Growing up in London, Violet was a loud and confident child who loved dressing up. She lived in a loving home, with plenty of food on the table, and a family who adored her.
‘I was very lucky and privileged. I was loved,’ the 25-year-old tells Metro on a video call from her home.
‘I came from a nice family home. My mum and stepdad were in good careers. We had a good life. I didn’t struggle growing up.’
In short, Violet appeared to be a very contented child – on the surface, at least.
However, as she approached adolescence, the feelings of isolation and awkwardness that Violet had managed to supress for much of her life, started to bubble above the surface – and she began to go off the rails.
Battling with her mental health, Violet soon sought solace in drink and drugs.
‘Mum and my teachers struggled to manage me. I was very badly behaved at school, I was put under the mental health team, there was a lot going on,’ she explains. ‘People would call me “out of control” and “devil child”. I started to feel very isolated.’
When Violet went to secondary school at 11, she found it hard to cope with a newfound freedom.
‘I had a phone and was online. But I was also really vulnerable, because I felt a lot older than I actually was.
‘I was looking for connection, so when I was about 12, I created a Facebook account and posted loads of pictures of myself,’ she explains.
‘I put a bit of makeup on and I got 100 likes and loads of people – both friends and strangers – told me how beautiful I was. It was a rush.’
In the beginning, it was little more than innocent flirting between teenagers, until an older man, who Violet has declined to name, got in touch on BlackBerry Messenger when she was just 13.
‘It was just small talk, no different from how I would talk to other boys at the time. The conversations were quite innocent – just meaningless chat. There was nothing that screamed red flag,’ she remembers.
When the man asked her to go see him one night, Violet didn’t give it much thought. She was going with a friend and felt strong and confident, any potential dangers didn’t cross her mind.
Trigger warning: this article contains experiences of sexual assault
When the girls arrived at the address they’d been given – ‘a really disgusting building’- the man was waiting with some other men. Her friend decided to leave straight away.
‘They had promised me a taxi home, but it was the early hours so I thought it made sense to wait for the cab,’ remembers Violet.
It was a decision that would dramatically change the course of her life – although the teen could have no clue about what would unfold.
Speaking on the BBC documentary Britain’s Forgotten Girls, which investigates how children across the UK are being groomed, trafficked and sexually exploited by organised drug gangs, Violet remembers the horrific moment of being ‘surrounded by men and not knowing what to do.’
‘I just wanted to leave. I thought – the quicker it happens, the quicker I can go home. I was definitely scared,’ she tells the programme.
A number of men raped Violet.
‘I remember how much fear I felt within that moment when I was being touched without consent. My body went into shutdown,’ she says.
‘People think that rape and abuse always needs to be this violent thing, but one of the ways people control you is by making you feel you are in control.
‘For me, I felt like I had a say because I felt grown up and like I was making my own decisions. But expecting a vulnerable person to perform sexual acts, that is not humane. I was 13. No matter how old you are, that behaviour would not have been acceptable, but the fact that I was a child makes it even worse.’
Violet left, distraught and confused, promising herself not to tell anyone.
She messaged the man and told him how angry she was at the way she was treated. He apologised, telling Violet he would come and see her and put things right.
‘I was in bed in my pyjamas getting ready for school the next day. I believed him.’
But when Violet dashed down the stairs to see him, she found someone else waiting in the car, who told her to get in.
‘It felt like there was no way I could say no. I didn’t feel like I had any other option,’ she remembers.
Violet endured another assault.
‘The way I felt after the abuse was horrendous. But at the same time I was terrified of what would happen if anyone found out. I felt unsafe, embarrassed, ashamed and disgusted with what had gone on,’ she tells Metro.
Not knowing where their daughter had gone, her parents had reported Violet missing to the police and a few hours later, she returned home to find her mum and stepdad sitting at the bottom of the stairs, looking distressed.
‘I was in a dissociative state. I went to a drawer and took a knife out. I don’t think I wanted to kill myself. I was just feeling like I was out of control. I didn’t know how to explain what’s happening – it just felt like I was in danger and I needed help,’ she remembers.
Violet was taken in for examination by the police and swabs found multiple men’s DNA inside her body. ‘I didn’t even know any of their names,’ she says.
Her attackers were on the DNA database, and though she does not know much about the police investigation, Violet was told that the perpetrators would be prosecuted for drugs offences rather than rape.
After her assaults, Violet was taken into care against her and her parents’ wishes for her own protection and she spent her teens being moved around homes across the country, sometimes hundreds of miles away.
‘I had gone from a middle-class home with a good education, lots of love and care, to going into institutions. The contrast was crazy,’ Violet tells Metro.
‘I went from one situation where I was unsafe to another where I was equally unsafe.
‘I never imagined this life for myself. I had gone from having a family, friends, hobbies to all of a sudden being moved to a semi-secure unit on the other side of the country.’
Men continued to groom and abuse Violet while she was in care.
‘I just wanted connection, and I wanted validation, and I wanted comfort. Instead, I was exploited,’ she explains.
The other forgotten girls
The Forgotten Girls documentary, which is available to watch on the BBC iPlayer from today, also tells the story of Christine, from Coventry, who was groomed by an older man through a group chat and went on to endure more than eight years of sexual and physical abuse.
They also speak toAnnie, from London, who was raped by three older boys when she was 14. They took photographs of her and threatened to distribute them unless she had sex with other people. She was subsequently raped countless times, and the images were ultimately shared online anyway.
Another victim, Holly, from Manchester, explains how she was sexually assaulted from the age of 12 by multiple men linked to a criminal drugs gang and forced to transport drugs around the country.
‘That is a common thing among women who are abused – they just want protection. It happens so quickly that you don’t really understand it. You’re too young to process it all.’
When she was 18, Violet moved into a flat on her own and she is now in 12-step recovery, having been sober for more than two years.
She credits her family for fighting her corner non-stop, working with authorities and services to get the support she needed.
‘If I didn’t have the family I did, I would be in a very different situation now,’ she remembers.
Now working in reproductive health, Violet says it’s a role that has been incredibly healing. She loves helping others, and is now happy, in a stable relationship and looking forward to the future.
Violet explains that she is sharing her story as she wants the authorities to do more to protect children, give better education in primary school, and to give a voice to the rampant misogyny that sees one in six children sexually abused and one in four women raped or assaulted since the age of 16.
‘It’s ridiculous to think that conversations about sexual exploitation aren’t happening in schools,’ she says. ‘We have really timid sex education when you know a lot of children in primary school are being sexually abused. These things shouldn’t be taboo.
‘I want people to understand that sexual exploitation comes in many different forms. Anybody can be exploited. It is not limited to class, gender, ethnicity or religion. You can be a confident, strong individual, and still be a victim of abuse.
‘I feel very proud of how well I’ve done and the life I’ve got now because it’s taken a lot of hard work,’ Violet adds. ‘I am in this new chapter of healing now, and I am looking forward to the future, whatever it may hold.’
Britain’s Forgotten Girls is available on iPlayer or BBC Two from 9pm today
Posts
0 Comments