Violated: A Shocking and Harrowing Survival Story From the Notorious Rotherham Abuse Scandal. Sarah Wilson
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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.
Chapter Six
Within seconds of my 999 call, a police car was tearing up the street, sirens blazing. I hadn’t told them anything about the men, just that we were runaways and we needed to get home. Nadine was still on the phone, but she hung up as soon as she heard the commotion.
‘You fucking idiot,’ she said. ‘Piggy bastards.’
Nadine hated the police and nearly always called them ‘pigs’ or ‘piggy bastards’. She glowered as a female copper climbed out of the car and started asking us some questions about where we’d been. Neither of us gave anything away. The copper was all right, I guess, but she insisted on taking us down to the station before we could go home.
There was another officer driving the car but he didn’t say much. When we pulled into the car park, the first copper took Nadine inside but told me to stay in the car. I’m still not sure why.
‘Can’t we just go home?’ I asked him.
‘We just need to make some routine inquiries,’ he said. ‘Has anything happened to you tonight? You know you can tell us if it has.’
I just folded my arms and said nothing. It seemed like ages before the other copper came back to the car, but Nadine wasn’t with her. She got into the back with me and she had a serious expression on her face.
‘Sarah,’ she began slowly. ‘Your friend has just made a very serious allegation against the group of men you were with tonight. Is there anything you want to tell me?’
She explained that Nadine had told her we’d gone back to the flat with the men from the second takeaway and I’d been gang-raped. I could barely believe what I was hearing, and I genuinely thought the police were playing mind games to try to trick me into telling them the truth. Nadine had been raging at me for phoning them. I thought she’d never grass those men up, far less make up a story that was ten times worse than what had actually happened. She was always sticking up for Amir and all the men that tagged along with him, so why was she trying to get them into trouble?
I told them it was a load of rubbish. They took us home separately and they never contacted me again about what Nadine had said. The next day, though, she thought it was a hoot.
‘I told the pigs that those Pakis gang-raped you,’ she said, laughing at the thought of me being violated by a group of strangers as if it was the funniest joke in the world.
At the time I was so confused but, looking back, I think Nadine was smarter than she made out. She was teaching me a lesson and it worked. I never phoned the police again as it all seemed far more trouble than it was worth.
As for the coppers, I think they already had me down as a bit of a time waster because I’d run away so much, and this was probably the final nail in the coffin. Whenever Mum reported me missing after that, they just didn’t seem bothered about finding me. To them, it was like I’d decided to hang about with older men and get off my face on drugs and alcohol, and I’d have to live with the consequences. I wasn’t yet a teenager, but years later I would discover that they’d described what was happening to me as a ‘lifestyle choice’.
The more I saw of Nadine and this ever-expanding gang of Asian men, the worse things got at home. I’d always had a fiery relationship with my brother Robert, but the drugs made my temper even worse and we were always scrapping. This meant Mum was more stressed out than ever before, and even Laura and I weren’t as close as we’d once been. She was ten, but she was still playing with prams and dolls in the back garden while I was being sucked into something that I couldn’t seem to get myself out of, something that was being controlled by a group of men I didn’t know – something that was so far away from the world of playing with dolls.
A few days after Nadine made up the gang-rape story, I was in my maths class when I caught sight of Robert outside the window. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but I knew he was trying to wind me up, making faces and pointing and laughing, as siblings often do. I’d been given loads of phet the night before, so I could feel an uncontrollable rage sweeping over me as I kicked over my seat and made for the classroom door.
‘Where are you going, Sarah?’ the teacher, Miss Jones, asked. She’d sprung up from her seat and she was now standing in front of me, blocking