I'm Sammy Woodhouse and I'm a survivor of criminal and sexual exploitation.
I grew up in a small town in the north of England called Rotherham.
I grew up with both parents
and both of my oldest sisters.
As a little girl I have so many great memories.
I loved to go to school, I had lots of friends,
I was bubbly, I was confident,
but my dream and my ambitions was to grow up and be a dancer.
So I started
dancing at just the age of 4 years old and I did that up to the age of 12,
and I would go all around the country
dancing and competing
against other little girls and boys as well.
And I thought I had my whole life mapped out.
There was nothing vulnerable
about me as a child apart from the obvious,
and that was I was just a child.
When I was 14 years old, it was just after my 14th birthday,
I was on my local shop with a friend
and a man started to drive up the street in a silver sports car. He got out of the car and started talking to my friend and she already knew him and I knew his brother a little bit as well, so when he asked us to go for a spin in the car
he didn't feel like a complete stranger. And of course as a child
I didn't recognize
what the dangers and risks could be.
His name was Arshad Hussain,
he was 24 years old,
and what I didn't know at the time but he was known to all services such as police and social care
for being a dangerous criminal.
He asked us to go for a spin in the car and we said, Yeah.
And I had no idea but that was going to be the moment that would change my life forever
and I would go on to be mentally,
sexually,
and physically abused for several years,
and I would also be criminally
exploited
in committing crimes.
Now I started going missing for days, weeks, and months at a time,
and of course my parents wasn't happy about this, and just within a few days they reported
my new boyfriend,
of what I thought at the time, to the police.
The police came out and said that I was making a lifestyle choice and there was nothing that they could do about it.
But I was living in hotels,
in B and Bs,
in his friends'
houses, and even in his family home at times as well, and I was missing out on a lot of school, so I missed out on about 9 months of my education.
And as a child I was never treated
as a victim.
I was treated as somebody that was his mistress,
his girlfriend, and somebody that was a part of his gang rather than somebody that was a victim to it.
When I was 14 and made pregnant
I was forced to have an abortion,
which is something that I didn't want to do. And of course I was so young, I was just a baby myself.
And I remember telling my mum and she said, you know, this just doesn't make sense,
how can a baby have a baby?
And
the reason why I didn't want to have an abortion
is because I felt like I was murdering
my child.
And
he told me before the abortion
that he would either punch me in the stomach or throw me down a flight of stairs so I would miscarriage.
But then he also gave me something, what was called castor oil, and he said if I was to sit in a hot bath
and to drink that I would lose a baby, it would be peaceful and everything could go back to normal.
And he told me that if he was to go to prison,
especially for me, that his family and friends would blame me, I won't be safe, and he wouldn't be able to protect me. So I went through with the abortion.
When I met him I was only 14 years old
and he started to groom me.
And I always say that grooming is the most dangerous of crimes for two reasons.
1, because it's a silent crime and it happens without you even knowing it's happening,
and 2, it can also be an enjoyable crime.
So first of all he came into my world and he found out everything
there was to know about me,
who I was, who my friends were, my family,
what music I liked, what kind of movies I liked as well, what school I went to,
and it seems we had so much in common because he liked all the same things that I did,
and all his friends seemed to know my friends as well. So I never saw him as a perpetrator,
as a sex offender,
I saw him as someone that was my boyfriend.
Because I was going missing all the time for days, weeks, and even several months at a time, my parents placed me onto a section 20
so I was placed into
foster care but they had full parental rights.
And I remember the first time when I got placed into a foster home
and I cry myself to sleep
and
Orchard
phoned me and he said, don't worry, tomorrow I'm going to come and get you.
So the next day he and a woman came to the foster placement
and I walked down the stairs with all my bags and I said I was going to go for a walk,
and I got into the car and I left and then I became a missing person again.
Now I was missing all the time from home and I was often
found by police, but the only times I was returned is when I was missing
for large periods of time.
In total I was in 3 different foster placements
and when my parents thought that they were putting me into care to keep me safe
that plan actually backfired
and the authorities said that he could have full access to me as long as he picked me up from the top of the street and I was back to the foster placement
by 10 o'clock.
And they also wanted me to spend some more time in school.
So then I started going back to school but it was on a part time table.
Now
my whole world started to change
and he started to break down all the different relationships in my life, whether that be with parents,
with my sisters, with friends.
So it just came to the point where I was just arguing and fighting with absolutely everybody.
And that was very clever on how we did that because
on the times when I needed to reach out to someone
it made it very difficult to be able to do that.
But there was many occasions when I tried to leave,
there was an occasion where he dragged me by my hair into the car, he started speeding to the top of the street,
and he was saying that if he couldn't have me no one else could, and he drove through 2 parked cars and into a church wall.
And at that point I was pregnant with my second child.
I got rushed into hospital
and
luckily my son was okay, was safe and well,
and I went back to the foster placement.
But there was another occasion where again he was saying that he was going to kill me,
and we was in the car and he started speeding
towards
the end of a hilltop that overlooks Rotherham.
And he slammed the brakes on right at the edge
and he got me out of the car and he hung me over the edge and said that he was gonna chuck me off.
And I was that scared, I wet myself.
And then he put me into the back of the car and had sex with me so nothing had happened.
And I remember
just laying there
and I just felt like I was a dead body on a slab,
and I had this constant pain there, you know, like in my chest, like all the time, and I knew it was from him.
I knew I had to get away from him. I just couldn't
I just couldn't
picture a way of how to do that because I knew that there was people working for him, you know, such as police
and other people.
And as silly as this sounds,
I knew I think at the time that my mum and dad had helped me, but I didn't want to hear the words of we told you so.
And it was just so hard to try and process
absolutely everything what was happening.
And
I started to really shut down emotionally as well, and What
I wanted professionals and other people to see is, you know, when I was this child that was being angry and lashing out and screaming and shouting,
there was actually just a little girl underneath all that
that was being abused,
raped,
beaten,
and had no one to turn to.
And even though I was so young and of course I shouldn't have been having a baby in the first place,
I think me getting pregnant again is something that saved me and I always say that my son was sent as an angel because if it wasn't for him I'd probably
be dead or in prison.
I was committing crimes that he was getting me to do, and I was also becoming really suicidal.
He got locked up when
my
son was just about to be born,
And that was really fortunate for me because it gave me that gap to be able to go home, to build relationships
with my family again,
and be able to try and break out of the exploitation.
And I gave birth to my son just after my 16th birthday whilst he was in prison,
and in time I was able to cut off contact.
Now when my son was a couple of months old I was in Rotherham Town Centre doing some shopping.
He'd just come out of prison and I bumped into him,
and he grabbed me by the throat and tried to throw me over the top floor balcony in the shopping center.
2 men that he was with dragged him off but he started screaming and shouting, he was being really racist towards my son.
He was saying that he was gonna set us on fire and watch us burn, and he kicked over my son's push chair whilst he was sat inside it.
So I grabbed the push chair and I started running, and I pushed my son into a phone box.
And I remember phoning my sister and she could hear everything, what was going on, and he chased me as well and he was spitting in my face.
And again people dragged him away.
And I remember going
on record with the police at that time, and I think for my parents that must have been a real moment because for 2 years they've been trying to get me to do official statements.
Now for the first
period of time that I knew him I would always deny things and try and defend him, but then once I went into care
I was open with professionals because they were allowing it and they said that he wouldn't be prosecuted,
so I didn't need to lie and hide things anymore.
But I went on record with the police which was a complete waste of time.
Even though there was CCTV,
there was witnesses, and my statement, and of course DNA from my son,
They didn't even go and question him.
In fact the police officer turned around and said, well he's got every right to do that because you've stopped him from seeing his son.
I then went to
court and got a private court order so he couldn't come near me because professionals
weren't doing what they should have been doing in helping keeping me safe.
And,
he started coming to my flat, he was making a lot of threats
and I ended up having to move back home with my family.
And I had to cut pretty much everybody off in my life because it was targeting everybody, whether it be my family, my friends.
So I pretty much just hid away for a really long time and just tried to get on with life as the best I could.
I've never had any therapy,
you know, to process things and to be able to deal with my emotions, and I always say that if I would have had therapy at that time, you know, when I was 16 to help me process what had happened.
My life could have been very differently,
but unfortunately that didn't happen.
So after my exploitation
life
was at times really difficult for me and as well for me too because I had not been able to process things and as well through other things that had been going on in my life as well.
And
I became very suicidal
at times, there was times when I took tablets, I drank bleach, slit my wrists, tried hanging myself,
thankfully none of that worked.
But I still went through life,
not processing
what had happened to me.
And I reached out to services
for help and they said that I wasn't severe enough,
and I was severe enough to be helped because of how suicidal
I was. I didn't have, at that point, any support around me because I was no longer in contact with family either.
So I felt like I was really struggling with things and on my own.
After my exploitation,
I really struggled with a lot of things in life, and I think that was because I'd never come to terms with the fact that I was a victim of exploitation.
I always saw this man,
for being my boyfriend, and we were just in a violent relationship.
It wasn't until I got to about 27 years old where I started to come to terms
with the fact that I was a victim in all of this. And I started working with professionals and they started to help me break down, you know, what had actually happened to me in my life.
But I was still really struggling with services and getting support for me and my son,
and I contacted
the police with the help of a professional
and the police come out to see me. Now I recognize the police officer straight away from when I was 14 years old, when I was in foster care, but also from other incidents in my life as well.
I started working with professionals
and I was really frustrated though with how some people in the services
were treating me and my son and I didn't feel supported.
But professionals asked me if I would be willing to speak to the police about what had happened to me as a child and I agreed.
And the police officer came out and I actually recognized her from when I was a child as well, and I asked her to go away to look what evidence there would be to support me,
and she came back with a male officer.
Now I decided
to record
both those police officers on my mobile phone because I didn't trust them,
and I was right in doing so. So when I asked them what evidence I had, they said that they could only find one piece of evidence and that was a missing person's report.
I said, well, I have DNA evidence from my son, which of course could prove that he was conceived underage.
They said that they didn't want to use his DNA.
I asked about my safety. They said they couldn't watch me all the time. So even though they wasn't saying that they didn't want to,
deal with it, They just always felt like there was,
you know, a barrier
to to things that I was asking.
I decided because I didn't trust the police not to take it further at that time because I didn't feel supported with the lack of evidence that they said
there was.
So I decided
to get a solicitor
and gather my own evidence.
I got police records, social care files,
medical records, and I also had the tape recording of the police officers.
I then contacted
a journalist at The Times newspaper called Andrew Norfolk.
I shared my story with him. I gave him all my evidence,
and in August 2013,
he published my story.
Now when I contacted
Andrew, I'll be honest,
I had no idea really what I was getting myself in for, and I think I contacted
him just out of sheer desperation.
I just felt
like I had nowhere to go,
and at that point I was suicidal
in my life as well. I tried to kill myself,
I was on medication,
and I was involved with the Mental Health Act as well.
So what I learned was that other professionals and a survivor had also come forward with their evidence
before me, but unfortunately
they were ignored.
Now when my story went to print, I thought I was gonna get ignored as well.
Fortunately,
I didn't, but what I was able to do with the amount of evidence that I had, I was able to name people. So I named my rapist, Orsha Rasame,
I named the then deputy leader of Rotherham Council and Labour politician, Jahangir Akhtar,
and I also named a police officer, PC Ali, for his involvement in a no prosecution deal as well.
And that triggered the
opening of all the criminal investigations
in South Yorkshire,
which is currently the biggest criminal investigation
in regards to child abuse
in our history,
but it also commissioned the Alexis Jay report
which went on to show 1400
children
had been groomed,
abused,
raped, trafficked,
tortured,
and some even murdered,
and the police turned a blind eye to it.
And
the majority
of the perpetrators were Pakistani Muslim men,
and majority of the victims
were white female non religious children.
So it was said they was afraid of being called racist or Islamophobic.
It's been 11 years now since my story were published
and 10 years since the election's jury report were published.
And
at times I feel we have come such a long way because when we look back to 11 years ago, there wasn't even conversations
anywhere within our services or our government
about children
that were victims of exploitation,
but I still feel that we have such a long way to go.
Now
in those 11 years, I've worked with media all over the world to raise awareness, to try and educate the public about what's happening.
I've also worked with police forces,
social care, foster carers,
schools to try and educate them and give them a better understanding from a victim's
point of view, but I've also worked with government to change policy
and law.
But I feel that
even after all the exposures that not only I've done but other people have done, because exposing this was a collective of lots of different people,
I feel that we still
aren't doing enough for children.
They are children still being criminalized,
still being blamed.
As a survivor
that has a child through this,
I had to fight through the courts in trying to change a law to ensure that rapists
can't have access to our children.
There are still thousands of survivors
left with criminal records
because we were criminalized as children, the perpetrators wasn't.
There's
survivors like myself that had children from our abuse,
that have had to fight in courts or against professionals
because rapists
can apply through our courts and have contact and custody
to our children.
So there's work that I'm trying to do around children born from rape, but children born from rape
still don't have a voice within law.
There's still no government research into the needs of mothers and children born from rape. Professionals
still have not been trained.
There's no support services that are focusing
on this. So there's still so much work to be done,
and there's still thousands
of children in our country being failed.
I decided
to write a book about my experiences,
and the reason why I wanted to do that is because I wanted, again, to raise awareness but to educate people.
So at the end of my book I speak a lot about spotting the signs,
if you are a parent, who you can report to or what kind of evidence and information you can gather. And I think it's really important that we educate people, as many people as possible,
about what grooming is, you know, how we can spot it, who we can report it to, and how we can support victims of abuse
because there's still so many people that aren't being supported improperly.
I'm Sammy Wood Woodhouse and I'm a survivor of criminal and sexual exploitation.
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