I Know What You Are: The true story of a lonely little girl abused by those she trusted most

I can only remember one occasion when Tom tried to force me to do something I didn’t want to do. It wasn’t long after he had kissed me for the first time. We were in the garden of his mum’s house when he suddenly grabbed my hand and pushed it down inside his trousers. I had touched boys of my own age at primary school, but never a man before, and I was really shaken. When I tried to pull my hand away, Tom grabbed my arm and held it where it was. I was more confused than frightened, until I saw the dark, almost threatening look in his eyes. By the time he released his grip, his fingerprints had left little red marks on my skin, which slowly turned into bruises.

I didn’t have any concept that what he was doing was wrong. I had read articles in Evie’s magazines about little girls whose dads crept into their bedrooms at night and did horrible things to them that traumatised and scarred them for the rest of their lives. And I had read about women who were raped – usually by men they didn’t know – who were very frightened and struggled to try to get away. But what Tom was doing to me wasn’t anything like what had happened to the little girls and women in those magazine stories. Tom didn’t ever hurt me and I wasn’t afraid of him. I often felt embarrassed by what he did to me, but only because I didn’t have real breasts, like Evie did, and I thought he must be comparing me to her and would soon realise I wasn’t really worthy of his attention.

I read a lot as a child. It seems odd when I think about it now, but I was probably reading Harry Potter during the time when I was becoming involved in a ‘relationship’ with Tom. Reading was a form of escapism for me – I loved the Harry Potter books. But there weren’t any books, or even television programmes, that involved an 11-year-old girl having a relationship with an adult man. At least, there weren’t any that I saw or was aware of at that time. So I decided that what Tom was doing was something private, something lots of people do, but don’t talk about. I think I knew that wasn’t true, although I certainly had no idea that it was abuse. But when you’ve spent your life not understanding a lot of the things people do, it’s sometimes easier to tell yourself a lie rather than become fixated on trying to work it out.