Dirty Harry
He lured me in with sweets then his tactics turned to terror
Knocking at the door, I listened for footsteps but nobody came. My friend wasn’t home from school yet, I supposed. So I walked back down the path and to the pavement.
Coming out of the garden next door at the same time was a white-haired man with a lovely black Labrador. I bent to pet the dog. ‘Her name’s Kira,’ the man said.
‘My name’s Ikeyra,’ I laughed. ‘Almost the same.’ He laughed too.
I looked more closely at the man and suddenly became transfixed.
He was lighting a Chinese lantern.
As he released it into the sky, I stared, fascinated, as it bobbed up and away.
It was September 2009, and I was 10.
Weeks earlier I’d moved to our new home in Leven, Fife, with my mum Brenda, then 45, and my sister Indianna, 13.
The man walked me to the corner of my road, he lived in the street behind ours.
By then, he’d told me his name was Harry.
I mentioned him to Mum and she asked neighbours about him.
‘He’ll do anything to help anybody,’ they said.
Turned out my friends often went to Harry’s house, and when I asked Mum if I could go too, she nodded.
Harry, then 68, would visit us as well and would regularly slip Mum money for the electricity meter and buy her cigarettes.
Mum had been on her own since my dad left after I’d been born three months premature.
She loved us fiercely, but had her own struggles and I was often cold and hungry.
Harry’s house was warm and cosy, and there was always something to eat. I loved playing with Kira. The middle drawer in the kitchen was crammed with packs of sweets and he had a jar of pound coins. ‘Help yourself,’ he’d say. In his house, we played on games consoles as he ordered us takeaways.
In his garden, I’d watch the goldfish and koi carp swimming idly in his pond.
We didn’t have a garden at home.
And when somebody offered to give me a trampoline they no longer wanted, Harry said I could keep it at his.
Harry was retired but he’d worked in the coal mines and had grown-up kids.
‘I’ve known what it’s like to struggle, that’s why I like to help out,’ he told Mum.
Flags and banners hung from the walls of his house. One of them had a huge red hand on it.
It was the symbol of the Ulster Volunteer Force, Harry explained.
Sometimes he made trips to Northern Ireland.
‘I do jobs for them,’ he said.
They were a loyalist paramilitary group.
Only, as I got older, I realised the group were classified as a terrorist organisation. Guns, bombs.
Was Harry really involved with them?
It was hard to believe as he smiled and doled out sweets.
One afternoon, in 2010, I’d gorged on so many sweets in the drawer, I was hyped up on sugar and being noisy. Harry was on the phone. ‘Shut up,’ he yelled.
But I carried on.
Suddenly he whipped round, unzipped his pants and flashed at me.
I was shocked into silence.
I’d never seen a man’s privates. I was 11.
‘Sorry, but I had to get you to shut up,’ he sighed later.
I nodded.
Harry was so generous. Paid for me to go on a school trip to Alton Towers, and bought me new clothes.
Until one day, when I was 12, everything changed.
‘I treated you. Now you can treat me,’ he grinned, after giving me a BlackBerry phone.
I was perplexed. What did he mean? He unzipped his trousers and told me what to do.
I felt that I had no choice but to follow his instructions.
From then on, Harry did the same almost every week.
A year later, after a trip to the arcade in December 2013 when
I was 14, he made me go further.
He told me he loved me. I felt special, grown-up. I cared about him.
But he tried to do things that hurt me.
‘No,’ I said.
But he pointed to the red hand on the wall.
‘I can have people hurt you or kill you if you don’t do as I say,’ he said.
I was scared.
I’d stay away a few days but go back when I got hungry.
And he’d be generous once again.
I didn’t reach
‘I treated you. Now you can treat me,’ he grinned
puberty until I was 16 and noticed that younger girls were going round Harry’s house.
And by the time I was 17, I began to realise exactly what Harry had done to me.
The sweets, days out, clothes, had enticed me into his orbit, and he’d taken advantage of a vulnerable girl from a troubled home.
And then I found out that Harry had been accused of sexual abuse by younger girls.
In May 2019, he was jailed for three years.
He’d done to them what he’d done to me. But they’d gone to the police.
Mum didn’t know about the conviction, and I didn’t tell her.
Didn’t want her asking if he’d done the same to me.
By now I was 20 and I had a boyfriend, Josh, then 22.
A childhood friend, he’d worked with my brother, Liam, then 28.
I found it hard to trust men after what Harry had done to me.
Harry’s lenient sentence angered me.
I knew he’d soon be out of prison.
I have to do something,
I thought.
But then I remembered the flags displayed on Harry’s walls.
Was he a terrorist?
Or were his boasts all a lie to make me and other girls comply with his depravity?
I didn’t know for sure. But what if he got out of jail, continued hurting more girls?
First, though, I had to tell Josh.
‘Go to the police,’ he urged, shocked.
So with his support, the same month Harry was sentenced, I told police everything.
Harry was charged with abusing and raping me.
Then, in September 2019, while Harry awaited trial, I discovered I was pregnant.
Me and Josh were over the moon.
And I did my best to put the abuse and pending trial out of my mind.
My gorgeous baby girl was born in May 2020, weighing 7lb 2oz.
We called her Hope. Mum visited, and looked so proud as she nestled her close.
But one month later, Mum was dead.
She’d had problems with her lungs and had suffered a heart attack, aged 56.
I’d never told her about what Harry did, I hadn’t wanted to upset her.
At his trial in October 2021, Harry Canning, then 80, pleaded not guilty.
But he was convicted of seven charges of sexual abuse of girls, including six charges of rape.
Two months later, at Stirling High Court, he was sentenced to nine years in prison.
He’s likely to die in jail. That drawer he had full of sweets?
That jar of pound coins? They were part of his abuse kit to trap me.
It was hard to speak up but I’m so glad I did it, for me and for Hope and all the other little girls out there who deserve so much more.
My girl will grow up in a better world with men like Harry where they belong.