THE SKY WAS BABY BLUE WITH JUST A HINT OF WISPY CLOUD, THERE WAS A WARM BREEZE AND THE LAST RAYS OF THE SUMMER SUN WERE SHINING BRIGHTLY. A perfect day for a trip into town, filled with excitement for a young girl: a mixture of McDonald’s and window shopping.
I was wearing my brother’s tracksuit bottoms, tied around the waist with a cord-type pull fastener, a T-shirt with a fleecy jumper on top of it and a tracksuit top over that, and Nike trainers.
As I walked up the drive to the caravan, a thrill surged within me at what lay ahead that day. I expected Katie to be waiting for me inside, and I was about to knock on the door when I spotted Huntley through the caravan window, sitting alone at the table. As I stood there momentarily, waiting for Katie to come out, I caught the faintest aroma of freshly cut grass, carried on the gentle remnants of the breeze.
I was pulled out of my world of serenity by Huntley’s soft voice drifting through the wafer-thin door. ‘Come in,’ he called out, as he motioned with his arm from behind the picture-postcard window for me to enter.
As I went in he greeted me warmly, ‘Hi.’
‘Is Katie here?’ I asked.
Huntley was no stranger to me; we had previously met and spoken. I had no idea of his past, and no one had told me to mind him. To me, he was Katie Webber’s boyfriend. But, to fill out the picture, it was only because I had won my mum’s trust about my flourishing friendship with Katie that I was allowed to call and see her in the caravan she shared with her boyfriend.
‘No, she’s just nipped out to the shop,’ Huntley casually replied to my question. ‘She’ll only be ten or fifteen minutes or so.’
Having known Huntley for a few months, and because he was known to my mum and dad, I was completely at ease as I entered the chintzy caravan to wait for my friend. All the same, I tried to cover my awkward feeling of self-consciousness at finding Katie wasn’t there by saying, ‘Oh, I was supposed to go to town with her today. I don’t know what’s happened there then. It must be confusion or crossed wires.’
What I can’t fully work out, when I look back, is why didn’t Katie return home directly from my place? Because, when she had called by earlier and I wasn’t ready, she said we’d meet at the caravan. And how could Huntley be so certain that she would be back in such a short time as he said, since, as far as he knew, Katie had planned to be in town all afternoon with me. Surely she had told him that this was what we were doing, or had she just told him she was popping out for a short while? If so, why would she have told him a lie like this?
After a while the subject changed and Huntley rather cleverly made a comment that was his key to the door into a far deeper conversation. ‘Oh well, you’re not allowed to leave the street on your own, are you?’ he said.
Without giving a moment’s heed to any ulterior motive behind his question, I replied, ‘No.’
‘Oh, well, why can’t you leave the street on your own then?’ he pressed me.
I had no reason to be cautious over his motive for asking these questions as I replied, ‘Because my mum says that I am not allowed to,’ quickly adding, ‘I think I maybe got it wrong. I can only leave the street with an adult.’
Little did I realise from Huntley’s calm demeanour what he had in store for me; nothing crossed my 11-year-old mind. The table, which could be folded down into a bed, had pornographic magazines fanned out on it; the pages were spread open, revealing naked models that Huntley had clearly been ogling.
During the course of this conversation that Huntley had initiated, he emphasised how careful my mum was about me. ‘Your mum’s really strict; she doesn’t let you out of the street, does she?’
‘Yeah, because I want to go and buy sweets,’ I innocently replied.
Already Huntley was aware of how my mum kept a watchful eye on me. She strictly supervised my movements and I might as well have been tagged – that’s how much I was monitored.
The malevolent mind of this man was now steering the conversation his way as he said soothingly, ‘Your mum’s really strict, just like mine was. I was never allowed to do anything.’
We were still talking about my leaving the street when Huntley orchestrated a question that would turn the metaphorical key already in the door of innocence. He took his eyes off the girlie magazines, looked straight at me with his deep, fiery eyes and out of the blue asked, ‘What’s the most daring thing you’ve done with a boy?’
That was the first time I felt uncomfortable and a bit out of place in his presence. In a way, looking back on it, he dared me to reveal my innermost thoughts. It was as if he was challenging all the boundaries with his invitation to reveal to him what little I could about my experiences with boys.
With wide-eyed innocence, I looked back at Huntley’s unlocking eyes and asked, ‘Well, what do you mean about daring?’
With his disarming manner, he prompted me with an example. ‘Have you kissed boys, sort of thing?’
Embarrassed and with an uncomfortable shrug of my shoulders, I replied, ‘No, no. But I’ve played kiss-chase around the school playground.’
This revelation, that I had kissed a boy, although just in a game, was something that I wouldn’t have wanted even my mum to find out about.
Huntley was moving in on his victim: me. Huntley wasn’t your ‘abduct and assault’ paedophile. Exerting control, for him, was a gradual process and the start of that process was his pushing at the door of opportunity by saying to me, ‘I’ll tell you what, Hailey, why don’t we go for a walk? And we can climb some trees, because you’ve had a really boring life like me.’
Alarm bells started ringing in my head about how Mum would go mad if I disobeyed her, so I replied defensively, ‘Well, I’m not allowed out of the end of the street!’
Huntley deftly defused my reply with his charm. ‘Well, you said earlier that you were allowed out of the street with an adult.’ And then he pushed further, ‘Aren’t you?’
‘Yeah,’ I replied.
The boundaries of safety and the protective custody of the street were being whittled away by Huntley’s accelerated grooming of me so as to get me out of the street and to some secluded spot where he could carry out his sick wishes. He was talking to me as if we were both 11 years old when he pulled me into his make-believe world by revealing, ‘My mum, when I was your age, she was really strict, she wouldn’t let me do anything, and it’s so unfair, isn’t it?’
‘Well, yes,’ I had to agree.
All through our conversation I was sitting across the table from him. He was still, from time to time, gazing intently at the magazines. He didn’t make any effort to conceal this from me; he had this particular one right open in front of him.
It was a Saturday and, by the look of him, he had decided it was a rest day, as I recall him having stubble on his chin; he was dressed in a T-shirt that was tucked into his jeans and he wore flat scruffy work shoes.
I remember looking at his hair and thinking, God, you’re not that much older than me. Although he had jet-black hair, there were sizeable grey streaks running through it. This gave me the impression that he was already turning grey. He had mucky hands. He didn’t have aftershave on; he didn’t use a body spray either.
When I went into the caravan that Saturday, there was dog hair everywhere and the musty smell of wet fur. Huntley had an Alsatian puppy called Sadie. It was the one Maxine Carr went on to keep after she was released from her prison sentence for giving him his false alibi over the Soham murders.
Huntley then skilfully referred again to my life in the street, saying, ‘You’ve a bit of a boring life, haven’t you? Your mum is really strict and so is your dad. They don’t let you go out of the street.’
Then, cunningly, he threw a searching look at me as he probed further about what he had already touched on. ‘Have you ever climbed trees?’
Knowing how angry my mum would be if she caught me doing that, I warily replied, ‘No. I’m not allowed to climb trees.’
Returning to another of his themes, he said, ‘God, you’ve had a bit of a boring life, haven’t you, kid?’
‘Well, yeah. Yeah,’ I replied nonchalantly.
‘Yeah, and you wouldn’t climb a tree, you say?’ Huntley quizzed me. ‘It’s not the kind of thing that you would do?’
‘No.’
‘Or not allowed to do, rather?’
‘No, because my mum always said, “You climb trees, you fall and break your neck.”’
‘Yes, you’ve had a really boring life, haven’t you?’ he said, pressing his earlier point.
‘Well, it’s a bit unfair that I’m not allowed out of the street without an adult. All my friends are allowed out of the street. Even to go to the corner shop, I’d have to have an adult with me.’
It was true. I was only allowed out on my own in our street, where my mum could walk out of her front door, look left – ‘She’s not down there’ – look right – ‘Oh, she’s down that end’ – and then she could call me in.
So that was when Huntley beguilingly said, ‘Well, I’m an adult. Why don’t you go out of the street with me and we’ll go and climb some trees. Your mum knows me and so does your dad.’
When I look back on it now, it was in a really charming – how can I put it? – a smooth-talking, befriending sort of way that he then said, ‘We’ll go out of the street, we’ll go and climb some trees and, you know, it’s all right because I’m an adult and you’ll be fine.’
‘Oh, yeah,’ I gushed, ‘Mum and Dad know you and my auntie Sue lives next door and my cousin Katie lives next door and Mum knows Jackie, Katie Webber’s mum, and, oh yeah, OK then. OK.’
Using that as his cue, Huntley folding his magazine once and then again, before stuffing it down the side of his seat. Then, beaming a smile at me, he repeated reassuringly, ‘Your mum and dad know me. I’m an adult, it’ll be fine.’
The trap was set for me when I thought for a lingering moment that what he was saying was right. And that’s when the rebel in me accepted his offer with gusto. ‘All right then,’ I answered.
Off we went, step by step, the safe confines of my street disappearing into the distance. Huntley led the way in what, to him, was a walk of lustful abandonment. He must have been preoccupied with the wicked thoughts of what he wanted to do to me running around inside his head. Knowing what I now know about Huntley, this is probably what he had done to the Soham girls, Holly and Jessica, before murdering them.
I recall that, as we walked past the window of Katie’s house, her mum Jackie wasn’t there. She wasn’t by the window, as she had been when I arrived. We walked out of the sanctuary of the street, ambled through this alleyway that I used to walk through every morning on the way to school and then we went across a road before trekking through the grounds of my school – Huntley always leading the way, with me keenly following close behind.
We were generally talking about school and where Katie had got to, and he was reassuring, saying, ‘I wonder where she could have got to? Don’t worry, I’ll tell her you were looking for her.’
Picturing trees in my mind, I replied cheerfully, ‘Oh, don’t worry.’
We were as talkative as each other. You couldn’t shut me up; I could have talked the head off a brush. This was going to be much better than a day in town. Climbing trees would make this a great Saturday. It was like going from felt to velvet.
We walked for over 30 minutes, at about three to four miles an hour, which means it must have been a mile and half to two miles from the caravan. I didn’t know where we were going, and he never said where he was taking me. I just assumed we were going to climb trees.
Huntley had done a good job in not arousing any suspicion in me about what he had planned in his brooding mind. It was as if he was an old hand at this.
I blindly followed where Huntley led. We made our way through the school grounds, towards and then across the playing field. There was the main entrance, but we didn’t walk that way, we walked right across the far side of the field, where there was an open walkway.
As we passed my school, the scheming Huntley lured me deeper into his trap, exploiting the false sense of security he had already created within me. After spotting some trees, he gawped at them, chuckled and said, ‘Oh, them bloody trees are no good.’
After all, what would a little girl of 11 think was wrong with a grown man of 23 wanting to climb trees?
Then, as we got across the other side of the field, where there were houses, we followed a series of winding roads. We ended up at the Grosvenor pub, in Cleethorpes, where people were gathered outside having a drink. There were wooden benches with people sitting on them, and many more drinkers standing about with beer glasses in their hands. I can remember thinking that I was thirsty, but I didn’t say anything to Huntley, as I didn’t want to delay our tree-climbing expedition.
We passed through the mass of people milling about in the garden, round the side of the pub and to a fence at the far side of the car park. Huntley beckoned me through a gap in the fence and, behind it, in contrast to the other, bustling side, was a secluded orchard, like a secret garden. We two were the only ones there, although it seemed to be part of the pub’s grounds.
The thickly wooded area that greeted us was not at all frightening or displeasing to the eye. Ferns sprouted from the shaded areas beneath the moss-covered trees, their leaves fanning out in a welcoming wave of green tasselled arms. Looking like a picture postcard, sporadic clumps of dense bracken fused together with dead wood and leaves, as brambles battled their way through to reach the light. Beneath the aged branches of the trees, where the wind had blown the bullion from them, lay a carpet of golden leaves, strewn across the untouched ground. As we walked, twigs broke beneath our feet, making cracking noises before being silenced by the spongy earth.
Huntley looked at me and prompted, ‘Go and pick a tree.’
Swept along by his charm, I struggled to contain my excitement and eagerly pointed to an octopus-limbed tree by the fence at the far end of the orchard. ‘All right then, what about that one?’ I said, seeking his approval.
‘You won’t be able to climb that,’ he challenged me with a chuckle.
‘I will, I will,’ I insisted.
He looked at me in astonishment, then gasped cheerfully, ‘Do you think you will?’
‘Yes. All right then,’ I said confidently.
I scampered through the wild undergrowth, got my foot up on the fence behind the tree and clambered up on to one of its branches. Just as I was reaching out for a more secure hold, waves of shock and fear swept through my body as I became aware of Huntley’s mucky, searching hands grasping my waist roughly and with some force. I knew something was not quite right; this wasn’t a friendly hand helping me up the tree. For some inexplicable reason, I was paralysed with fear. Although I didn’t swear, I knew what it was, and in that fleeting moment I thought, Oh, no! Shit, I mean, what’s all this about? I shouldn’t have come here.
My survival instinct kicked in, warning me something was wrong. I didn’t know what it was, but the feeling was uncomfortable and not one I was used to. In that split second, as I held on to the safety of the friendly-looking tree, wide-eyed panic took over as Huntley’s grubby fingers blindly and wildly groped me in places they should never have been.
I looked around at him in abject horror and I asked, ‘What’s the matter?’
With ease, he spun me around towards him, away from the last vestiges of safety offered by the branch I was clinging to. As my hands slithered off the branch and I faced him, his eyes pierced deep into mine. Instantly, I was transfixed, and then he took me by surprise when he said something like, ‘It’s you that I love. I don’t love Katie.’
The harmless look he had in his eyes when he was in the caravan had been consumed with what I would now call a sinister, brooding look of lust. His whole expression had transformed into something no longer recognisable as the Huntley I knew: his eyes were lit up and his mouth had got wider. It was what I would describe as a crazed look; yes, that is the word. Looking back on it now, it was as if he was on some kind of drugs. His eyes were really wide open and his whole face had become fused and distorted with anger. I remember feeling scared seeing this man with the look of a gargoyle about him.
Without me realising or being able to react against it, Huntley had me firmly wedged between him and the trunk of the tree. He dropped his hands to his sides, as if to signify that I had to stand there and face him.
Huntley dwarfed me as he defiantly stared down at me. Yet, strangely enough, I remember the soft, golden rays of the sun shining through the soft leaves of the trees, casting shadows across what was, seconds earlier, a vision of unspoiled beauty. The image in my mind of what I’d thought was the Garden of Eden was now gone. Suddenly the place looked like a menacing, wild and mouldering orchard.
I had to squint against the constantly changing shafts of sunlight that shone though the aged, softly swaying branches. Peering at him, I saw Huntley had changed from being my happy-go-lucky tree-climbing pal to a silhouetted spectre of evil.
I felt really uneasy as he ran his searching fingers through my hair. With each stroke of his hand, he was cooing incoherently. It was like lightning striking me.
Wide-eyed with disbelief, I cried out, ‘What are you doing?’
As Huntley panted, his stinking breath sending shivers of revulsion shooting down my spine, he told me, ‘It’s you I want. I don’t want Katie.’
Not grasping what he meant, I asked, ‘What do you mean?’
‘Come on, Hailey, I really love you,’ he coaxed, his eyes glazed. ‘It’s you I want. I don’t want Katie. I really love you!’
Shaken, I told him, ‘You love Katie, you don’t love me.’
By now I was in a blind panic about what he was going to do. Looking back, I can see how far he had become detached from reality as he continued his barrage of crazy words.
I had really long, brown hair that hung right down my back like silk, and, as he kept pawing it with his clammy, smelly hand, he spurted a torrent of half-incomprehensible words that had my insides reeling in even more shock. ‘Katie cut her hair off, I wish she hadn’t.’ And he kept saying over and over again, ‘I don’t love Katie, I love you, I love your hair.’
‘No! Please, Ian, don’t!’ I pleaded.
Huntley’s lustful and perverted words were lost on me, they meant nothing to me, but something was about to happen that would haunt me for the rest of my life.
As Huntley pawed me, he said something that sent waves of fear through my body, ‘It won’t hurt.’
And then, as he looked at me with cold, unfeeling eyes, he repeated, ‘I really love you. I don’t love Katie, she’s disgusting, she makes my stomach churn. She’s cut all her hair off, because it was long and permed and then she went and had it cut. I don’t like it. Your hair is beautiful. Keep your hair long for me, won’t you? Oh, it’s fantastic.’ And he just kept going on like this.
All I kept thinking was, I shouldn’t have come here. I knew I shouldn’t have gone out of the street. That is what Mum used to tell me all the time, ‘Don’t go out of the street, don’t go out of the street,’ and I shouldn’t have done, because of what was happening now.
My nerves were in chaos. I didn’t know what his intentions were, what it was all leading to. All I could think was, How can he say he loves me when he’s going out with Katie, my best friend?
As his eyes locked with mine, he held my gaze and angrily spat, ‘Stuff Katie. I don’t love her, you’re the one that I love.’
I was getting even more scared, and pressed him, ‘Can we go home now?’
His eyes had become even more fierce and powerful, and as he held my gaze further he fired at me, ‘No, not until you’ve listened to what I’ve got to say first.’
Then, clearly deciding actions spoke louder than words, he wanted me to undo my tracksuit trousers. The tone of his voice changed to something more disturbing as he demanded in a harsher tone, ‘Undo your toggle on your tracksuit bottoms.’
The crude words that followed were alien to me. ‘I want to finger you.’
‘What’s that?’ I asked, truly confused.
His eyes were now even more ablaze with madness than they had been and his face was hideously contorted when he ordered, ‘Just let me do it.’
‘No, please,’ I cried.
Blind lust was leading him on as he growled, ‘No, just let me do it.’
I begged him not to do something I didn’t know the meaning of, though I knew from his demeanour and the tone of his voice that it was bad. ‘No, I don’t want you to,’ I pleaded.
Repulsed by his foul breath, I pulled back a bit and I felt the coarse, moss-covered bark of the tree pressing against the back of my head. I tried to reason with him, ‘You don’t love me, you have got to love Katie. You’re living with Katie. She loves you and she thinks of you first of all.’
This only set off another torrent of demanding words. He kept pleading, ‘Come on, just let me do it,’ clearly intent on wearing down my resistance verbally.
But then, although he didn’t force himself on me, his hands started to wander over me again and his breathing became deeper and faster. In this secluded place, one that Huntley obviously knew well, I knew I was in a very menacing situation.
The reasons he gave for why I should let him ‘finger’ me were nothing but accelerated cultivation of a victim – exactly as I now suspect he tried with Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells before killing them. I believe that they, like me, resisted their little hearts out before Huntley snapped, carried out his evil deeds and then killed them. All while Maxine Carr was away visiting relatives in Grimsby.
With a new-found smugness to his voice, he kept saying, ‘It won’t hurt. Trust me, it won’t hurt. Just let me do it to you.’
I went on pleading with him, ‘No, no, no.’ I was now crying as I begged, ‘Please, Ian. I’m scared.’
Somehow I managed to extricate myself from his wandering hands and repulsive breath. I sidestepped away from the tree and then backwards. As I edged away from Huntley, I was crying again. In an effort to stop him from groping me, I knelt down in a protective posture. I remember feeling the coldness of the earth, in comparison to the warmth of the sun, seeping into the knees of my tracksuit bottoms as I implored, ‘Please, Ian, no!’
I dropped into the kneeling position because I didn’t want Huntley to undo my tracksuit bottoms, as he was now groping between my legs. I was just a young girl, I didn’t know about the sexual role of the vagina; to me, it was for urinating. Please, I was thinking, don’t make me undo my trousers. If I’m kneeling down, he can’t undo them.
I thought that was fine until he ordered, ‘Stand up and talk to me.’
I just put my head in my hands and started crying uncontrollably and shaking with fear. All the while he was running his hands over my hair.
The only defensive thing I could do was to pull my head away from his hands as I repeated again and again, ‘Please, don’t. I just want to go home, Ian.’
‘No, no, no,’ he shouted at me. ‘You’re fine with me, you’re fine. You’re safe here. Nothing will happen, you’re safe. Just do as I say and you’ll be fine.’
As soon as he said that I thought, What do you mean, as long as I do as you say, I will be fine? Oh, God. I shouldn’t be here, I kept thinking. I knew I shouldn’t be out of the street.
‘Please,’ I cried, trying to be calmer, ‘I’m going to be late home for my tea. Please.’
‘No. No, you can stay with me,’ he insisted, and we went on and on like this, I would say for about an hour.
I was still on my knees, crying torrents and pleading as he continued to paw at my now dishevelled hair. Eventually, I did what he asked and stood up. From where I stood I could see the gate leading out of the orchard and a blue plastic sheet in the shape of an igloo that looked as though tiny kids could crawl underneath it.
I kept this blue shape in view as I tried to inch away from Huntley, and all the time crazy thoughts were running through my head. Should I just run away? No, I can’t, he can run quicker than me, I bet, and I won’t be able to get to the gate. There is no way out.
I remember the stillness being disturbed by the brrrrrr-brrrrrr of pneumatic drills. Workmen were drilling the road right behind me, beyond the back of the orchard. I could hear them shouting. I couldn’t make out what they were saying, but I could hear the noise of their shouts despite the drilling.
We had been there for at least an hour, and all I could think was, I don’t want him to put his hands down my trousers, I just want to go home. If Mum finds out I’ve left the street and I’m not home by about four or five o’clock, I’m going to be in big trouble.
Huntley kept cajoling and badgering me as he growled with lust, ‘You know, just let me put my hands in your trousers and do this to you. It won’t hurt, trust me, it will not hurt.’
‘I just want to go home,’ I kept on begging him.
The faces of those close to me flashed before my eyes as I suddenly realised what being at home was all about. I just kept crying, ‘I’m scared and I want to go home; people will know that I am with you.’
At one point, I thought that being trapped here like this was going to be my life – held prisoner here for ever. I remember the fir trees. I was just staring at them and thinking, I don’t want to look at him because he’s too scary to look at. When I did look, his face had become even more unrecognisable, vile and contorted than ever.
I gripped the top of my trousers as if my life depended on it and, looking back to that day, maybe it did. After a while my fingers hurt and, as my strength waned, I thought, God, please!
With tears of utter despair running down my cheeks, I sobbed uncontrollably, ‘It’s going to hurt.’
Huntley snapped, ‘No, it won’t hurt, it won’t hurt,’ and then, as suddenly as it had started, it stopped.
He had become the epitome of what I now understand paedophilia to be all about. He had come of paedophilic age and here he was having his own evil rites of passage by putting his hands down my trousers.
As bizarre as it may sound, my biggest fear of all was still that Mum would tell me off for leaving our street without her permission. This was more of a concern than Huntley actually making his alien demands to ‘finger’ me. I didn’t think he would actually do whatever it was, and then, obviously, I discovered what ‘fingering’ was.
I was still begging Huntley, ‘Please, can I go home.’
My resolve and fortitude were already broken enough by what had happened over that terrible hour. But what now emanated from Huntley’s vile mouth sent a sadness reverberating through me that would have broken the heart of anyone who witnessed my suffering; but there were only the two of us there.
My jaw dropped and my soul seemed to be smashed into a million pieces as Huntley finally cracked and the darker side of him manifested itself as something truly demonic and he spat, ‘Listen, bitch, let me do it again, otherwise I’ll kill you!’
As I searched his eyes for an ounce of compassion, all I could see were a thousand wicked thoughts in the windows of his soul as I implored, ‘Oh no, please!’
This was no longer just about escaping from Huntley to get home to an irate and worried mother: this was now about my life! The sexual appetite that had shadowed him for all his adult life had finally burst out, and he threatened me, ‘Right, we can do it the easy way or the hard way.’
‘What’s the easy way?’ I asked fearfully.
In what to me now was a precursor to the murders of Holly and Jessica, Huntley seethed as he poured out his desire to inflict pain on me. ‘The easy way is for me to press just behind your ears, because I’m a black belt in karate.’
In a burst of dry tears, I blubbered at him, ‘What will that do?’
With an air of chilling menace, Huntley hurriedly spoke his instructions. ‘All you will do, right, is either pass out or black out for five or ten minutes. Let me do what I want to do to you and then you will wake up and you will be fine.’
‘If that’s the easy way,’ I asked, ‘what’s the hard way? Because I might die if you press there. What happens if you don’t mean to kill me but I don’t wake up?’
Huntley seemed to think he was giving me a choice when, in fact, the option was either to succumb to being blacked out or to carry on struggling. Then, after a short time, he rasped, ‘The hard way is, if you don’t fucking let me do it, I will put my fingers there anyway, and I will press real hard there. And if I press so hard, you will die and I will do what I want to do to you anyway!’
On hearing what was likely to happen to me, I unleashed a stream of tears, along with a heart-rending plea, ‘Please, I just want to go home. I don’t want you to do it, please. I just want to go home.’
Little by little, I was backing away from him towards the fence, but he was still only feet away from me. It seemed that, for every step back I took, he inched closer towards me in this continuing bizarre dance of the predator and his prey. As he did so, he leaned forward, stooping over me. He was breaching the invisible barrier around me, the barrier we all have around us. Once more I was feeling very uncomfortable, yet I was powerless to stop him.
Huntley was inches away from me and my skin crawled. I renewed my grip on my tracksuit bottoms. I was becoming increasingly scared because he kept putting his hand near my neck. I was frantically thinking, He’s just going to press it or something and I’m going to drop dead. I didn’t know what happened if someone pressed behind your ears, and he was trying to do that to me.
When you get cold or you see something eerie, the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end. Well, that’s how I would feel for another hour, as I kept up my unrelenting plea to be allowed to go home.
Huntley had gone from feigning putting his hands behind my ears to slowly running his fingers through my hair again, and each time his hand passed my ear I would let out an audible gasp as I thought, He’s going to kill me. At that time I thought someone just had to press the area and you would drop down dead. With every terrifying pass of his hand, I thought I was in the shadow of death. Fear swept through me each time and I would pull my head away from his evil touch. I remember thinking, Don’t touch it there, because I might die. It had stuck in my head when he said I could die if he pressed just a bit too hard.
I remember feeling a bit queasy as I rasped again, ‘Oh, please, Ian, I just want to go home; my mum is going to kill me. I’m going to be late for my tea and she knows that I’m going to be with you. Please, just let me go home.’
And then a determined look came across his face and, without any hesitation, he moved my hands away and did it to me again: he pushed his fingers into my vagina. He actually made contact with it from inside my tracksuit bottoms. He had been gripping the top of my trousers and forcing them into my belly. I didn’t know these invasive procedures were all just so that he could have his moment of glory.
In his state of excitement, he gulped down air and kept growling, ‘Move your hands away, move your hands away.’
All the while I kept on begging him, ‘Oh, please. Please, Ian, don’t. It’s going to hurt. Please, no.’
Without an ounce of compassion he kept going, telling me, ‘No, it’s not going to hurt. Just let me do it.’
I was wailing now, ‘Please, Ian, don’t. I’m going to be late home and I have got to go home for tea.’
If I kept saying that, he might let me go, I thought. I knew what he was trying to do was wrong. I didn’t know what the details of the wrongness of it were, but I knew instinctively that something was wrong about it because nothing like this had ever happened to me before. And I didn’t know when, if or how it was going to end.
By now Huntley’s hand was crawling around inside my knickers and it made contact with my flesh again. In total he did it about four or five times. Every time he inserted his fingers into my private parts, he stopped and pulled away a little bit when I started crying, ‘Please, stop it, it’s hurting me.’
Then his manner became cajoling. ‘Don’t be silly. Don’t be silly.’
I noticed now that, when I started crying, he pulled away and stopped doing it for a while. Then I dried my eyes, tried to gather myself and started hoping and praying that he might let me go home in a minute. No sooner had I thought that then he started the cycle all over again and then I started crying and he pulled away a little bit and he would stop. Each time he fingered my vagina, it went on for up to five minutes. During the attack and afterwards he repeatedly mentioned putting his fingers behind my ears and pressing.
Then, after he had done the same sexual act to me yet again, I managed to stand up on the bottom ledge of the fence and I looked over and started screaming to the men drilling the road, ‘Help me.’
I was waving one arm frantically because Huntley was holding the other. And I was yelling in blind panic, ‘Please, help me. Come over here!’ It was then that I realised my cries were falling on literally deaf ears, as the guys drilling the road were wearing ear defenders. I think they were yellow or red.
I could see lots of workmen, but they couldn’t hear my calls or see my arm waving desperately. That was when Huntley put his hands around my waist and pulled me down out of sight of anyone on the other side of the fence. Then he undid my trousers again and carried out another sexual assault, the same as before. He was still in a state of arousal, although he hadn’t exposed himself to me.
With the clatter of the pneumatic drills, I couldn’t hear the babble coming out of Huntley’s mouth; I could just see his lips moving. As he drew closer to me, my head was in bits, but I remember the sickly smell of his breath, diluted a little by my own heavy, anxious breathing.
Looking back, the odd thing is that Huntley didn’t expose his penis or fondle himself. What he was doing to me was a perverse thing for his own mental gratification. This was maybe something he would run through his head at another time; perhaps even now when he is behind bars. There was no physical gratification for him, other than the pleasure of abusing me. He was deriving a feeling of power from the control he exerted over me. He was feeding himself what he most needed, that sense of power, and getting off on it.
Not long after that, he finally agreed to let me go home. I don’t know if this was because I told him I had arranged to meet my mum at the pub that we were behind, but, as I look back on it now, I have the feeling that it might have been entirely due to Huntley’s lust having been sated, rather than a response to my constant sobbing and pleading.
When we eventually walked out of the orchard, he threatened me when he raised the subject I was already worried about. ‘Well, you can go home but, if you tell anybody, I’ll kill you.’
I was petrified and barely managed to stammer my reply, ‘No, no. No, I won’t. I won’t tell anyone. I promise.’
Of course, my reasons for not wanting to tell anyone about what Huntley had done to me were entirely different from how he saw it. Obviously, he wanted to avoid being put behind bars. I wanted to avoid my mum finding out that I had disobeyed her strict orders not to leave the street without first letting her know or getting her permission to do so.
I remember with exhausted relief the feeling of liberation that ran through me as I walked out of the orchard. If I can get back home in time, I thought, I won’t have to face a scolding from Mum for leaving the sanctuary of the street. But what if, while Huntley was abusing me, Katie Webber had called at my home to see where I was for our planned visit into town? Mum’s rage didn’t bear thinking about! My head was in pieces, but I was distracted from my thoughts as I noticed how empty the place was; the crowd of drinkers from two hours earlier had dispersed.
As we retraced our steps back the way we’d come, I was in such a state of severe shock that I said very little. The madness in Huntley’s eyes had melted away; the cruellooking predator of minutes earlier was now looking more like his former self. At that point, I was able to think a little more clearly, and my thoughts were of my mum frantically looking left and right down the street for me.
I was startled out of this dismal vision by the sound of Huntley’s voice repeating what he had said earlier, this time his voice more pleading than demanding, ‘Don’t tell anybody; make sure you don’t speak to anybody about it.’
Because of his earlier threat to kill me, I promised again not to tell anyone. Although I was out in the open again, that threat hung over me like a widow’s veil.
We carried on walking and arrived back at the field near the school grounds, where I spotted something that gave me hope. It was an old Vauxhall Cavalier, or at least that sort of shape of car. I thought it was the caretaker’s and all sorts of jumbled and muddled thoughts ran through my mind. What made me think it was the caretaker’s car was because he was often at the school tidying up on a Saturday.
At the thought of this, my muggy head began to clear even more, my eyesight, blurred from crying, began to improve and my survival instinct was kicking in. Halfway across the field I made my move. I ran into the school grounds, leaving Huntley standing there.
In retrospect, knowing what happened to Holly and Jessica when Huntley was a school caretaker, cold shivers of panic run up and down my spine every time I think about how I made a run for it across that field of hope. I believe that my survival may have caused Huntley to murder Holly and Jessica. He knew that they could promise him all he wanted, but that in the end they would do as I had done… escape and eventually tell of what happened.
I was just one witness against Huntley, but Holly and Jessica were two witnesses. He knew that, if they escaped his evil clutches, all would be made known to the police. In exactly the same way as I went knocking on his caravan door, they too went calling on him like lambs to the slaughter. It was as though the sick-minded Huntley was gifted all three of us for his own perverse pleasure.
After a short sprint, I reached what was known as the school’s ‘quiet area’, where there was a tranquil pond for schoolchildren to sit beside. In desperation I looked around for the caretaker, but he wasn’t in sight. However, it dawned on me that there were some CCTV cameras around the school that would save me. By now Huntley, as quick as a greyhound, had dashed after me and was on my tracks!
Near by were the doors to the gym, so I ran there, but I ended up doing a bad job at hiding. The best I could do was just stand near the doors, puffing and panting and shaking with fright. If that wasn’t bad enough, the fear of God ran through me as I heard Huntley’s ruthless voice booming out, and it was getting worryingly closer. The caretaker has got to be around here somewhere, I told myself in desperation.
‘Fucking come here!’ Huntley yelled.
When he cornered me, I dared to give him a fleeting glance and, sure enough, what I suspected had happened. The calm demeanour that had briefly returned had now vanished and his face was devoid of any compassion. His evil persona had resurfaced. Maybe my darting away had set him off. Maybe I should have kept the calm demeanour of a lost and helpless girl about me. I don’t know.
Now Huntley’s fury was increased tenfold. I had dared to defy the control he was obsessed with and this time his eyes had more of a faraway look about them than the crazy look of earlier. His face, darkly friendly at times, had become a brooding mask of malevolence and brutality as he announced loudly and coldly, ‘Now I’m going to do it to you again.’
The thought of death once more flashed before my eyes. As the nightmare at his hands in the orchard came flooding back to me, again I found myself begging, ‘No, Ian, please don’t. Please don’t.’
I grasped at one final straw of hope that I might bring Huntley back from the brink when I warned him, ‘There are CCTV cameras watching you. Don’t!’
As he looked about him, he shattered any hope I had of escape by hissing, ‘Oh, don’t worry about it, they’re fake. They’re not real.’
There were quite a few cameras, pointing outwards from the classroom, directly at us, but he didn’t care: he was too much in the grip of sexual desire to give a second thought to the consequences. I think that, even if someone had come across him while he was in that state, he would have continued to pursue what he wanted.
‘Please, Ian, just let me go home,’ I cried out.
Earlier, in the orchard, my screams seemed to work, but now they were useless. Deaf to my begging and pleading, he sexually assaulted me yet again.
My rainbow thoughts of being tucked up in the warmth of my bed were soon snow-covered and I started to cry again. He seemed to be regaining some grip of himself when he told me to stop, but I had a lump in my throat and I was finding it hard to bring it to an end. My eyes were red and started stinging. After so much crying there were hardly any tears left.
Any hopes I had of Huntley ceasing his attack on me were shattered when he said, ‘This is the last time that I will do it to you.’
It was a prospect that I had been barely able to imagine a few moments earlier, and it brought mixed feelings of relief and revulsion.
But then, as his hands roved over my body, he calmly demanded, ‘Just let me do it one more time.’
I weakly croaked, ‘Oh, please. No!’
Regardless of my pleading and trying to reason with him, he went berserk and continued to stoke up his lust by forcing his fingers inside my most intimate place.
By this time, he had me pushed up against the gym door with his forearm and pressed his body against me, and he wanted to do it again and again and again.
Desperate, I pointed again and cried out, ‘There are video cameras there. Don’t do it.’
But Huntley, by now wildly aroused and unstoppable, shouted breathlessly, ‘They’re fake, they don’t work.’
The physical and mental torture for me was nearly over when, awkwardly, he withdrew his hand from my tracksuit bottoms and his eyes darted about to see if we were still alone. Maybe now that he was out of his sexual stupor, the cameras worried him.
He again threatened, ‘If you run, I’ll come after you! If you dare to tell anybody, then I’ll come and kill you. Just remember, Hailey, I only live down the street from you,’ he rasped, ‘and I’m a black belt in karate!’
He scared the living daylights out of me, and out of fear I promised once again, ‘No, I won’t tell anyone. I promise, I won’t say anything to anyone.’
We set off again and, on the last leg of the walk home, he drilled it into my head: ‘If you tell anybody, I’ll come and kill you.’
I was devastated at the thought of not reaching home and promised yet again to tell no one.
When my street came into sight I had to stifle sobs of joy as I thought, Thank God!
And at the same time I was consumed with the chill of death as I thought of Huntley’s threats to murder me.
Then he left my side, without saying a word, and went into the driveway of Katie Webber’s house, where the caravan was.
Just in case he had changed his mind and was coming after me to kill me, I gave a worried glance over my shoulder as I started walking faster. When he left my sight, I wasn’t aware if Katie was there… I was just pleased to be alive and back in the street.