‘I was 14 when I was abducted and trafficked into a paedophile ring’ | EUROtoday

Leon Towers grew up with out ever realizing what it meant to be cherished. Born in 1975, he was six weeks previous when he was present in his cot beside his father’s physique. His mom was arrested for the loss of life, and by the point it was found that his father had taken his personal life, Leon had already been positioned in foster care.

That transient starting was the final time he would see something resembling a house. From there, the system meant to guard him delivered one thing else solely.

In the foster residence he grew up in, underneath guidelines he felt had been designed to crush him, Leon spent the primary 14 years of his life in torment: overwhelmed, psychologically tortured, and advised that his mom had murdered his father. When he was simply eight-years-old, he was compelled to spend 14 hours standing bare within the freezing coal shed as a punishment for taking a chunk of bread with out asking.

He was forbidden from talking and would go the entire weekend with out saying a single phrase, determined for the varsity week to roll round out of concern he would finally lose his voice altogether.

Every mirror in the home was draped with towels so he couldn’t see his personal reflection, his foster dad and mom would inform him it was as a result of he was ugly. Each morning on his stroll to highschool, Leon could be compelled to repair his hair in wing mirror home windows, with no different approach to see what he regarded like. Leon grew to become a toddler no one needed to listen to or see.

It was an period when sweeping public sector cuts launched by the Thatcher authorities, mixed with a surge in demand for social companies, left native authorities unable to maintain up. An already underfunded and poorly supervised care system meant weak youngsters simply fell via the cracks and had been failed by these meant to guard them.

“I was held captive there, I couldn’t escape… I was just living in this torture, this prison, this hell, and I couldn’t escape it,” he advised The Independent.

Donate right here or textual content SAFE to 70577 to offer £10 to Missing People – sufficient for one baby to get assist.

The Independent is aiming to lift £165,000 to assist launch SafeCall – a free new service that can present youngsters in disaster with confidential help, steering and a path to security. Around 70,000 youngsters go lacking every year within the UK.

As a kind of youngsters, Leon believed he could be higher off lacking than staying in care, even when it meant he may be killed. One night time, he slipped away into the Cumbrian darkish.

When a person approached him on a park bench providing someplace to remain, Leon thought he was lastly being proven kindness. In actuality, it was the start of unimaginable horrors.

He was kidnapped and brought to London 4 days later, the place he was trafficked right into a paedophile ring. He was advised he needed to maintain shifting to keep away from being returned to foster care. Over the subsequent three months, he was taken to 17 properties throughout the nation.

He stayed not more than every week in every place, raped by older males earlier than being moved on to the subsequent home the place the abuse could be repeated.

Nearly three a long time later, Leon remembers each place he stayed. They had been by no means properties; they had been flats with a mattress and typically a sofa, rented for that sole goal.

Too younger to know what intercourse was, he believed these males had been his associates. He was taken to nightclubs and made to really feel like a star. His abusers purchased him garments and performed him tapes within the automobile between homes to make it really feel like a “holiday”.

Even when he was pushed in opposition to a wall and suffocated, or when a married man with youngsters advised him he could be killed if he ever spoke concerning the rapes, Leon nonetheless felt, in a distorted manner, that he was being cared about for the primary time.

He didn’t realise he had been raped till he was 29.

He later found that the person who kidnapped him went on to homicide somebody who had beforehand taken him to London and subjected him to the identical abuse.

After three months, Leon escaped and stayed with one other boy in the identical trafficking community. Just a few days later, he positioned his belief in adults once more and went to a police station for assist, sure this may be a turning level.

“When I escaped that paedophile ring, I went to the police station… It was about five o’clock. It was pitch black, it was pouring down with rain, and I was drenched to the skin. I went into a police station in Newcastle, and I said, ‘My name is Leon, and I think you’re looking for me’.

“They basically said, ‘I haven’t got a clue who you are. You’ve come to the wrong place, you need to go to social services. You better be quick, it shuts at half five.’”

The panic of working via an unfamiliar metropolis at midnight to search out social companies earlier than closing time has by no means left him.

“I’d already been away a few days before I went to the police. I was having to eat out with dust bins. I remember eating a half-eaten burger out of a bin because I was starving.

“I had nowhere to go. I only had the clothes I was standing in. I’m 14. I’m terrified that they’re gonna find me again and catch me, and I just didn’t know what to do.”

Banging on the doorways of social companies in torrential rain, Leon was let in and positioned in take care of the night time. The subsequent day, he was taken again to his authentic foster residence. For the primary time, he wasn’t fearful of his carers. Just a few days later, he left once more and was moved into residential care full-time.

He spent the subsequent two years making an attempt to obliterate each reminiscence: stealing vehicles, shoplifting, taking medication.

His turning level got here at 18, when he grew to become a father for the primary time.

In 2009, he wrote Leon: A Lost Childhooda e book about his life. His mom, Audrey, purchased it that yr and skim it with out realizing her son had written it. Terrified that he needed nothing to do together with her, she had by no means dared get in contact.

As a toddler, Leon satisfied himself she was Audrey Hepburn, an concept sparked after watching Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

“In my head, I built this story that she was in Hollywood making movies, and when she made enough money, she was going to come back and get me,” he mentioned. “That’s what kept me going through all of that trauma.”

He was at all times certain he would get a birthday card from her on his eighteenth birthday. When nothing arrived, it was essentially the most upset he had ever been about her absence.

After posting an enchantment on Facebook for details about his father, he realized that his father had abused his mom and offered her to males to be gang raped to repay his playing debt.

In March 2020, Leon messaged her. “I’m so sorry for what you went through and what you’ve been through, and I’m reaching out to you to say I never knew any of this. I’ve always loved you, you’re my mum. I always wanted to find you, but I didn’t think you were looking for me.”

She replied inside three minutes. They spoke day by day till assembly in person who May.

On his forty fifth birthday, she despatched him 45 birthday playing cards.

“We’ve spoken every day ever since, and it’s five years later… We’re a massive part of each other’s lives.”

Leon is now a fierce advocate for kids. He runs a YouTube channel, Let’s Talk Trauma TV, discussing points together with baby intercourse trafficking, home and sexual abuse. Next July, he’ll entrance a sequence investigating ten unsolved instances of youngsters disappearing from care properties.

“Somebody needs to be their voice… being brought up in the care system [I realised] that when people go missing, nobody’s actively looking for them.”

A soon-to-be ambassador for Missing People, Leon says it’s important to interrupt the cycle of youngsters going lacking and reminds people who no baby disappears and not using a purpose.

Please donate now to The Independent and Missing People’s SafeCall marketing campaign, which goals to lift £165,000 to create a free, nationwide service serving to weak youngsters discover security and help.

For recommendation, help and choices when you or somebody you like goes lacking, textual content or name the charity Missing People on 116 000. It’s free, confidential and non-judgemental. Or go to www.missingpeople.org.uk/get-help

If you might be experiencing emotions of misery, or are struggling to manage, you’ll be able to communicate to the Samaritans, in confidence, on 116 123 (UK and ROI), e-mail jo@samaritans.org, or go to the Samaritans web site to search out particulars of your nearest department. If you might be based mostly within the USA, and also you or somebody wants psychological well being help proper now, name or textual content 988, or go to 988lifeline.org to entry on-line chat from the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. This is a free, confidential disaster hotline that’s accessible to everybody 24 hours a day, seven days every week. If you might be abroad, you’ll be able to go to www.befrienders.org to discover a helpline close to you.

If you’re a baby and also you need assistance as a result of one thing has occurred to you, you’ll be able to name Childline freed from cost on 0800 1111. You can even name the NSPCC in case you are an grownup and you might be apprehensive a few baby, on 0808 800 5000. The National Association for People Abused in Childhood (Napac) affords help for adults on 0808 801 0331.