Gracie blames herself for being sexually abused because she ‘got involved’ with an older man
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Soon after Gracie started her first job, she was seduced by her manager.
Over the following two years, he trafficked her for the purposes of sexual exploitation.
Gracie left school at the age of 16, and began working in a shop. The manager, Mo, was in his mid-40s, and he asked her out for a drink after work with another colleague.
She says ‘It was all fine for a few months, then we started to see each other in secret’. She adds ‘He was married, I know I shouldn’t have done it’. She adds that she realised some time later one of his children was a similar age to her.
This had been going on for a few months, when Mo began coercing her into sleeping with other men.
Gracie says ‘It happened lots of times. The first time it happened I thought he was joking’.
She explains that they were staying in a hotel when a man she didn’t know turned up, and Mo told her she had to sleep with him. When she refused, Mo got emotional and kept saying ‘I need you to do this’.
After some time the friend said he would just sleep on the floor as it was too late to go home, but Gracie woke in the night to find this man raping her. The abuse went on all night and she can still visualise Mo sitting watching. ‘I guess he got a buzz out of it’ she says.
Mo trafficked her to many other men – sometimes they were people he met in pubs – in different locations. She remembers saying ‘no’ repeatedly to one man in a house, and Mo said ‘Well, this is rape then’.
He would ply Gracie with alcohol and often spiked her drinks. She says ‘I never drank so much in my life … not because I wanted to’.
Gracie remembers one friend of Mo’s who told him ‘What you are doing is not right’.
At one point Gracie moved in with Mo and he would take money from her to buy alcohol. They were once arrested with another man on suspicion of handling stolen goods. She remembers a police officer telling her ‘Stay away from him, you're too young for him’.
One night when Gracie was staying with Mo, he anally raped her. She left early in the morning and never saw him again. ‘Something just changed’ she says. ‘At one point I couldn’t imagine my life without him, then I thought “I don’t need this”.’
Mo carried on sending Gracie messages on social media. He sometimes admitted what he had done, and that he had made money out of her, then later denied it and became abusive.
Gracie says it was only when she got older and heard media stories about grooming and trafficking that she realised what Mo did was really wrong.
Gracie’s mum knew she was seeing Mo but simply told her daughter to keep away from him. Gracie says ‘I’m not a mum myself, but I know I would do anything to protect a child of my own’.
Gracie has been diagnosed with PTSD and another mental health condition. She says the abuse she suffered ‘absolutely destroyed my life – it’s affected everything’. She has vivid flashbacks and describes feeling ‘stuck’. She says ‘I can’t remember any names, but I can see faces and rooms in houses and hotels’.
She blames herself for what happened to her, saying ‘I don’t know what I was thinking. It was completely my fault – I shouldn't have got involved due to his age’.
Gracie adds ‘It’s embarrassing. I didn't speak up … if I’d said no, would he have not done it? It’s made me feel like a prostitute’.
She thinks that if the police officer who had warned her to stay away from Mo had been more persistent, she might have got away from him sooner. She would like the police and other authorities to be more prepared to get involved if they see children and young people in potentially dangerous situations.
Gracie says she receives good support from mental health services, and she now has a good job. She wanted to speak about her experiences to try and stop similar things happening to other girls.