Long before the era of smartphones and social media, the grooming of Girls was taking place
In 2004 she was just 12 years old and a bright, intelligent child, classed as gifted and talented, consistently in the top sets at school, with a lifelong dream of becoming a forensic pathologist.
But her life dramatically spiralled out of control just yards from her school gates when she was approached by a “good-looking guy in his 20s” who offered her cigarettes and asked for her phone number.
She said: “I was very flattered. I was only 12, and I didn't understand that there could be anything wrong. A few days passed and I arranged to meet up with them. It was just conversation, cigarettes, talking... very normal things."
Over a period of months, the gang carefully and methodically built her trust.
In her naivety she thought they were her “friends” but the trap was about to slam shut.
The paedophiles invited her to what she believed would be a normal party with food and alcohol. 🍻
Instead, they took her to a house filled with older men she didn't know.
“I realised very quickly that it wasn't any kind of party that I recognised, I immediately felt that there was something very, very wrong and I wanted to go.
“I was taken into this room and I was told that I needed to make them happy. I realised very, very quickly that I wasn't gonna be leaving this room."
By the time she turned 13 she was caught in a relentless cycle of daily sexual violence and forced drug addiction.
The gang weaponised the trust she had placed in them, using the personal information she had shared to issue chilling threats against her family if she dared to resist.
She was treated as human cargo, being transported in hire cars, forcing her to lie down on the back seat as she was driven up to 250 miles across the country.
She was kept deliberately drugged and drunk so she wouldn't recognise or remember the location of the house where she would be locked in rooms for days on end.
Incredibly, despite Girl One's hellish ordeal she was ignored, dismissed, and gaslit by those supposed to be protecting her.
Missing for weeks at a time from local children's homes, she was repeatedly found by police in the company of adult men.
Instead of questioning why a missing, heavily drugged 13-year-old girl was with men in their 20s and 30s, officers incredibly blamed the child.
“I was told that I was wasting police time,” she says.
“I was labelled a prostitute, I was a bad kid.
“There were incidents where I would turn up at the police station at two or three in the morning with no shoes on, having run away from these men, desperate. Sometimes, with very obvious physical injuries, and nobody did anything. I'd just be put in a cell… and then I'd be taken back to the children's home. Within 24 hours, I was back with those men.”
When she explicitly disclosed the abuse and the county lines-style drug dealing to the authorities, Thames Valley Police recorded that she was a “fantasist” who was “fabricating stories for attention”. ( 😡)
Social services reports led to her being placed on antipsychotic medication, but even when a psychiatrist concluded she was not psychotic but suffering from severe trauma, social workers continued to argue she was just a “bad kid making stuff up.”
utterly convinced this systemic blindness was no accident.
Oxfordshire County Council has since admitted they believe nearly 400 children were targeted in their jurisdiction alone.
She said: “I personally think that the police and social services were corrupt. The gang was grooming us, getting us hooked on drugs, and selling us for sex. Money was changing hands.
“It wouldn't take a genius to believe that maybe there were officers within Thames Valley Police that were also in on it.
“Until they explain to me why they did nothing, the only thing that makes sense to me is coch in 2012, Girl One was in the process of slowly rebuild