How one survivor of child sexual exploitation is making a difference

Linda Hartley was abused by an older man at 17. Twenty years later she is training frontline staff to help today’s victims

Linda Hartley was listening to the radio one day when she heard the story of a young girl who had been a victim of child sexual exploitation. “She’d been a witness during a trial and couldn’t leave her home. She still sounded very isolated, having come through it.”

The story and feelings were all too familiar to Hartley, who was a victim herself 20 years previously.

According to Barnado’s, child sexual exploitation can range from seemingly consensual relationships or informal exchanges of sex for accommodation or gifts, through to serious organised crime.

While it is difficult to ascertain the full extent of the problem because it is largely a hidden crime, the number of children and young people using Barnardo’s 24 child sexual exploitation services increased by 22% in 2011-12 to 1,452.

Hartley knew she wanted to help. She conducted some research and came across Northern Care, an organisation dedicated to fighting child sexual exploitation. Northern Care has 11 homes which look after 55 girls, of whom approximately 60% have been victims. Hartley contacted Northern Care and offered her services. From next month, she will help train staff to spot the signs of and understand child sexual exploitation. She will be a guest speaker on a course designed for frontline practitioners who work with young victims. Her story will give staff a firsthand account of how grooming can work and how victims can feel so dependent on perpetrators.

Hartley was 17 when she started a relationship with Pasha, who was 20 years older than her. He was everything that she dreamed of in a man. “He was sophisticated, Persian, erudite, cosmopolitan. He was fantastic and a great guy, and very clever. I felt really safe with him.” she remembers.

Before long, however, he became more possessive, and Hartley, who had moved into a flat with him, felt isolated from her friends and family.

“I was hooked. I was dependent. But something wasn’t right. It was like my life was just off centre. Every time I mentioned going to college, restarting my A-levels, it would create such an argument.”

Hartley was an attractive young woman and was spotted by model scouts. She started travelling abroad for work, but the situation at home deteriorated. Hartley remembers once when she arrived outside the front door, she found herself locked out of the flat.

On other occasions, Pasha turned up with a gun, asked detectives to follow her, threatened that she would end up in a wheelchair and that he would run her over. “It got really nutty. It was non-stop.”

Hartley lived in fear, until one day she found herself locked in the bathroom with a knife, cutting her hand. “I realised I had to get help. I had to do something. This wasn’t me.”

Eventually she managed to break the bond and cut Pasha out of her life. Twenty years later, she has written a book and is open to sharing her experience to help others, something for which Julian Dale-Hutchinson, who oversees learning and development for Northern Care, is grateful.

“For our staff to hear it from the horse’s mouth – for want of a different term – and to understand how that made her feel and how dependent she was on him will help them understand that it’s going to be a really long haul to get our children to exit from this process. There’s nothing more powerful than someone who’s lived it and breathed it.” he said.

Dale-Hutchinson plans to introduce her as a guest speaker on safeguarding courses because of her experience of emotional abuse.

And, now that Hartley has written her story, he is looking at ways to use it in group work. He wants young people to read her story so they can see that there is “life at the end of the tunnel” and that they can break the cycle of exploitation and believe they are worth something.

Hartley, meanwhile, knows only too well the need for this kind of help. She remembers that nothing was available when she was going through her ordeal with Pasha.

“When you’re 17, you’re not making a choice. You don’t have the knowledge. I came from a very comfortable, middle class background but, as an adolescent, I was vulnerable. If you’re at a time in your life when you’re vulnerable, you’re susceptible to all kinds of things.”

She adds, “What’s as big an issue is stopping the girl going back. [The men] are very clever. They know exactly what they’re doing. I used to tell myself that I couldn’t really trust people in authority.

“That’s what impressed me so much about all the care. These people are so dedicated and they understand what the issues are. They are unsung heroes.”