Читать книгу: «I Know What You Are: Part 2 of 3: The true story of a lonely little girl abused by those she trusted most»

Chapter 5

Rajan was Kurdish. He had only been in England for about six months and although he didn’t speak much English, we managed to communicate quite well. I still felt as though I was going through the break-up of my relationship with Tom, and when Rajan tried to kiss me in the park one day, I felt really uncomfortable. I was shocked too, not because I realised that there was anything wrong with a 27-year-old man trying to kiss a 12-year-old girl, but because it didn’t seem right for him to be doing it in front of little Zoe. Despite having only a very hazy idea of what was okay and what wasn’t in terms of my relationships with other people, I was adamant that I didn’t want to play around while she was with me. In fact, although it was nice to have someone to talk to, I went to the park to play with Zoe and that was all I really wanted to do while I was there.

After that first attempt to kiss me, Rajan kept asking me to go to the park on my own, and when I eventually agreed and went there alone one afternoon, he kissed me and touched me. I didn’t like what he was doing. It made me feel embarrassed and uneasy. Although I didn’t really know anything about Rajan, and I didn’t usually pick up on things that lay below the surface with people, I had a sense that he was like a tightly wound coil and might explode into anger if I said the wrong thing. I don’t suppose I would have noticed it at all if it hadn’t been for the fact that he was a bit like my mum in that respect. He had the same sort of tension inside him and his eyes didn’t always smile when his mouth did. But my experiences at primary school had taught me to be wary of upsetting people in case they shouted at me and I was quite scared of him, which is why I didn’t have the courage to tell him to stop.

In fact, I didn’t really like Rajan. I certainly didn’t feel the same way about him as I had done about Tom. I know it sounds odd to say this, considering the circumstances of my relationship with Tom, but I always felt safe when I was with him. Whereas Rajan had a slightly predatory, boy-approaching-girl attitude towards me that I didn’t like at all.

I looked as young as I was, or even younger, but when I told him, the first time we met, that I was 12 years old he said that was a good thing, because it meant that I was a virgin. I didn’t really know why that would matter to him, until I eventually gave in to his constant pressure and thinly-veiled bullying and went back to his flat one day. I had only ever had anal sex with Tom, so it really was the first time for me. But, for some reason, I didn’t bleed.

Rajan was angry with me afterwards, shouting at me and calling me dirty. Suddenly, he didn’t look handsome at all, with his lips pulled into a thin line of disgust, and he yelled at me, ‘You are not a virgin! Why do you lie to me? How many men did you sleep with?’

I was frightened by his reaction and by his obvious revulsion. He was the second man I had been intimate with and the second man who had been angry with me afterwards. Once again, I thought I had done something wrong and felt as ashamed as if I really had had sex with countless other men, as Rajan seemed to be so convinced I had.

Unfortunately, I was very unworldly – even for a 12-year-old – and easily intimidated, so I didn’t have the confidence to walk away. Instead, I went back to his flat the next time he asked me – which he did a couple of days later, despite his apparent disgust – and on many occasions after that. I didn’t agree to go because having sex with Rajan was a pleasant experience. It never was. In fact, I didn’t ever feel anything, except for a strange sensation that I can only describe as like watching from outside my own body. Perhaps it was an early sign of the dissociation I began to experience much later as a reaction to extreme stress.

It’s an odd feeling being with someone who wants to have sex with you but doesn’t seem to like you. Obviously, I’ve only experienced life from my own perspective as someone with Asperger’s, so I don’t know how someone else would feel in that situation, or if anyone else would keep going back the way I did. Because Rajan wasn’t kind to me in any way. He always insisted that I had to have a shower at his flat before we had sex. And as the water was always cold and he wouldn’t allow me to touch his towels, I had to stand, naked and shivering, afterwards until my body had dripped dry. I wasn’t permitted to eat in his flat either, I assumed for the same reason – because he thought I was dirty and didn’t want me soiling his plates and cutlery. Looking back on it now, I think it wasn’t only me that disgusted him. I think he was disgusted by himself too. That would explain why he was always angry with me after we had had sex, and why he sometimes pushed me around aggressively and said nasty, hurtful things.

It’s unnerving not being able to understand other people’s reactions. There are lots of things very young children can’t make any sense of. But because they don’t yet have any conscious concept of cause and effect or of being able to work things out for themselves, they don’t even try. For someone with autism, however, knowing that you need to be able to read and interpret people’s reactions but not being able to do so is frustrating, and often very disheartening. So I was confused by the contradictory way Rajan treated me: on the one hand, he often said unkind things to me; on the other, I knew that he must care about me, otherwise he wouldn’t want to have sex with me. Ultimately though, because I believed he was my boyfriend, I simply accepted it all and told myself it was stupid to allow any of it to upset me. But even if you manage not to be actively upset by something like that, you can’t do anything about the fact that it creates a little empty hole in your soul.

It was because I believed Rajan and I were in a relationship that I pushed Tom away when he came round to our house one day and tried to kiss me. ‘It wouldn’t be right,’ I told him, probably echoing something I had heard someone say on the TV. ‘I’m going out with someone else now.’ That’s how grown-up I thought I was. I had learned what I knew about ‘love and relationships’ from the TV and magazines and, at the age of 12, I was worried about cheating on one abuser by kissing another.

I don’t know how Rajan justified our relationship to himself. Perhaps he didn’t even bother trying. I do know that his friends objected to it. Although they always spoke their own language in front of me, they gesticulated a lot when they were talking and I could tell the first time they met me that they disapproved and were arguing with him. But Rajan just shrugged his shoulders and said something that made some of them laugh.

I often caught his friends looking at me after that, usually with expressions of contempt, and they used to send him texts telling him to meet them in the park, but always on his own. I know they wanted him to stop seeing me and I resented them and felt hurt at the time. Looking back on it now though, I realise that his friends had a morality Rajan didn’t share.

One day, he told me that he was going to take me to a nightclub. I was incredibly excited. Somehow, I managed to persuade Mum that I needed some new clothes, and her friend Sid offered to take me shopping in town. Sid was quite a bit older than Mum and a genuinely nice man who was always very good to me. I think I told him I had been invited to a party with some friends who were a couple of years older and that I wanted to impress them. He was obviously a bit worried about it and when he quizzed me, quite gently, I admitted that they could be as old as 15 or even 16, which didn’t sound great when I was just 12, but was considerably better than the truth. I don’t think Sid approved, but he still took me shopping.

I really enjoyed spending that day with him. It was just the two of us, and after he had bought me some cropped cargo pants and make-up, he took me out for lunch. We didn’t ever do it again though, because when we got home Mum accused Sid of ‘sniffing around’ me and they had a huge row. ‘Why on earth is he spending money on you? What does he really want from you?’ she shouted at me afterwards, as if it had all been my idea for Sid to take me shopping, when in fact she was the one who had set it up so that she didn’t have to be bothered with it herself. Her reaction was ironic too, when you think that she didn’t ever ask me where I had been or who I had been with when I was having sex with Rajan at his flat.

Mum’s anger ruined what had otherwise been a really nice day for me. And although Sid was very offended by what she was implying, it did make him think about how it might appear to other people. And I suppose it was because he was wary of being labelled a nonce that he never took me out alone again. It was a shame, for both of us – for Sid because he wasn’t able to have children of his own and had obviously enjoyed playing the role of someone’s dad, and for me because I didn’t have a dad and had enjoyed being treated like a daughter.