But then the light was on and Phil said, "Can we join in?" And Liam said, "Be my guest." None of them asked me. I thought that if I just let him do it, it would be over and I would be able to wait out the long hours until it was safe to go home without arousing my parents' suspicions. I won't say this was rape, though it was statutory rape because of my age, but I was uncomfortable and uncooperative, hating every second of it. I whispered, no, said it wasn't right with his friends there, and asked again to go downstairs. The light went out and Liam started touching me. I left my shirt and underwear on and got into bed next to the man I had trusted, feeling embarrassed, knowing that I wouldn't sleep a wink. He said, "We'll all squeeze in together."Īs the other men got into bed I asked Liam if we could sleep downstairs, but Phil was growing impatient and told us to hurry up because he wanted to sleep, and Liam jumped at his command, hurrying me along. When we reached the room I looked around, confused. I followed them up the stairs, led by Liam. The men said they were tired and that we should go to bed. It was a 1980s bachelor pad, I suppose, though I had never been in one before. There was a black leather sofa, black ash veneer furniture and Athena pictures of semi-naked women. I didn't think Liam would spend three weeks getting to know me, before passing me on to his friends. I never thought it would happen at a local music festival, the first I had ever attended, after days of begging and pleading with my parents. That was what I thought rape was, a man climbing through your window in the night. I felt safe, with my father watching over me. He was determined no rapist would get near us. My father, desperate to protect his family, would stay up all night after barricading the windows. Malcolm Fairley broke into houses during the night and raped women at gunpoint in front of their husbands. The year before, our county had been terrorised by a rapist known as the Fox. Asking me where I wanted to stay was taken as consent to group sex. This is what, he later told me, he took as my consent. I thought he wanted us to spend the night alone together at Simon's, so this was what I chose. (He was also a model and actor and was having a party.) I didn't understand the hidden meaning. Liam asked if I would like to stay at Simon's house where we would "all be together" or go back to the fourth member of the band's bedsit. I said yes and he shuffled me out of the door quickly, followed by the others. Liam asked if I had made the arrangement to stay out. I waited while they circulated for half an hour and then they came over to me. After the concert, the men were on a high, enjoying the attention of their groupies. I didn't drink much of it and certainly wasn't drunk. I wasn't plied with champagne but with cheap vodka. So I arranged my alibi and went to the concert. He also told me that he couldn't believe I was a virgin when I first met him. I would have done anything he asked because I had fallen in love with this man who spoke of grown-up things, who said, "I can't believe you're only 14, you look so much older" - though the photos I gaze at now tell me that I didn't. He suggested I lie to my parents and say I was at a girlfriend's house, so we could "spend the whole night together".
Liam asked me to arrange to stay out the night of the concert. I had been seeing one of them, Liam, for three weeks and had met Phil and Simon once or twice. That night, I watched them on the stage high above me and when they smiled at me, pointed me out and waved, I felt grown-up and glamorous, and important. They were a gang with catchphrases I didn't understand, mostly referring to sex acts, and little hand signals that my best friend and I emulated and giggled over in the playground at lunchtime. Their faces pouted out of photo- graphs in the local paper. They talked about a world I knew nothing of, a glamorous world of recording studios and record contracts. The men, who were about six years older than me, were in a pop band, playing village halls and occasional support slots to bigger bands. But to me, a 14-year-old girl, only 4ft 11in tall, with very limited experience of the world, they were glamour personified. The men who raped me weren't celebrities and they weren't even rich. By the end of the night I had been gang raped in circumstances similar to those alleged by the 17-year-old girl accusing several men, including Premiership footballers, of raping her at the Grosvenor House hotel. In October 1985, I attended a pop concert against my parents' wishes.
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