A woman who claims she was drugged and raped by a West London grooming gang, then dumped naked in a park, has broken her silence. The woman, who we are calling Amy, told MyLondon she was lured to a ‘raping house’ by an older girl after becoming homeless as a teenager, kickstarting abuse from a group of men who nearly killed her then tried to snatch her back from hospital.
Now in her 40s, Amy believes her alleged abusers were linked to another group of men she encountered years earlier in a flat above a chip shop less than a mile away. There, she claims, men assaulted girls as young as 11, and attempted to molest her aged 13. Amy provided no evidence of a link between the two groups, other than their ethnicity.
After struggling with her mental health for more than two decades, Amy says media attention on grooming gangs in Northern England, including the Three Girls BBC drama, helped her realise her experiences growing up in London in the 1990s were not normal. After keeping the details of the alleged abuse secret for years, now she wants people to know the truth.
Warning: This report contains distressing details of sexual abuse. If you have been affected by anything in this article, you can contact The Maggie Oliver Foundation here.
“I hid this all from my family,” Amy said, “Even when I went into the hospital, I didn’t talk about it at first because who would believe me? Who’s believing me? And now years later…it’s coming out that these things are true.
“I never felt like I was a victim. I felt like it was all my fault, that I deserved it… I blamed myself rather than blaming the people that done that to me.
“It was the innocence that they took away from me. They took away my virginity. They took away everything that made me who I was, do you know what I mean? I never had a chance.”
Due to the historic nature of the allegations, MyLondon could not verify everything in Amy’s story. We have also noted where evidence is unclear or missing.
The chippy
Amy said she had a “very good” early childhood, with loving and supportive parents, but was “severely bullied” at primary school. In secondary school, she started bunking off with a girl, who were are calling Sarah, who was two years older and, according to Amy, living in a nearby children’s home. We have not named the home to protect her identity.
Amy said she could remember a time when she was missing and Sarah got her to dye her hair in the toilets of a London Underground station so police would not find her, remembering both the colour, a specific brand of dye, and the station.
Sarah later took her to a restaurant “everyone knew” about, where Amy claims older men gave her free chips from behind the counter. Next door an off-license would also give out alcohol exclusively to girls without asking for identification, she says.
But the first and last time Amy joined Sarah by heading upstairs to a flat above the chippy, Amy claims she entered a room where young girls were “off their heads” on alcohol “having sex” with older South Asian men that she referred to as “Uncle”.
Amy recalled watching a girl that appeared as young as 11-years-old, sitting on the lap of a man as he sexually assaulted her, while other girls “had sex” on pillows that were strewn across the floor. “She just didn’t flinch, like she didn’t move,” said Amy, “It was all laid back.”
Asked what the men allegedly did to her, Amy said: “They were trying to touch me. And I kept saying to them, ‘What are you doing? What are you doing?’ And they kept saying, ‘Oh, drink, drink, drink, drink, drink.’
“There was one sitting… on the floor and he (was) trying to touch me. I was like, ‘No, no, no.’ And they kept (saying) take the ‘drink, drink’. And then they left to go somewhere just outside or what-not. So, I poured the drink into a big massive plant pot that was there.
“Then I said, ‘Oh, I need to go to the toilet.’ And then I noticed there was a window. And what it was, it had… a lock on it where they had tried to (make it) so there was no escape for you, but I broke the lock that was on that window to get out.”
Amy said she went feet first out the window, ran down a set of stairs, and entered the nearest telephone box to call police, who she claims picked her up in a car and asked her to point out the flat where she reported being attacked.
After removing a group of around six men from the property, Amy claims police drove her home and never contacted her again. We asked the Met Police if they had ever investigated or arrested men from above the chip shop, but they did not identify any records.
By visiting the property where the alleged abuse took place, MyLondon confirmed the location of the exit window, Amy’s route to the stairs, and a nearby old phone box. Neighbours and shopkeepers were too new in the area to recall events from nearly 40 years ago.
MyLondon also spoke to Amy’s mum, who backed up her missing episodes around this time, and claimed she could remember Amy being brought home by police, when she says she told her Sarah had taken her to a flat above a chip shop where she escaped from the bathroom window after South Asian men allegedly plied girls with substances and tried to give her alcohol.
“She did say to me something about (a chip shop) or something on (the road) and something or other at the back, that place she climbed out the window because of a load of Indians or something or other,” claimed Amy’s mum.
“The police brought her back that day… You should have seen her. They came to the door and said ‘Is that yours?’ They didn’t say ‘Is this your daughter?’ They said ‘Does that belong to you?’ And I looked and I went ‘What?’, because the state she was in, she was filthy. Filthy and she was in her bare feet. And I said ‘I think it is’, but I wasn’t actually quite sure because of the state (she was in).
“A lot has happened with (Amy)… some of the stuff… she went to tell me, but I think she stopped because she was ashamed. I think she was ashamed to tell me because of the way she was brought up.”
The house
In the months that followed, Amy says her relationship with her mum deteriorated and became “volatile”, to the point where her mum wrote a letter for Amy to take to the local authority asking to house her. Amy’s mum recalled becoming depressed with the amount of house work she had to do, and claimed she could specifically remember writing this letter.
But Amy alleged: “(The council) did not help me. They told me to go back to my mum’s, which I could not do. So for a very long time I was homeless on the streets. I slept in doorways. I slept in parks by myself. I was assaulted by men on the street.
“I then would go back to (the) council. I even slept outside the doorway of (the) council when the work people came in. They kept telling me to go home. Not once did they make contact with social services for my safety.”
During this time Amy says she reconnected with Sarah, who she claims led her to the house where she would spend a prolonged period of time under the rule of men who allegedly treated Amy, Sarah and another unnamed girl as “pieces of meat”.
There Amy claims she was injected with heroin, forced to smoke crack cocaine, and spiked with ketamine, a sedative drug that became popular at London squat raves during the 1990s.
Housebound for long periods, Amy claims she was washed once a day in a sink by an older man and repeatedly gang-raped by South Asian men of all ages who were invited into the house from the ground floor by a middle-aged South Asian woman she knew as “Lady”.
She told MyLondon: “There was (Sarah). There was me in the other room, middle room, and I believe there was a third room (because) I could hear a girl crying in there, but I never physically saw her… because we weren’t allowed to basically see each other.
“(Sarah) used to come in and talk to me like she was my friend, but as I said, she was allowed to come and go as she pleased because she was compliant. But I ain’t so compliant. This went on for about three years (then) I was then found naked in (a) park with no clothes, no nothing… I was so drugged up.”
Asked why she thinks the men allegedly left her there, Amy said: “I believe that was because they drugged me up so much that they thought I was basically dead.”
Amy claims she was taken from the park by police to a nearby hospital where she had her stomach pumped and tested positive for large amounts of drugs and sexually transmitted infections. She also claims the hospital found her insides scarred.
Under severe mental stress, Amy says she attacked a police officer and was transferred to a psychiatric ward where she claims a security guard stopped an attempted abduction by her alleged abusers when they appeared outside the hospital in a red sports car.
Remembering the same period, Amy’s mum told us she “didn’t recognise her” own daughter, and consented to her being sectioned under the Mental Health Act after the hospital told her she had attempted suicide.
Amy also shared the first name of another girl on the ward, who she believed had been abused by the same men and later took her own life. MyLondon could not verify the girl’s death because Amy only remembered her first name.
When we asked if Amy had disclosed any abuse at this time, Amy’s mum remembered: “She said, ‘I can’t tell you, mum’. She said ‘It’s disgusting. It’s disgusting’. She said, ‘I wouldn’t want to put you through what I went through’.”
Amy says she was treated with psychiatric drugs and released under the care of the council. In the years since, Amy says she has been through a cycle of abusive relationships, homelessness, and in-patient mental health treatment. After giving birth to a child in her 20s, Amy says she saw Sarah again, by then a mother to multiple children and still addicted to drugs and alcohol.
A source with knowledge of Sarah’s life told MyLondon that she went missing at age 15 and spent time living above a halal shop in the local area. The source also volunteered an allegation that Sarah was “the one for the girls and the coke” and that she had a child with an older South Asian man – though it is unclear whether this relationship was ever illegal.
Asked how she feels about Sarah now, Amy said: “I believe that she was groomed to be like that. And she was made to… bring girls there because she was young herself. She didn’t know any different.”
Amy was unable to provide the identities of her alleged abusers beyond a description of South Asian, but she did show us what she believes to be the location of the house where she claims she was raped and imprisoned. We were unable to verify if Amy remembered the correct property.
When we spoke to a neighbouring landlord, he confirmed a man and woman lived at the property during the period in question, but did not think they were abusing children. Another neighbour, who had lived opposite the property for 40 years, said he could not remember noticing anything suspicious happening there in the 1990s.
We checked electoral rolls for three specific addresses given to us during our investigation. Beyond the occupants who roughly matched the descriptions from Amy and another source, we found nothing significant in the public record about the named occupants to support Amy’s claims.
However, we did find a local newspaper report from the correct period, detailing two attempted abductions of young schoolgirls by an Asian man who tried to take the victims to the same road where Amy named the chip shop. Based on archives, it is unclear if police ever caught the perpetrator.
‘We were not happy with it’
Amy believes police knew what was allegedly happening, so MyLondon spoke to a retired Met Police detective with intimate knowledge of the area. Though he was unaware of any ‘grooming gangs’ or child sexual exploitation during the time period as a police constable, he remembered feeling unhappy about the girls who frequently went missing from children’s homes.
“They would walk out two to three days at a time,” the former officer told us, “Staff could not lay a hand on them. Most of them were girls. They would not tell us what they were doing. We often wondered what they were doing, but the extent of our involvement was giving them a lift home.
“Inevitably the girls would go back (out of the home). To be honest, we would not query what they were doing. In essence they would not tell us. Staff were clueless. Whether they were being exploited or groomed, or staying with legitimate boyfriends.
“It was something we were aware of, but not something we felt we could do practically. We certainly did not have the training. As long as they came back safe and well and nothing happened to them. As I understand it, as far as staff were concerned, as long as they came back fit and well and were safe.
“It may have been going on, but (not) like the rest of the country (Rochdale and Rotherham etc), it was not something fed into us and kicked into the long grass, that I was aware of anyway.
“It’s not something I came across, that’s not to say it was not there. With my contacts in (the area), if it was alleged as elsewhere, with not taking action, saying girls were ‘asking for it’, that as I am aware was never a discussion.
“The only thing closest to it was the missing girls who went missing and came back after two to three days. We were not happy with it, but felt there was nothing we could do about it. They came back not battered and bruised, and then went back off again.
“They did not want to talk to us. They did not want to talk to hospital staff. They were not doing it out of fear, they were doing it because they did not want their activities curtailed.
“I do not recall anyone making those allegations. (Police in the area) were quite fond of their manor. I think something would have been done about it.”
‘I am forgotten’
Asked what she thought of the 2010 cut off point for the Met Police’s review of 9,000 child sexual exploitation cases, Amy said: “I think that’s disgusting. It’s absolutely disgusting. That’s not helping me emotionally. That’s not bringing to light how serious this is.
“We are going to be classed as the missing children. If they review it to 2010, not to (the 1990s), I am forgotten. I am nothing now. It’s generational groups carrying it on. How did it start? Who is carrying it on?
“I feel worthless. I feel I do not exist in a big world. They took my childhood. They took all of my life. (The police) can solve cases from 60 years ago. Why are they not searching everything, every child? Why can’t I get what they get?”
MyLondon has read a long email written by Amy to her local authority’s insurance department in 2011, when she described being made homeless at 16; taking crack and selling sex near a London railway station at 17; and being sectioned by police. When we asked Amy why the dates did not appear to neatly align with her claims to us, she said her memory of timings has been affected by trauma, drugs, and alcohol.
We also read a subsequent email exchange in which a senior council official agreed to make a £400 payment to Amy after the local authority lost her housing file. Amy still blames the council for the abuse she claims she suffered as a result of being made homeless, and has suggested losing her file was part of a cover-up in relation to her housing history.
A spokesperson for the council in question said they could not comment on the accusation that Amy was denied care in the 1990s as their systems do not go that far back, but added they sympathise with the “very difficult circumstances this vulnerable tenant experienced,” and that the payment was made “by way of compensation and are done as a gesture of goodwill and an apology”.
Police have not identified any historic reports, cautions or arrests in connection with the allegations, though it is understood this does not necessarily mean the incidents did not occur. MyLondon understands that cases not included in the national Beaconport review going back to 2010 can still be referred to the Child Sexual Abuse Review Panel for clarification on historic matters.
Got a story? Please email callum.cuddeford@reachplc.com or katherine.gray@reachplc.com
