From report to court, part one – Calling the police

My breath was warm on my hands as I cradled my face. I lifted my head and looked at my phone beside me on the sofa. When I’d sent Alfie the news article, I’d needed him to tell me it wasn’t Tim. I’d have been okay if he’d said he wasn’t sure. But his confirmation meant the only option I had was the one I never wanted to do.

Just hours before I’d told my friend Phil, I wasn’t going to call the police. I’d said there was no evidence. I’d said I’d left it too late. I was fourteen then and that was twenty-four years ago. I’d said it would be our word against Tim’s. I’d said ‘our’ like it wasn’t just my decision to make. But Phil had thoughts. Phil always had thoughts, and his thoughts never stayed in his head.

“Just Google him,” he’d said. So casually, so matter of fact. “It’s been twenty-four years, if there’s anything to worry about, he’ll have been caught by now.”

How often had I Googled Tim before? Once a year? More sometimes. Typing his name into Google, or Vista, or once, Ask Jeeves, looking over the results and seeing nothing. There was never a result. No pictures, no articles, no posts on social media, the internet was a blackhole when it came to him.

He’d looked after me, he’d protected me, he’d cared for me. He’d held me while I cried when I finally said out loud that I’d been physically restrained and raped a couple of weeks before Christmas. He’d told me it wasn’t my fault, he took my adamant refusal to speak to the police as proof that I kept rapists secrets. I gave him permission to take what he’d wanted since the first time he’d kissed me, since the first time he saw me and started working on getting me into his trust and protection.

I typed his name, dropped a comma, and typed paedophile. My world became laser focussed on results one and two. Same headline, different publications. Still no pictures, but every fibre of my being knew it was him. ‘Paedophile escapes justice.’ Of course he’d escaped it. Could he have talked his way out of it?

I dialled 101 and hung up as the recorded message started playing. I saw a message on my phone from Alfie saying, “I found an old pic of him while packing the other day, if you wan –” I swiped it away not wanting to see the rest of the words that made a sentence too big to fit in my brain.

I collapsed onto the sofa, falling backwards to stare at the ceiling. I had to get rid of that cobweb above the kitchen door, it’d been driving me nuts for weeks.

‘Paedophile escapes justice.’ Ten counts of owning and making child pornography, some of which was Category A. I sat up, unlocked my screen again, hit redial, then hung up.

Making! He made child pornography. I couldn’t ignore that. That could mean he reproduced images, but it could also mean he took them. A child alone in his house, naked, scared, under his thrall in such a way the fear was battled through in an attempt to gain Tim’s approval. I was that child once.

I dialled again. This time I listened to the recorded voice telling me all the things I should hang up for and dial 999, but this wasn’t an emergency, this was ancient history that was going to be noted down in a file and maybe, just maybe I’d get a call in years to come when someone with evidence came forward. I selected option 1 to speak to an operator, and hung up.

He didn’t stop! Alfie and I hadn’t heard each other’s voices since the ‘90s, but we’d been messaging on Facebook since we reconnected in 2007. Not much, there was a void between us that was filled with the lives we’d created in the missing decade. But recently our messaging had increased. We’d touched on the reality of what we’d never spoken about, using Tim as the bridge. What he might be doing now. What he used to do then. What he could have on his computer now the internet wasn’t just for emails and a little online bookstore called Amazon.

But making child pornography. He didn’t stop. It wasn’t just us. And everyone he’d touched since Alfie and me, was because of our silence.

I dialled 101 again, the recorded message played, I pressed 1 to speak to the operator, “Swindon and Wiltshire police non-emergency, how can I help you?”

She sounded young. I imagined her sat in a call centre, probably painted an industrial shade of magnolia with grey padded cubicle dividers. What was I about to do to her day?

“Hi erm- I’d erm like to –” I knew the words I had to say, but the pounding of my heart was beating them down into my stomach. I was supposed to say, ‘I’d like to report a historic sex crime.’ But what I actually said was, “I’d erm, like to speak to someone about what happens if I report a historic sex crime.”

I thought what I’d just said was perfectly self-explanatory. But the silence it triggered in the telephone operator, gave me time to hear my words. The rambled chaos of uncertainty. My non-committal statement that wasn’t really a statement at all, just an admission of my past. Was she silent because she thought I was turning myself in for something?

With a slight tone of hesitance, she said, “What do you mean?”

The chills ran from the base of my neck down my arms and spine. I spoke the words I’d held inside for all those years. The words that would have stopped others from being put through what I was. The words that could have stopped others from ever needing to make this call. But now, now those words were worthless, just like I was all those years ago.