A picture of innocence. The girl on the front cover of Girl A: the truth about the Rochdale sex
ring by the victim who stopped them (Ebury Press) is rosy cheeked and clear
eyed. Long straight hair, long fringe, hiding behind it.
Demur increases the allure; like 16-year-old Kate Moss in her
first-ever front cover for The Face
(Corinne Day’s ‘The 3rd Summer of Love’ photoshoot, July 1990).
Of course the book cover photo is not the real Girl A
(neither did she write the book, which was ghosted by Daily Telegraph crime reporter Nigel Bunyan). But it is her real
voice on the radio this morning (Today BBC
Radio 4): Manc/Lancs accent flat as Lowry’s matchstick men, telling a terrible tale
of repeated rape; singing her song of horrendous experience.
She’s being played again. This is not to say it’s as before,
in smelly rooms underneath naked light bulbs with her half-clothed and sobbing
at the bulk of brutal men. But she is being passed around the media, obliged to
give a performance of innocence betrayed, for one interviewer/reviewer after
another.
Again, she thinks she’s playing it. Previously, she must
have counted up the free food and vodka and one or two good times, thinking she
was coming out on top – until she was lying underneath, getting her
comeuppance.
Now there’s another lot playing her for all they can get. Having
written off her ‘chaotic’ kind the same way the police did (they’re all slags
until proven otherwise), Girl A’s story is being used as the antidote to middle
class cynicism: mea culpa, mea culpa, these working class girls were innocent
all along; we were so in the wrong.
Uncomfortable, yes; but middle class therapy, nonetheless.
Girl A has been moved from the Rochdale sex ring to respectable
hand wringing; both times the object of someone’s else's self-interest.