Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
I cannot count the number of men who raped me.. but it runs into thousands
the start of her descent trafficking and abuse. he clearly remembers very first “client” who d her. “He was an older an man, who obviously a family,” she says. “He photos everywhere of wife and kids.” hen it became one or clients a day, mostly an. “I was told I would killed if I told anyone, t they would set the se on fire,” she explains. hese paedophiles did not use protecIn the very first year, Caitlin became gnant, but an abortion was swiftly nged. In a silent plea for help she t a diary, which her mum eventually nd. She called the police, but Caitlin’s recollection of the one and only officer who visited makes for shocking reading.
She says: “He seemed angry with me, asking me very intimate and upsetting questions. When I asked him to stop, he said I had to get used to it as this is what I would have to deal with in court. He told me that if I were to testify, I would get no protection.”
She adds: “For that reason, I never took it further. The police told my mother that I was a known prostitute and to leave me to it, that I’d stop when I was ready.”
She says her parents didn’t step in again, but says they are still close. They live nearby and help with her daughters, which is why Caitlin has not moved elsewhere. She says: “It’s easy for people to blame them, but I can see what a difficult position they were in. If the police wouldn’t help, what could they do?”
As men continued to turn up at the house, her parents arranged for her to live in a local hostel to protect her younger brother. “Then there was no one to keep an eye on me,” she says.
She was sold on to different traffickers and raped by more men, often in queues, sometimes in groups.
“Physically, I was in a lot of pain,” she recalls. “Sometimes I was able to become numb. But I couldn’t always do that.”
Sometimes, at sex parties, where she and two or three other girls would be passed around, the gang forced alcohol and drugs on her. “I don’t know half of the stuff I was given. I only took it when they got really angry. I think they wanted us to be addicted, then they had more power,” she says.
The men would call her names like “white bitch” and some became violent, threatening her with knives.
At other times, she was filmed being raped, and the images were posted online, where some remain today.
Now suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, Caitlin has a lot of “blanks” in her memory.
And she admits that forming a bond with her daughters has been tough, especially with her eldest, who is mixedrace, but now she is able to love them.
“I can separate them from that horror. Sometimes they ask about their dads, but I would never want them to know.”
Caitlin’s abuse continued until 2013. By then, the gang was pestering her to find them younger girls, which she refused to do. Horrifyingly, they even began to enquire about her eldest daughter. Finally, after two horrific rapes in her own home, she found the courage to flee. She contacted a cousin in Australia and told her everything.
Caitlin and her girls lived out there for seven months, but could not get visas to stay. When they returned, support had already been set in motion.
By September 2014, the then National Crime Agency’s Human Trafficking Centre officially deemed Caitlin a victim of trafficking. It warns that the problem is on the rise, and underestimated.
Will Kerr, director of vulnerabilities for the NCA, said: “Modern slavery has rightly been made a priority across law enforcement. But it is a hidden crime, so the onus is on us to seek it out.
“The more that we look for modern slavery, the more we find the evidence of widespread abuse of the vulnerable.”
He adds: “The growing body of evidence we are collecting points to the scale being far larger than anyone had previously thought. The intelligence we are gaining is showing that there are likely to be far more victims out there, and the numbers of victims in the UK has been underestimated.”
In early 2015, Caitlin agreed to anonymously give a speech in the House of Lords about her experience. In it, she told the full horror of her story, and how she had been failed by the police and medical professionals she attempted to tell over those 15 hellish years. “These men find it OK to rape non-muslim girls. It’s a brutal cult and needs to be stopped,” she told the House. “There are other young British girls who are still suffering today in the way I suffered at the hands of Muslim men, who should be behind bars.”
Bravely, she worked with police, identifying around 80 gang members on Facebook. But although initially they told her they could build a strong case, it crumbled last year.
Caitlin was told DNA evidence wasn’t strong enough, and her memory blanks made her an unreliable witness.
“I am utterly disgusted at the lack of interest from the police and the lack of protection they have given me,” she says.
Despite her fears, Caitlin is speaking out to alert people to the dangers of these gangs. “I can’t let them win. I’m afraid, yes, but I am now doing what I can to get the message out,” she says.
Please, Let Me Go by Caitlin Spencer, John Blake Publishing, £7.99 is out now.