Western Morning News (Saturday)
If I didn’t get out of here, I was going to end up leaving in a body bag...
How a desperate middle-class girl groomed into sex slavery finally seized a chance to escape her terrifying pimp on a nail-biting night in the mid 90s
JOANNE PHILLIPS’ ordeal began aged 13 when she was gang-raped in her bedroom by local boys. Following the trauma, she dropped out of school, was befriended by an older man and was forced into prostitution aged 16.
Over the next six years, she was raped by over 500 men, starved, beaten, and transported around the country to brothels.
She vowed to keep the abuse a secret – until years later, a conversation with one of her own teenage daughters changed her life. In this extract, Joanne finally manages to escape her evil pimp Gerald…
London, Edgware Road, 1994
This was a mistake nobody had noticed. I am left alone in a flat with money and a handgun. And I have minutes, possibly seconds, to make a decision about what to do next.
My trembling hands loosen the grip on the bankroll. One £20 note unfurls and drifts slowly to the carpet. I know very well what girls have to do to make twenty quid.
This was weeks’ worth of work. Revolting, hideous, souldestroying time spent.
“Think,” I tell myself with urgency. ‘You’ve got to think fast’.
I close my eyes and beg my thoughts to calm. This was the biggest chance to escape I’d ever had, there was no time to waste. I force myself to stand up. All I possess are the clothes on my back. Yet with this cash, I could afford a taxi and a ferry back to Northern Ireland. There was a way out of here alive. So what was I waiting for?
Out of nowhere a memory echoes in my mind. Words spoken by Catriona, one of the prostitutes I was forced to work with in a London sauna.
“Sounds like you’re from a nice middle-class family. So why are you here? Girls like you don’t belong in this world. How did you end up in a place like this?” She was right. How does a girl who used to be top of her class, who once dreamed of being an English teacher, whose graduate mum lived in a lovely big Victorian house, end up as a slave working in brothels?
I didn’t have an answer for Catriona then and I still don’t now. But none of this matters because I face a stark choice: Escape with the money and my life before anyone gets back or leave later, in a body bag.
A golden opportunity
Maddie quickly cashed up that night. I had been busy with customers and Gerald clearly hadn’t been down for a while, so there were bundles of notes from weeks of work. She carefully put it all into a grey hessian bag and handed it to me. “You need to give Chris, I mean Gerald, this,” she said, her eyes full of sympathy. ‘“Are you okay?”
“I’ll be fine,” I told her breezily. Suddenly I was alone again. I dreaded hearing Gerald at the door. At the very least he was going to batter me for being rude to him.
I sat and stared at the hessian bag in my hand. There must have been a few grand in this bag. I breathed deeply to gather my thoughts. I was broken inside, but closed my eyes to channel this anger into courage. Without allowing myself to waste any more time, I grabbed the bag, ran out of the flat and into the street.
It was after midnight, traffic was thinning out on Edgware Road and only a few people were staggering home from a night out.
I had no time to waste. Gerald was on his way and I needed to get out of London asap.
A fare to freedom
In London, you are not supposed to flag down a mini-cab but I had no time to call and pre-book, so I banged on the window of the first cab I saw. He unlocked the door so I could jump in.
“Please take me to Telford,” I said. He moved around his seat to take a good look at me. ‘No way I can take you there. It’s too far…’ he began. “I also can’t pick up in the street. I’ll have to go back to the cab office to pre-book.”
“Look, I need to get away,” I said, struggling to sound calm. “I have the cash on me. Please get the cab moving. We can discuss on the way.” I slumped in the seat to hide from the window.
We arrived at the cabbie office, where a receptionist seemed to take forever to fill out the journey details. It was going to cost £150. ‘Fine,’ I said quickly. ‘I can pay up front.’
A near miss
It was around 1am and the streets were very quiet. The cabbie had to turn back onto Edgware Road to reach the flyover out of London. Then, to my horror, we stopped at traffic lights directly outside Tracey’s flat (Tracey was a girl I had long suspected Gerard of sleeping with).
It was then I peered over the window and froze.
Gerald’s car was parked almost right next to ours. I could see him on the front seat, cuddling a girl with blonde hair. Tracey.
My sense of panic rose to a point I thought I might faint with fear. All Gerald had to do was turn his head slightly to the right and he would see the cab I was in. I
willed the red light to change. Every second felt like an hour.
Finally it turned to green, and we lurched forward. “Please go,” I urged the cabbie. He put his foot down, and away we sped.
My sense of panic rose to a point I thought I might faint with fear
Joanne Phillips