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

The only thing I remember is that I wasn’t crying. What I’d just done was horrible, so horrible it made me sick to my stomach, but as hard as I tried, the tears wouldn’t come. I was completely numb.

I pushed my bedroom door open and Laura’s bed was empty. After Dad left, she’d taken to sleeping in Mum’s bed from time to time. I was glad she wasn’t there. I needed to be alone more than I ever had before.

As I undressed, I felt dirty and ashamed. I wanted to get into the shower and scrub myself until my skin was red raw, but I didn’t because Mum might suspect something was up if she heard the water running. I hadn’t even known what to do; I’d just sort of guessed. But somehow, I felt like it was my fault. I wasn’t sure why, but I felt like I was to blame for it happening.

I climbed into bed and pulled my covers over my head. I was still drunk and the room was spinning, but the thoughts inside my head seemed clearer than ever. I was home now, tucked up in my own bed with Mum downstairs, so why didn’t I feel safe?

I closed my eyes and tried to sleep, but all I could see was Rahim, half-naked in the playground, trousers round his ankles, with his horrible, creepy grin.

Why did I feel like my life would never be the same again?

Chapter Five

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

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.’