I cannot count the number of men who raped me.. but it runs into thousands
ASIAN SEX GANG VICTIM’S HORRIFYING ORDEAL
Over 15 years, starting from the age of 14, Caitlin Spencer was raped by thousands of men. The result was 11 pregnancies, which led to seven abortions, two miscarriages, and two babies who Caitlin kept, learning to love the daughters whose fathers were monsters.
Now, she is bravely telling her horrific story for the first time. Hers is undoubtedly one of the very worst cases of UK child trafficking at the hands of a predominantly Asian sex gang heard to date. And, shockingly, Caitlin – whose real name we are protecting for her safety – says the vast network, which includes a local politician, is still at large.
She wants to name names to protect other potential victims, but legally she can’t. Although she found the courage to make an official police report two years ago, her case was dropped.
Predominantly Asian sex gangs are no strangers to the headlines now. Three weeks ago, an 18-strong group was convicted in Newcastle of grooming and raping girls as young as 13. Police said there were 278 victims.
The case – which included men of Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Indian, Iraqi, Iranian and Turkish backgrounds – followed similar convictions in Rochdale, Oxford, Bristol, Aylesbury and Peterborough. But Caitlin says this barely scrapes the surface of the network of abusers she believes exist.
Horrifyingly, she still sees gang members in her local area. She says many drive taxis, and she has seen one picking children up from a local school.
Speaking quietly, but with grim conviction, she warns: “The courts are only getting a handful of men out of these gangs. This is going on under our noses. The men are quite brazen.”
She adds, even more softly: “While they are out there I am never fully free.”
Referring to the Newcastle case, she says: “There is no way the gangs are that small, I can guarantee that. I would be taken to places across the country. I cannot count how many men raped me, but I believe it runs into thousands.”
These men were generally nameless to her, but she later found out one worked in local politics. She says: “I was obviously shocked that someone in that position is doing stuff like this. And angry, because he seems untouchable.”
Caitlin, who is telling her story in a new book, Please, Let Me Go, does not fit the stereotype of UK sex gang victims.
Like the majority, she was white and a young teenager when the abuse began. But unlike so many, she did not live in a children’s home. She and her younger brother lived with both their parents. However, because her mum and dad worked away from home for long hours, they did not notice the initial signs of the abuse, which began when Caitlin spotted an advert searching for models.
Young, naive and home alone, she called the number. A man asked if he could come round to take some photos. “I thought it was normal,” she says. When he forced her upstairs and made her strip, then violently raped her, she was too terrified to protest. When he left, he told her he would be in touch again and warned her not to tell a soul.
“I ran a bath,” she recalls. “Then I stayed in my room. I felt so dirty. I couldn’t face my family. I blamed myself.”
Within days, he rang and told her he would be round to pick her up. She was so terrified she went along with it. That
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.
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