wash fucking pots right!’

‘What’s wrong with them?’ I asked, bewildered.

‘Look at this one!’ she said, her voice still raised as she held the pot in the air. For a second, I wondered if she was going to hit me with it, but instead she pointed to the tiniest speck of dirt on the handle. It didn’t look like food; it was probably just muck from her dirty kitchen.

‘Sorry,’ I replied, shrugging my shoulders.

‘Yeah, well, so you should be!’ she snapped. ‘This is a fucking disgrace. After all I do for you, you can’t even wash a pot right.’

Half an hour later, though, she was back to being okay again, and she still bought me some cider when she went to the shop. That was the thing with Elaine. She could be a right cow, but her mood swings never lasted long.

I quickly became an expert at hiding my smoking and drinking from Mum. Most nights she was on a late shift, so I’d make sure I got home before closing time and go straight upstairs to bed, back to the room I shared with Laura and all of our dolls, before anyone could ask me who I’d been with or what I’d been doing. Sometimes I even told Mum I’d been at Elaine’s, but obviously I made out that I’d just been helping with the kids. For all that Rotherham has its downsides, there is a real sense of community among some people, and lots of them will often go above and beyond to help others out. I think Mum just thought it was nice that Lynsey and I wanted to give Elaine a hand, because that’s what people did.

Ferham is a small place, and by the time I reached Year 6 word had spread that I was hanging around with a group of older, cool mates. Slowly, people stopped giving me a hard time, and some of the people who used to bully me wanted to be my mate. Even Jenny, Carolyn and Anna stopped being really mean to me. I was glad they didn’t want to tease me any more, but I couldn’t be bothered being mates with them. Even at the age of eleven, I knew it was all a bit fake. Ever since the row with Mrs Cunningham that led to me being excluded, I was determined that I wasn’t taking any more shit from them.

For a girl who was once so desperate to blend into the background, I was now the talk of the school. It didn’t help that I was almost always hungover or on some sort of comedown from all the weed I’d been smoking. I wouldn’t let anyone cross me – teachers or pupils – and I was soon getting excluded every other week for fighting or disrupting the class. If someone so much as breathed a wrong word to me, I’d batter them.

Mum was really angry and she soon began to suspect I’d been up to no good. She started quizzing me about who I’d been hanging around with and what I’d been doing, but it didn’t make me stop. She later told me that she feared I was still being bullied and begged the school to investigate, but they weren’t really interested. I think by that point I’d just become a bit of a nuisance to them and they couldn’t wait for me to leave to go to secondary school.

For Mum, alarm bells really started ringing when Laura began to pick up on my bad behaviour. By this point, Laura was starting to show the signs of having mild learning difficulties. She wasn’t as much trouble as I was, far from it, but she was always a little bit behind the others in her class when it came to reading and numbers, and she could never concentrate on her work because she was constantly hyper. Looking back, Mum thinks she had some form of ADHD, but those things weren’t talked about so much back then and she was never diagnosed.

One lunchbreak, I got into a fight with a girl in my class and, spying me across the playground, Laura ran over and tried to join in. She didn’t get very far – I would never let my little sister fight my battles – but the damage had been done, as one of the dinner ladies had come out of the canteen to see what all the commotion was. She told the headteacher and all three of us were excluded for a few days.

Poor Mum was at the end of her tether and made us stay in our room for ages. She was so mad she wouldn’t even let us watch The Powerpuff Girls, our favourite cartoon, never mind go out and play with our mates.

‘You used to be a lovely little girl,’ she told me, over and over, despair in her eyes. ‘What’s happening to you?’

I think Mum hoped my bad behaviour was just a phase, but I was careering off the rails by now and no one could stop me. I don’t know if I was really happy, but I know that I was glad I wasn’t being bullied and I felt relieved that I had a group of mates who could look out for me and I could have a laugh with. In my young eyes, Mum wasn’t protecting me – she was just trying to stop my fun.