Violated: A Shocking and Harrowing Survival Story From the Notorious Rotherham Abuse Scandal

I never felt like I fitted in there, and so I didn’t listen much in class. I was far from stupid but I was never top of the class or the teacher’s pet. That would have just given the bullies another reason to single me out, and all I wanted was to fade into the background. I desperately hoped that I could be invisible, that the other kids would just not notice me and wouldn’t give me grief.

It was a shame the way that school worked out, because ever since I was really young I’d wanted to do something with my life. I had dreams of what I could do when I was older. While lots of children would flinch at the sight of blood, I’d never been squeamish and I was always first on the scene when one of my brothers or sister got a cut or a bruise. When I was really little, before I started school, I told everyone that I wanted to be a nurse when I grew up, but after the first few years of primary school I stopped dreaming about stuff like that. Just getting through each day was an effort. Things got even worse later, when I lost my baby teeth and my big teeth started to come in.

‘Sarah, what’s wrong with your face?’ Jenny said one morning, as we copied down some sums from the blackboard.

I turned scarlet and looked at the ground, saying nothing.

‘Look at the gap in your teeth,’ Carolyn said. ‘I’m glad my teeth don’t look like yours.’

It wasn’t just about my appearance, though. Any time a classmate spoke to me, or invited me to join in one of their games, the girls would tell them they’d catch some horrible disease if they came anywhere near me.

‘Don’t play with Sarah,’ Jenny would say. ‘She’s got the lurgy!’

‘You’ll catch her germs,’ Anna would add, hand on her hip. ‘Play with us instead.’

Each time this happened, my new friend would scuttle off, leaving me standing alone in the playground. Some would give me an apologetic backwards glance, and I got the sense that they didn’t really want to play with the class bullies, but they were too scared to say no or to stick up for me because that would have made them a target too. Others didn’t give me a second thought as they ran off, delighted at having been asked to spend their lunch hour with the most popular girls in the class.

I never confided in Mum about what was going on at school because I didn’t want any more hassle and I knew she’d just get really angry at the bullies. If I’d told her any of the names they called me, she’d have been down at the headteacher’s office like a shot, and I didn’t want anyone to think I was telling on them – that would have just meant more trouble, and that was all I needed! Sometimes, when I felt really miserable and lonely, I ached to tell her, but there was always something going on with Dad and the time never seemed right. Still, a mum’s instinct is a powerful thing and she always had an inkling I was being picked on. Although I know she begged my teachers to keep an eye on me, the girls who bullied me never seemed to get in any kind of trouble.

Then, when I was six, there was finally a glimmer of hope. Mum sat us down and explained that Dad wouldn’t be coming home. Don’t ask me why, but I knew this time was different to all the rest. She’d been at the end of her tether for a while and I think she had finally realised she couldn’t go on like this – for our sake as much as her own. She had summoned up the courage to go to the police about Dad at last. She never told us what had happened, but from that day things were different. Dad wasn’t sent back to jail, but Mum was granted an injunction, which meant he was banned from contacting us for a bit.

Mum really wanted a fresh start, and our house in Psalters Lane held too many bad memories. It took her a little while to get a new house, but a few months later we moved a few miles away, to another part of Rotherham called East Dene. Gradually, I started to come out of my shell. My new school was a bit better and I liked most of the teachers. I made a little group of friends and I even started to pay more attention in class.

We also had some nice neighbours, who had a pond in their garden with lots of frogs. They also had a son my age, called John. I took a bit of a shine to him and we used to tell people we were boyfriend and girlfriend, although we were always falling out! Those were good, fun times.

Things even started to pick up with Dad. He’d tried to get custody of us shortly after he and Mum split up, but of course he didn’t get very far. Mum was having none of it, plus he had a criminal record. But he had a new girlfriend called Ellen who seemed really nice, and Mum eventually let us see him on weekends and school holidays. We had some nice times at Rother Valley Country Park, just down the road, and we even tried canoeing and rafting. Don’t get me wrong, I always got the impression that Ellen was far more interested in us than Dad was, but it was nice that we could all be civil at least.

Then, just before my ninth birthday, Mum announced that we were moving back to Psalters Lane. She had lots of friends in Ferham and Kimberworth and I think she missed being so close to them. Another family had moved into our old house, with all its bad memories, but Mum had found us a new place on one of the little side streets, just off the main road. It was semi-detached, with a bit of a garden and three bedrooms. I’d share with Laura and Mark would share with Robert, just across the hall.

I wasn’t sure how to feel as we packed our things and the removal van set off back towards Ferham. Of course, I didn’t really want to go back to my old school and face the girls who’d made my life a misery, but as the familiar red brick houses of Psalters Lane slid into view, I tried to convince myself I’d find a way of coping.

Sadly, when we got back to Psalters Lane my old school bullies became the least of my problems.

Chapter Two

Fitting In (#uf6f390fb-6ae1-51f4-9ad3-e3bed8942194)

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.