Hailey's Story--She Was an Eleven-Year-Old Child. He Was Soham Murderer Ian Huntley. This is the Story of How She Survived (5 page)

I don't recall having quality time as a family, trips out to the cinema or going out for a meal together. None of that close bonding family thing happened. I remember, though, when I was about 14, going to Ikea in Leeds with Mum, Dad and my two youngest brothers. And there was one family holiday, when I was about 12, when we went to Disneyland in Florida for two weeks. The two eldest boys stayed at home, so it was Mum, Dad, Hayden, Joshua, Hadleigh and me. It was fun, but I think they would all agree with me that Hayden monumentally ruined the holiday because he was just miserable throughout. He was just at that
difficult age, two years older than me, and I don't think Disneyland was really for him.

The problem was that Hayden smoked and he was suffering withdrawal symptoms. He was dragging his heels and had to be practically hauled on to the plane. I must admit, he was excited to an extent, but then he wanted some cigarettes even though he couldn't smoke in front of my parents. I smoked as well. I don't think Mum knew this, but I believe she knew Hayden did.

Over 18 months, I had saved up money by taking two paper rounds, cleaning my next-door neighbour's car, tidying up and doing little jobs like that. I ended up with
£
500 for the holiday. Hayden had saved up roughly the same, but he had spent it all before we set off.

While we were in America, he kept demanding, ‘Go on, ask that lady for a fag.'

I would snap, ‘No, if you had saved your money, then you would have been able to go and buy some. No, I'm not going.'

Then he would sweet-talk me, ‘Just go and ask her, please.'

‘No, it's bloody cheeky.'

‘No, no, no, it's not. Just go and ask her.'

‘No. I'm not going to. If you wanted fags you should have saved up your money and bought some or brought some with you and stuck them in your bag.'

So Hayden was pretty miserable on that holiday, but
I enjoyed it and took in the whole Disney tour. It was a fond memory. It wasn't worthless or a wasted two weeks. It was better than a day trip to Ikea!

After that, the nearest I got to a close-knit family life was when I would sit in the front room with Mum and Dad and my two youngest brothers to eat my tea or dinner. But then the elder one would go to his bedroom to eat his and the younger one to his bedroom to do the same. It was a bit like the story of the three little piggies, each little pig with its own house to retreat to.

D
ESPITE THIS LACK OF FAMILY COHESION, EVERYONE LIVED IN COMPARATIVE HARMONY WITH ONE ANOTHER.
Although there were no big family fallouts or jealousy or fighting to be number one in the pack, Dad used to get annoyed with Ben, the eldest, because he used to be quite bossy towards me and my younger brothers. I think he thought he was an extra parent.

I remember when I was six years old, two of my brothers were in a bedroom and somehow a mirror got broken. Dad raced up to see what the noise was. Ben and Adam blamed me; they used me as a scapegoat. In anger, I charged through to my room – at this time my bedroom was upstairs – where I had a mattress on the floor, as we were waiting for beds to be delivered.

Dad stormed into my room after me with a look of thunder on his face. He took his slipper off and used it to smack me. It wasn't just like smack, smack and ‘You're done, don't do it again.' I had never been assaulted before, but from the anger in his eyes I knew as he took his slipper off that something sinister was about to happen.

I was in fear, but what could I do at six years old against a grown man? I wanted to cry out that I wasn't responsible for the broken mirror but my voice was almost stifled by my fear. I just managed to cry out, ‘It wasn't me. It wasn't me.'

There was no stopping my dad as, slipper in hand, he manhandled me and violently struck my bottom with the sole. In between each whack, and with perfect timing, he seethed through his clenched teeth, ‘You will not sit down for a month, young lady.'

After he had finished dishing out the punishment, I was left there sobbing. My mother was out at work. I feel that if she had been at home at that particular time she would have taken an eye for an eye as far as my dad's actions were concerned. It wasn't until the following day that I was able to reveal the damage he had caused to me by showing her the purple, telltale welts that were the legacy of his fury.

With a rumbling rage that was barely hidden beneath her apparent calmness, Mum ordered me, ‘Go upstairs.' The next thing I knew, World War III had broken out.
What did Dad expect? I seem to recall there was an apology from him when I came downstairs later on, but I am not totally sure about this, as it is the attack that remains in my mind more than what followed. I do remember my dad looking sheepish after having had the wrath of Mum inflicted upon him.

When she came home, she had picked up on the fact that something had gone on, because there was an atmosphere in the house. I was still upstairs in my bedroom, and the boys were still in theirs. To Mum, I was conspicuous by my absence, so she came upstairs and got out of me what had happened, and that is when it exploded into all hell.

After the carry-on with the slipper, I soon managed to bounce back the Hailey way and set about living the life of a normal little girl. I had experienced the humiliating pain of a punishment slippering for the first time.

But, with anything to do with sex, I was as innocent as a newborn baby. So, when a boy I knew tried to get me to perform a sexual act on him when I was eight years old, it was alien to me. The sex act he tried to coax me into involved him exposing his penis to me.

It all started when he was at my house and my mum was out at work. That day, we were playing hide and seek. The boys' bedrooms had bunk beds and I was hiding underneath one of these, not on the bottom bunk. I was lying on my front and he was on the bunk
above me. Then I poked my head out and he got off the bed and knelt down beside me.

That was when he exposed his penis to me. He was about 13 or 14 at the time. I can't recall if his penis was flaccid or erect. I do know, though, that I was shocked and bewildered. But what was to follow was even more shocking and incomprehensible.

‘Just put this in your mouth,' he said in a matter-
of-fact
tone, as if he was offering me a sweet.

‘What!' I cried in alarm at the idea of this unnatural act. All I knew about the penis was that it was dirty because boys had a wee from it.

He repeatedly said, ‘Just do it, it won't hurt.'

I kept saying, ‘No. No, I don't want to.'

I was still underneath the bunk bed, lying on my front, and he was still kneeling with his penis exposed, just inches from my face. He kept alternately
sweet-talking
and badgering me to suck it. His pestering of me continued for about ten minutes.

Then he said something along the lines of ‘It'll taste fine, because I'll put toothpaste on it.'

In fact, he wanted me to put the toothpaste on his penis. Being an eight-year-old girl, I didn't know the meaning of it all. I just knew it wasn't right. I wasn't even aware that this was a sexual situation. Eventually, he said he would apply the toothpaste himself and he went and got it, obviously believing that this was the only way he could get me to suck his penis.

The next thing I knew, he had the toothpaste tube in his hand and he had started to coat his penis with it. Obviously, either he'd done it before or his warped mind had worked out that little girls would prefer to suck a penis that tasted of toothpaste.

As he rubbed it in, he extolled the virtues of his toothpaste-coated penis. ‘It will taste fine,' he tried to reassure me.

I was still verbally resisting his pleas as I lay on my stomach with my head sticking out, but, although I was a little vulnerable, he didn't get hold of me physically.

At the time I didn't know what masturbation was, but he was masturbating in front of me while continually asking me to suck his penis. He wasn't threatening; there was no air of menace in his voice: it was more like pleading with me.

Then, about 20 minutes after he had first knelt down beside me, it all ended. I think he left the room and I came out from beneath the bunk bed.

Soon afterwards, in the typical way a perpetrator of such crimes acts, he came up to me and asked me not to tell anyone about what had happened. ‘Don't tell your mum or dad or anything,' I think he said.

‘No, I won't,' I replied innocently. And then he left.

He didn't say why I shouldn't tell Mum and I didn't fully understand the implications of what he had just done, other than that it was dirty. When I was older, of course, I realised what had happened:
my innocence had been taken advantage of by this older boy.

It was some seven years after that day before I divulged the details to anyone. I had been asked to attend a meeting with social services, because I was continually leaving home without my parents' permission. Some might have argued at the time that I had invented the whole thing just to get attention, but I could have thought of better ways than raising such an embarrassing issue, especially as it concerned someone close to my family committing an indecent act in front of me.

In view of what I said about the boy to social services, the police had him in for questioning. I couldn't tell you if they came and arrested him, but I do know that he was in the police station with his solicitor and his mother was present during his interview.

When he was interviewed – and this is only what I heard about a year ago – he just started crying and saying, ‘I love Hailey, I would never do anything to hurt her.'

He also sent a text message to Colin about what Huntley did to me. It read: ‘I could have killed him after what he did to Hailey. I would never do anything to hurt her.' And in a text message to me he wrote: ‘You ripped me to pieces when you said that about me.'

I recall that, in a phone conversation in which I spoke to Mum and Dad about it, I said, ‘I'm not going to drag
it through the courts. I can't anyway, but obviously the police have decided what they are going to do and what they are not going to do.'

In some text messages he sent, and in particular the one where he writes about what he will do to Huntley, he went on to write: ‘…she killed me when she said that about me and all this.'

So I put it to him that he should take a lie-detector test. ‘I am going to pay for it. I will sit and have mine done. Come on, you want to prove that you are not lying, prove your innocence or whatever. You come with me, you don't have to speak to me if you don't want to; you can go on your own. I will go and have mine done and you go and have yours done.

‘I've got nothing to prove, you know,' I added. ‘You are saying you want to prove your innocence and you are stating that you never did what you did to me, so go for a lie-detector test.

‘I'll pay for it but, boy, you had better have a damn good memory, because I have got a good memory. Because I have got no reason to lie about what happened and I remember it as if it was yesterday. I can remember details, word for word. I bet you don't, because you are the one that is lying about it.

‘You know whether I am telling the truth or not. How about you?'

And he said to me, ‘I'm not having one of them done. You can't force me to.'

I rejected what he said with, ‘Well, that is guilt over and done with then, but I would still go for one, even if you didn't. I would still be prepared to go for one tomorrow.'

I know a lie-detector test is not like a judge and jury examining a case, but I believe that it can prove whether you are lying or not, so I would be happy to go for one to show that I have not just been fantasising about it all.

In early 2004, I got a number of death threats. The person issuing them also spoke to Colin, saying he was this and he was that, and Colin told him, ‘Well, listen, mate, you are the one that did this and exposed yourself and did this and that to Hailey.'

After that, the idea was never brought up again, because I think my mother probably mentioned it to him and he would have said something like: ‘I am not having one done because I have got nothing to prove.'

I haven't been able to speak with him face-to-face since that conversation, only over the phone or via texts. He had moved away from the area before I had actually left home. As far as I am concerned, the police investigation into my allegation sent a great message of comfort out to any abuser: ‘Go home, son, or go to the pub and get yourself a stiff drink.'

And did the police come and see me over the matter? No. Did they interview me? No. Did social services tell me the outcome of the matter? No. No one did.

All I was told was that, if he had done it, the police would have charged him. That is the same scenario as when I raised the allegations against Ian Huntley, years before he killed to satisfy his evil lust. How many more predators are the police going to let slip through their net?

To say the police have failed me is an
understatement
. In five years' time, or fifty, the truth will come out. I refused to testify against Huntley in court – my feeling was, why should I help the police out when I felt that they hadn't helped me.

I am in full-blown bereavement at being deprived of police help or even sympathy. Justice, may you rest in peace, because you are dead.

A
T
11, I
WAS STILL A DOE-EYED, LONG-HAIRED, SWEET AND INNOCENT PARTY POP GIRL.
I
ENJOYED LIFE AND HAD THE KNACK OF MAKING NEW FRIENDS.
One of these new friends, Katie Webber, was four years older than me. This was a friendship that I would later come to regret, one that led to Huntley's perversions against me.

How this matchless, younger girl–older girl friendship came about was through my elder brother Hayden. He knew Katie's younger brother, James, and I knew James as well. My cousin, another Katie, lived next door to Katie Webber and they were the same age. That connection also helped to bring about the friendship, otherwise I would not have had any reason
to become friends with her. Not that I'm blaming my cousin for what subsequently happened.

My cousin Katie used to ask my mum, ‘Can I take Hailey up town?' and Mum would always say yes. Because she was friends with Katie Webber, this Katie used to come along as well.

Cousin Katie started mixing in different circles, with new friends, which meant that she didn't spend as much time going to places with Katie Webber. That was the start of Katie Webber and I becoming closer, more like big sister and little sister. I was immersed in our friendship, perhaps because I had no sisters.

Now, instead of my cousin Katie, it was Katie Webber calling by and asking my mum, ‘Is it OK if I take Hailey up town shopping?'

Mum used to say, ‘There you go, there's some money for a McDonald's or whatever.'

Katie would buy me a Happy Meal with it and then get some fags with the change. I hadn't begun to smoke then. In a way, this was ideal for my mum, as she didn't have to give her time to me.

Each Saturday from then onwards, Katie used to take me to town and I think she used to enjoy taking me because the change that she had left from my meal supplemented her fag money.

I used to go to Katie's house about every other day, so we saw a lot of each other. I lived at number 3 and Katie lived a short walk away up the road. I used to pass
her house every day when I went to school, so I felt quite comfortable calling in to see her, and my mum was happy for me to go there, even though she kept a close eye on my movements.

One Saturday, with excitement fluttering around in my stomach about going into town with Katie, I quickly got ready and dressed. I think it was about a quarter to twelve when she came to the house and said to Mum, ‘Hiya, Mandy, is it OK if Hailey comes up town with me? We're catching the twelve o'clock bus.'

Mum, of course, said, ‘Yes, that's fine, Katie, as long as she's back by five for her tea. Here's some money for a McDonald's.'

As I'd been in a bit of a rush to get ready, my hair wasn't brushed properly. Mum looked at me in utter shock and, as her eyes opened wider, she screamed, ‘Actually, Hailey, you are not going anywhere like that. Go and brush your hair. Go on, go upstairs and brush your hair.'

Mum didn't want me going out a bit scruffy, and not wanting to make a scene I said to Katie, ‘OK then, I have just got to brush my hair and put my trainers on and then I will be down.'

She said, ‘I will just meet you at my house then. See you then. You do your hair.'

Not wanting to delay things, I replied, ‘All right then, I'll see you in a minute.'

I was rushing and thinking, I've got to get up to town with Katie for a McDonald's and all of the rest of it. I brushed my hair and I got my shoes on and as I hurried out of the house, I called out, ‘See you later, Mum.'

As I rushed out the door, Mum's words trailed off, ‘Don't be late…'

I tore along to Katie's and I remember briefly spotting Mrs Webber in her dressing gown, looking out from the bay window of the semi-detached council house. Just before I disappeared from her view, down the drive to the side of the house, towards the caravan that was parked there in front of a big shed, a large bottle of Pepsi caught my eye. A trivial thing, but that's how clear my recall of that day is.

I suppose my senses were heightened as I was in such a hurry to get into town. Katie's gran lived next door to her, and it was a close-knit community, so I'd felt safe enough walking the short distance to my friend's house by myself. And, anyway, I didn't have anything to fear.

Let me explain about that caravan. Because Katie was only 15 at the time and her boyfriend was 23, her parents didn't agree with the relationship, so she had started living in the caravan at the side of the house. She was having a relationship with Ian Huntley – boyfriend and girlfriend. So, when Katie said she would see me at her house, she actually meant the caravan.

Personally, I believe she was infatuated with Huntley. She would say, ‘Do you mind if I go to the shops, Ian?'
and ‘Can I get you anything? Are you sure? I will only be two minutes. I'll be back. Two minutes, Ian.'

Katie had been with Huntley for about eight months, and at that time, September 1997, I had no reason to feel wary of Huntley. There were no warning signs or anything like that. Little did I know there were allegations against Huntley going back as far as August 1995, when the family of a schoolgirl made an allegation that he had had sex with her. Nor was I aware that in April 1996, after a family reported their concerns to her school, social services became aware of another girl said to be involved with Huntley. The following month two further allegations against Huntley had been reported to social services by the families of other girls. On no occasion was there evidence upon which to prosecute Huntley. They say there is none so blind as those that refuse to see. I say there is none so blind as North East Lincolnshire Social Services and the Humberside Police Force.

As I look back on it, I wonder why no one became suspicious of the goings-on. Had I or anyone else been aware that such a filthy pervert was living in their neighbourhood, perhaps the death of two little girls could have been avoided.

I believe that all sex offenders, and especially those with multiple allegations against them, should be made known to the locality where they live. I am not talking about a one-off charge against someone with no
previous convictions or a single allegation in this sphere of crime. I mean someone like Huntley, who was the subject of a number of allegations.

I had not learned anything about Huntley that would have alerted me to what he was. I had no reason, as an 11-year-old girl, to be wary of him. No one said, ‘This guy likes to have sex with young girls.'

I was never with Katie's parents enough to get to hear what they thought of him. All I knew was that they didn't like the fact that Katie was not going to school. For by then she had left school of her own accord, and she never went back.

Let me describe Katie. She always had her hair long; it was dark brown and halfway down her back, not as long as mine. It was permed into ringlets and she used to gel, spray and mousse it every morning. She wore make-up and she was paranoid about wearing glasses, which she wore for reading. From what I can remember, she lived in tracksuit bottoms, trousers or jeans. I would say she dressed like a chav.

My opinion on Katie living with a man eight years her senior would be like the pot calling the kettle black. Obviously, because of the situation that I am in now, I can't comment without appearing to be condescending. What I can say is that, although she used to hang about with me, a few years younger than her, she was quite mature for her age. So I never questioned that she was seeing a 23-year-old man.

Mind you, she did brag about it. She would shoot her mouth off and say, ‘I get fags and I get beer and if I want this I can have it.'

In Katie's defence, I must add that she would often say that he was always cuddling her and that ‘He looks after me' and ‘He buys me cigarettes.' As I got older I used to think, Just because he buys you cigarettes, it doesn't mean you have to live with him. If I remember correctly, he stopped buying her things; he stopped buying her beer and pizzas and treating her to things like that. That's just what I noticed; it wasn't anything she told me. In fact, everything she was telling me seemed to be the reverse in real life. So, with that in mind, because she said she was happy with him, then maybe she wasn't at all.

For a while, though, I do think she was happy with him.

I recall how they met. Huntley was working for Katie's mum, Jackie, knocking on doors and selling raffle tickets for a child support charity. Sir Christopher Kelly's report, mentioned in the Introduction to this book, suggested that Katie's relationship with Huntley started as early as 1995.

My brother Hayden's friendship with James Webber would be the catalyst for a fateful and accidental meeting between me and the future Soham killer Ian Huntley. And, as I said, no one in the community, as far as I know, raised an eyebrow about him living there in
that caravan with a girl of 15. But he was a walking time bomb, waiting to go off.