let’s help save kids

I’m helping to prevent child sexual abuse

Scrubbing the loo until it gleamed, I stood back to check my work. I was only seven, and it was an honour to clean the toilets at the mosque. I turned to see the imam, my religious teacher, standing in the doorway. The expression in his beady eyes made me uneasy. Had I done my cleaning job well enough?

‘Good work, Nabila,’ he said approvingly. ‘As you’re doing so well, you can come upstairs and clean my study.’

We were alone in the mosque where the imam held afterschool classes to teach the Koran. The other kids had all gone home.

I’d been given the job of cleaning as a reward for learning my prayers.

The other girls were jealous, but I didn’t deserve his praise. I was the slowest student.

Now, the imam pointed to the staircase, and I went up to the study-bedroom where he lived.

As I tidied his dirty clothes and crockery, the imam reached out and squeezed my cheeks. ‘Such a pretty girl,’ he said, grinning. ‘Sit on my knee and say your prayers.’

I was horrified. He was disgusting, with chunks of old food stuck in his straggly grey beard. But now he nuzzled my neck, touched my bottom.

At last he let me go. But next day after class… ‘Nabila, you’ll be cleaning tonight,’ he commanded.

This time, he bit my cheek, leaving an angry red mark.

‘I scratched my face,’ I told mum when she asked about it.

Now I dreaded the classes. But there was no escape. I was too ashamed to tell my parents, sure they’d blame me. I began cutting my legs with a razor, covering up with long socks.

A teacher asked what was wrong, but I couldn’t tell her.

The abuse got worse over the next four years. The imam put his hands down my pants, jabbing with his fingers. Then he began pleasuring himself, and making me touch him. He tried to rape me. I only got away when he heard footsteps.

The classes ended when I was eleven, but I still self-harmed. As an adult I couldn’t enjoy a loving relationship. Every touch only reminded me of the abuse.

That changed when I was 34 and met Robert,** now my husband. His love spurred me to write a book, Brutal, and to go to the police. They tracked down the imam, Hifiz Rahman, who was convicted of indecent assault in October 2016 at Wolverhampton Crown Court. He absconded to Bangladesh, but was sentenced to 11 and a half years in his absence.

I also went to the Truth Project – it felt like talking to friends. If you have an account to share, do contact the Truth Project. Together, we can stop these evil people wrecking young lives.

We can’t let these evil people go on wrecking young lives