Everyone knew I was being groomed – but did nothing to help
ZOE PATTERSON was 13 and in care when she was targeted by a sex gang. Shockingly, every adult she turned to ignored her pleas. She tells us her story
WHEN Zoe Patterson* heard about the abuse scandal in Telford she was saddened but not shocked. “I wasn’t at all surprised. It’s horribly familiar to me,” she says of the recent investigation that revealed 1,000 vulnerable girls had been targeted by a sex gang in the Shropshire town.
In 2001, when she was 13, Zoe was taken into care where she was introduced to a group of men who groomed her and coerced her into having sex. Now she wants to share her story to show how widespread the problem is in the UK and why changes have to be made in the way society treats its most vulnerable children.
Until the age of 13 Zoe lived at home with her parents and two older brothers. However, it was a violent household and Zoe confided in a teacher that her mum was hurting her. Social services were called and she was taken into care.
She was placed in a children’s home and befriended by an older girl called Abbie, 16, who one night invited her to a house party.
“We didn’t tell anybody where we were going and staff didn’t seem to care as long as we were back by a certain time.”
The girls were picked up by three older men and instinctively Zoe knew something was wrong.
“I felt uneasy the moment I got into the car. The men were at least twice our age.”
The car pulled up outside a run-down terraced house and they all went inside.
“I was expecting to see other people but it was just us. We were given vodka and cannabis and I started to feel drunk but I was still very uneasy.”
Then one of the men asked Zoe to go upstairs, saying he wanted to show her something.
“He took me to a room with a mattress on the floor and I started to feel scared. I tried to escape but he wouldn’t let me out of the room. I was screaming and begging him not to touch me.”
The man raped her, then another man came into the room and she was raped again.
When it was over, the second man told Zoe to get dressed and as she came downstairs she heard Abbie arguing with the first man about money. “It dawned on me that the money she was demanding was for taking me to the ‘party’. It hadn’t even crossed my mind she could betray me in that way. I felt humiliated, sad and incredibly lonely,” she says.
When she got back to the care home, she told one of the care home staff that she needed the morning-after pill. It was given to her with no questions asked.
The next day she confided in her social worker about what had really happened.
“She never told me it was wrong or that I’d been raped. Instead she took me to the doctors and I was put on the contraceptive pill. I realised then that this was what life was going to be like and nobody was going to stop it.”
Zoe tried to avoid Abbie but after a few days she was forced to go to another “party” where the same thing happened. Before long Abbie was arranging daily meetings for Zoe with older men. “I went into survival mode. I drank a lot because the men always gave me alcohol. I did everything I could to numb the pain.”
After a month Abbie left the care home but another girl called Natalie moved in and started taking Zoe to parties with a different group of men.
Zoe told the workers at the care home that she was scared but they did nothing to protect her.
“I was scared for my life. I left notes in my room saying what was happening but nobody did anything. I couldn’t ring the police because I knew they wouldn’t help. Once I was found at a house by the police when I didn’t come back to the care home. I tried to tell them what was happening but all they said was, ‘You don’t want to get these nice men into trouble’.”
After a year of abuse Zoe ran away from the care home and back to her parents’ house, even though she knew she was returning to violence. She stopped using the phone the men had given her and finally felt safe because they didn’t know where she lived.
After 18 months living with her parents, Zoe was placed with a foster family and it was during this time she came across other girls who had been abused. For the first time she realised she wasn’t alone. When she was 18, she moved into a flat by herself and started working in a warehouse. She tried to put the past behind her but was tormented by flashbacks.
It wasn’t until a few years later that she felt ready to confront the abuse again when a friend suggested she request her files from social services.
What she found was truly shocking. Not only were social services aware of what was going on but they portrayed Zoe as a willing participant with one note saying she was “choosing to have sex with adult Asian males”. “There were a lot of things in my files that upset me but the worst were the notes I had left in my room, pleading for help. I sobbed as I read the words I’d scrawled all those years ago. Now I knew for sure that the staff had read them and done nothing to help me.”
Zoe didn’t ever consider going to the police, primarily because she didn’t trust them after her experiences as a teenager when they didn’t seem to believe her or want to do anything to help.
However, using the evidence in her file Zoe instructed a specialist child abuse lawyer and won a generous settlement from the local authority.
Now 30, Zoe works as a boxing instructor and is hopeful about the future. But she is still angry and believes a lot has to change before vulnerable children are no longer at risk.
“The attitudes of social workers and the police need to change. I’m sharing my story in the hope that something positive comes out of the horrific things I suffered at the hands of those men.” * All names have been changed. Zoe has chosen not to reveal the name of the local authority in order to protect her anonymity.
To order a copy of Trafficked Girl by Zoe Patterson (£7.99, Harper Element) call the Express Bookshop on 01872 562 310 or visit expressbookshop.co.uk
‘I was screaming and begging him not to touch me’