Madeleine Black - Unbroken--Used, beaten but never broken. My story of survival and hope.

I t happened in May 1979, in North London, where I grew up. The exact date is something I have never tried to establish. Some of what happened to me was very clear in my mind, but most details were hazy, disjointed or gone altogether. It took many years and a lot of hard work to unravel and examine all the details from that night. For decades, I shut the memories out, burying them in my mind beneath a mountain of guilt, fear and self-preservation. And yet even though I didnt consciously think about or remember most of the violence done to me, all of my consequent actions were shaped and influenced by it. I was thirteen years old.

Like many girls I knew, my priorities in life were pretty straightforward: friends, fun, school and boys. My parents were loving and supportive and most of the time I got on well with my older brother and three younger sisters. I tried to help out at home as much as possible and I kept quiet. A shy girl, I was never one to bring a lot of attention to myself. My grades were average and by all means, I was pretty normal. But my friend Kelly was something different altogether.

Almost everyone has that one person in their class that they look up to and want to be like. For me, it was Kelly. She seemed so different from the rest of us and in many ways, she was. Her parents were divorced and I had never met anyone from a single-parent family before. Her dad was American, which seemed exotic at the time, and she wore make-up. She had Farrah Fawcett flicks in her hair and wore far cooler clothes than anyone else in school. Outgoing and flirtatious with boys, she was far more mature and physically developed than most girls in my class. She seemed so bold, so fearless. I was on the other end of the spectrum from Kelly, but being friends with her made me cool.

My dad was always unsure of Kelly and didnt like our friendship for all the same reasons that I found her so intriguing. He felt she was a bad influence on me; I just thought she was fun. The fact that Dad didnt approve of our friendship appealed to the rebel in me I was, after all, a teenager.

Even though our family got along well, the dynamic in our home at that time was quite difficult. My mum was ill with neck and back problems following a car accident many years ago, and had to spend a lot of time in hospital having operations and recuperating. When she came home, she was often in bed for weeks, even months. There was a rotation of nurses in the house looking after Mum, and between my siblings, my father and me, we did what needed to be done around the house, but it was very stressful.

Perhaps all of those factors contributed to my desire for some fun and excitement. And this in turn led me to do things I might not have done otherwise. To be honest, I think I would have agreed to most things Kelly might have suggested I was so influenced by her and so ready for something to shake up my day-to-day life. So when she asked if I wanted to go out to drink and meet boys, my response was immediate: Yes, please. I had never done that before, but I was ready. Or so I thought.

Kelly and I started planning our night out. In order to make sure we could stay out as late as we wanted, we pulled off what we thought was a very clever scheme. Kelly was staying with her grandma while her mother was out of town. She told her grandma she would be staying over at my house and I told my mum we would be staying over at Kellys grandmas. Of course this was before the day when parents would call each other to check the stories, or verify their childs location through the GPS in their mobile phone, so it all worked perfectly. We met up at her mothers vacant flat, dropped off our things and set out to buy some alcohol. My parents werent big drinkers so I had no idea what to buy; my friend suggested vodka, which she paid for, so I agreed.

Kelly said she knew of an off-licence near a Mexican caf on the Finchley Road in North London, just walking distance from where we were staying. We would buy the alcohol there, and then head a few doors down to the caf where a lot of boys from the local American school in St Johns Wood hung out. Not only did she know some of them from previous times at the caf, they were all friends with the manager, who was also American. She assured me it was a safe place for us to drink and meet boys. Perfect.

The first part of the plan went without a hitch. I have no idea how Kelly convinced the shop assistant that she was eighteen (I clearly looked underage), but she did, and so we emerged proudly from the shop with a bottle of vodka and two cartons of orange juice. We excitedly walked to the restaurant, ordered our food, and I followed her to a table where four American boys were sitting. She seemed to know them, but I didnt know how well, so it looked like the second part of our plan (meeting boys) was working perfectly, too.

But then there was a shift I hadnt expected. Within moments, I noticed that Kelly had transformed into a side of her personality I hadnt seen before. She had suddenly developed an American accent and was flirting with the boys in a way that made me feel alienated and embarrassed. It was as though she was performing. Even though she was outgoing, this part of her was a new level of bold, and I became seemingly invisible to her. Naturally, it had an effect on me. I was already too shy to even speak to them, let alone flirt with them, and we were the only girls at the table. It was fun, but I was uneasy and Kellys behaviour only amplified my discomfort.