How I became a sex slave when I was 13

My phone lit up with today’s instructions: “B here in 10. Friends here.” The text was deliberately vague — the man who’d sent it was careful never to leave words that could one day be used against him.

But I knew exactly what was required of me. Worse still, I knew there was no way I could refuse.

I’d turned my back on our comfortable middle class lifestyle, even though I couldn’t have had a more loving mum. We used to do so much together — taking my dog Snowy for long walks, becoming regulars at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and spending hours at the Natural History Museum in London.

Now, I’d started escaping regularly from our three-storey house to spend hours in a squalid crack den.

How could I even begin to tell her about the drugs and the men? How could I possibly make her understand that I now belonged to a man called Mohammed or that I had to do everything he asked?

In 2013, the world knew me only as Girl Three — the third teenage witness in the Old Bailey trial of an Oxford-based paedophile sex and trafficking gang.

As the sordid case unfolded, many must have wondered how any girl could allow herself to be so grotesquely exploited — let alone a child from a loving middle class home. Sometimes I ask myself that, too — but in my heart I know the answers.

Before I was adopted, my life had been violent and chaotic. My birth mother, Terri, was a hopeless junkie and alcoholic who had no interest in me or my six brothers and sisters. My father, Shane, wasn’t much better.

One day, I was walking with two girls when a man approached us. "Do you want to go for a drink?" he asked. The others ignored him, so he addressed me: "What do you reckon, then?" He looked nice — tall, mid-20s, possibly Arabic. I was flattered. We chatted and I gave him my number.

That was the day my life changed.

I’d no idea the "random" meeting with Mohammed Karrar was a process he’d gone through many times with other girls.

Afterwards, he texted me every day until I agreed to a date. I’d never had one before.

He told me to meet him at a flat on a problem estate. I walked into a white haze of smoke that caught at the back of my throat. I didn’t know it, but the flat was a crack den. Mohammed seemed friendly. He asked about me — where I lived, who I lived with, what I did. He never asked my age. We sat around drinking beer and watching music channels on TV. When I started to open up about my background, he pretended to get emotional. I really believed he cared. I was there a couple of hours. He didn’t encourage me to stay and he didn’t press for anything physical. It was months before he persuaded me to try crack. He told me how good it felt and that it was no big deal until finally, I gave in. I was only 13.

The next day, Mohammed’s whole demeanour had changed: He was talking down to me and ordering me around. I didn’t like it. When he passed the crack pipe, he reminded me I owed him around £100 for drugs. To repay him, he said, I’d have to have sex with some men.

Afterwards, I was in shock. Back home, I asked Mum to cut up my dinner into tiny pieces and feed me. Then I sat on her lap and asked her to stroke my hair. I knew I’d crossed a line. I belonged to Mohammed, but I wanted to be a little girl again — I wanted a second chance at childhood.

Ever since, I’ve struggled to understand why I didn’t just walk away. Why didn’t I call the police or tell my mum? For years, I thought it was all my fault.

The truth is that nobody except Mum was doing anything. The police and social services knew something very serious was happening, but claimed nothing could be done because I wouldn’t cooperate. How could I, when Mohammed was making threats against Mum and Snowy?

Just once, I decided to ignore Mohammed’s increasingly threatening calls. Then one of my school friends contacted me to say I was on YouTube.

The gang had made a video that included photos of me and labelled me a crack addict and prostitute; it even gave my address. I went straight round to the crack den and apologised to Mohammed. I knew the video was a warning, he could do far worse if he chose.

Still just 13, I was trapped as surely as if I’d been behind bars. 

(Courtesy of Daily Mail.)