Hailey's Story--She Was an Eleven-Year-Old Child. He Was Soham Murderer Ian Huntley. This is the Story of How She Survived (7 page)

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.'