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IN 2001, when she was just 11 years old, Josie Clark was gang-abused and subjected to horrific sexual abuse for five years.
After courageously reporting her abusers, they were convicted in 2007 and 16 years later Josie was awarded compensation.
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But she has never received an apology from those she believes failed to protect her.
Here, Josie, now 32, tells her story exclusively.
I stood there alone in the dark, with no idea where I was, wondering how I would ever get home.
I was only 11 years old and a few minutes earlier I had been in a car full of middle-aged men who had been abandoned because I refused to have sex with the men they had promised me.
I thought they were my friends, but I found out that wasn’t true at all.
It was only years later that I realised that the men, most of whom were Asian, were part of a pedophile ring that targeted vulnerable children like me.
When I was four, I was taken from my family in Blackburn and placed in a home.
By the time I finished primary school, I had visited so many foster homes and children’s homes that I had lost count.
In one of the homes, I was sexually abused at the age of six by an older teenage resident.
I had no place of my own, but what hurt most was that there was no one to love me.
When an older girl from school invited me to go out with some guys she knew, I jumped at the chance.
After driving around Blackburn for a while they bought us a takeaway and dropped us back.
It felt so nice to get some kind attention.
“Same time tomorrow?” they said, and I nodded enthusiastically.
I started meeting the men every afternoon.
They fed me and made me feel special for the first time in my life. They told me I was beautiful.
One of them said he loved me and wanted to marry me.
Finally, I thought, I had a future.
But a few weeks later the men wanted something in return.
I was so naive – I was only 11 and didn’t see this coming.
I was terrified and knew I had to do what they said.
Together with other girls, many of whom I did not know, I was repeatedly sexually abused and assaulted by all kinds of men.
Even the man who wanted to marry me raped me.
I was also given alcohol, cannabis, ecstasy and cocaine until I became addicted to it and dependent on the men.
If I refused to do what they asked, they would beat or threaten me. They said they knew where I lived and where my mother, with whom I had sporadic contact, lived.
One of them had a knife and the others showed me a gun, I had no doubt that they would hurt me.
‘I’ve been sexually abused so many times, it all became a blur’
As the months passed, the gang grew bigger.
Sometimes, after being forced to have sex with men, I would get out of one car and immediately get into another.
Sometimes I spent the night in a gang member’s shabby building.
I was sexually abused and raped so many times that it became a blur.
And with all those medications I barely knew what I was doing.
Yet I was convinced that these men were my friends.
I was brainwashed.
At the orphanage, the staff was desperate.
I refused to say who I was meeting.
Sometimes, when I came home late, I would find my bedroom door locked.
Sometimes my pocket money was stopped.
When I did go to school, I usually used drugs and was eventually expelled at the age of fifteen.
No one could find me a new school and I went to an approved unit for a short period, but my exams were not good.
I fell through the system.
I felt like my teachers never made a serious effort to help me.
For five years I was abused by hundreds of men.
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Some days there were one or two, but other days there were ten to twenty.
Usually I was paired up with another girl and put in a car and then taken to an old tire shop or an apartment where we were raped.
I hated my life, but I was so afraid of the men that I had to keep doing what they said.
When it became too much for me, I refused to cooperate.
But when that happened, they locked me up for hours in a disused factory in Accrington or beat me up badly.
‘I realized it wasn’t my fault – I was abused by adults I trusted’
The turning point came when I managed to escape with my boyfriend at the age of 15. One of the men tried to attack us with an iron bar after my boyfriend refused to have sex with him.
We were sure that we would have been killed if we had not fled, so we told a police officer who knew us from the orphanage.
At first I didn’t say anything about the sexual assaults because I didn’t think they were wrong.
When I finally did, I was shocked at how seriously the police took it.
But even then I didn’t want to get the men into trouble.
They were my friends and I thought I was in love with one of them.
But the police officers told me that I had been manipulated.
Following our report, Operation Engage was launched in Lancashire.
It was the UK’s first major investigation into child sexual exploitation and grooming rings.
In August 2007, two of my abusers were sentenced to five years and eight months in prison. The judge convicted Zulfar Hussain, 46, and Qaiser Naveed, 32, of exploiting vulnerable children in the care of social services.
Hussain admitted to abducting a child, performing sexual acts on the same child and administering ecstasy to the child.
Naveed pleaded guilty to the same crimes.
I was so relieved that they were captured, but I was also afraid of retaliation.
I was moved to a new foster home, far away from the region.
But it felt like a breakup and I was sad about it.
I missed them so much and kept blaming myself.
In my early twenties I found myself in abusive relationships because that was all I knew.
I couldn’t keep a job either, I was so angry.
I suffered from anxiety and panic attacks.
In 2020, at the age of 29, I finally started therapy because I was tired of living a chaotic life.
Slowly but surely I realized it wasn’t my fault and I felt devastated that the adults I trusted had let me down.
I was abused by men who were old enough to be my father and grandfather.
Thanks to therapy, I learned to channel my feelings in a healthy way.
The following year I adopted a Rottweiler whom I named Buddy.
Just wanted to apologize
I always loved animals, but I had never owned one.
I no longer felt so alone.
I also decided it was time to seek legal advice.
Last November, after working with law firm Irwin Mitchell, I received an undisclosed settlement from Blackburn With Darwen Borough Council after they claimed they had failed to protect me.
The council neither admitted liability nor offered an apology.
They may have given me compensation, but what I wanted most was an apology.
I am now in a happy, healthy relationship and through TikTok (@drdoolittlethesecond) I help and encourage other survivors not to suffer in silence.
I will always live with the consequences of the abuse, but I feel like I can finally move on with my life.
I have adopted two more dogs and I hope to become a dog trainer in the future.”
- For confidential support or advice, you can contact the Youth Care department of your municipality, call the police on 101 or the Child Helpline on 0800 1111.
