Six-year-old Emily Rose was carefully colouring in at Sunday school, when she suddenly realised she needed a toilet break.
However, as she dashed to the loo, the happy-go-lucky little girl could never have predicted the horrific turn of events that would transform her childhood into a living nightmare.
‘I really had to go, but I didn’t want to give up my pink pencil, in case another child ended up getting it; Emily, 35, remembers. ‘I eventually went but as I came out of the loo, I was grabbed by one man, very hard, and thrown into a room with another man.’
One of the men – who Emily had never met before – raped her. After the brutual attack, the little girl silently returned to her colouring, with the warning not to tell anyone, otherwise ‘the worst thing she could imagine would happen’ ringing in her ears.
In the subsequent weeks, Emily’s body shut down; in significant pain she became bed bound with a mystery illness. Each time she thought about the assault, she was physically sick, and as she recovered, Soon, she was a different child; scared of everything and full of panic.
‘For years I was terrified that my parents or sister would die, or my house would burn down,’ Emily tells Metro. ‘Being six years old, those were all very real scenarios in my brain. If I thought about telling someone, and something bad would happen, I would blame myself. I remember when one of my aunty’s pet’s passed away and I immediately thought it was my fault.’
Emily, from Newcastle, started seeing monsters in her bedroom and was plagued with sleep paralysis and recurring nightmares. Her night terrors got so bad, her dad had to sleep on the floor next to her. During the day, she would hide from strangers and panic if she saw someone who reminded her of her attacker. It would be years before she’d feel safe again.
At the age of nine, when Emily’s school started delivering sex education classes, the full context of the attack hit her. Around the same time, she noticed that in quiet time alone, she was pulling strands of hair out without realising.
Emily, who works as a business mindset strategist, explains that it started with a single strand here and there. ‘Before I knew it I would look down at the bed or sofa and there would be a huge pile,’ she remembers. ‘I hid it from my mum because it was so abnormal, and I didn’t want her to think anything was wrong with me.
‘As I was approaching puberty, I think it became a subconscious coping mechanism as I didn’t want to become sexual in any way. It was also self-soothing, a way to gain some sort of control. It was probably a form of self-harm too, which makes me really sad that as a child I was doing that.’
Emily was soon grasping at her hair and pulling it out multiple times during the day, making sure she hid the evidence down the side of her bunk bed to conceal the problem from her parents.
Afterwards, she would feel a sense of relief, but she was also left in pain, unable to lie on a pillow at certain angles and she soon ended up with bald patches and bleeding sores all over her head.
Even so, she couldn’t control her compulsion. ‘I was disgusted by my appearance and repulsed by myself’, she says sadly.
Eventually, Emily’s worried parents took her to the doctors and she was prescribed various creams, as she was unable to admit that she had been pulling her own hair.
When she did tell her mum the truth, Emily started sleeping in a nightcap and trying to cover the bald spots with a huge hairband. But still she kept the habit up. Her mum and dad desperately tried to get help from various doctors and psychologists, nobody seemed to know what to do.
Then, when Emily moved to secondary school at the age of 11, bullies singled her out.
‘It was relentless. I was wearing big headbands and while I had a ponytail, the hair on the top of my head was short or bald,’ she remembers. ‘People would laugh and say things every day. One boy from a year above would follow me home and throw rocks or cans at the back of my head.
‘I would be walking with tears streaming down my face, being called ugly and horrible. I just wanted to hide.’
As anxiety took hold of Emily, she became even more withdrawn. ‘Anything could set off this feeling of being unsafe. I would go very quiet and wouldn’t want to talk. I didn’t want to be around any men, and would pretend to be ill to stay off school. When it got really bad I would focus on getting through each minute of the day and trying to hide as much as possible,’ she says.
It was only when she discovered a book on neuroscience on her dad’s shelves, that Emily, then 12, began to understand how she could potentially stop her compulsive behaviour.
‘I was always a bit of a nerd and would fixate on things. I picked up the book and started reading about neuro-linguistic programming and how you can rewire your brain to break habits,’ she explains.
NLP, which has been around since the 1970s, suggests that there is a connection between neurological processes, language and acquired behavioural patterns, which can be changed to achieve specific goals. For Emily, it offered a sliver of hope.
‘I started to give myself little tasks. I realised that if I did pull a hair I wouldn’t let myself look at it or roll it in my fingers anymore’ she recalls. ‘I wanted to break the rituals and the more I did, the fewer hairs I pulled out at any one time. It became a big mission for me, and then I started noticing my hair getting thicker.’
Emily began using the techniques elsewhere, teaching herself to speak up for herself and be braver in social situations. Even so, Emily was still too terrified to talk about the rape, but realised she could enjoy flourish in others’ company, that life could be enjoyable.
By the time she was 14, Emily had a full head of hair and her mum took her for her first ever short haircut.
‘I remember the hairdresser putting clips in afterwards and I looked like a normal little girl. It makes me cry to think of it now. It was a lovely feeling to not stand out anymore,’ she remembers.
When Emily left school, she used what she’d learned to help others and started supporting business owners with mindset management skills. But she still struggled with anxiety, PTSD and a crippling depression that would keep her in bed for days.
It wasn’t until she started dating her now-husband Owen in 2018, that Emily felt safe.
‘I used to have all these fears that someone would come into our house. But with Owen, I felt really like no-one could hurt me. It was really nurturing and peaceful and I felt secure for the first time,’ she says.
However, when she became a mum to two daughters, it triggered her fears again. A school trip could leave her ill with worry as she was so scared of someone hurting her children.
‘I used to live in terror. ‘I would be terrified if a man even walked near my child,’ she remembers.
Still, Emily was dogged by the feeling that if she told anyone about the attack, something bad would happen.
It was only three years ago that she finally mustered the courage to go to the police. A squad car picked her up from home and she was bowled over by how kind and professional the detective on her case was.
When she delivered her victim impact statement, it was the first time she had spoken about the rape out loud.
‘I was glad to be able to say it, the support I had from the police was so brilliant. They put me in touch with Rape Crisis and the counsellor was amazing,’ she remembers.
The case remains open but Emily doesn’t know if the assailants are alive anymore. Just telling the police was a huge turning point; by reporting the rape all the fears of something bad happening to her disappeared. ‘It was finally out there and I didn’t feel scared anymore.’
And even though she may never see justice, Emily is happy for the first time.
‘The fear is always going to be there, when I hear of stories in the news, for example, I get very emotional and angry. But I am so much better now, living in the present and loving my family,’ she explains.
‘My home is exactly the way I want it to be and I have a job I love. Looking back I am sad that I lost so much of my life to this freak attack. But I am proud of how far I have come.’
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