Trapped and terrified, she says to herself: ‘What do I do… Would I even get out alive?’
By Mark Conrad | 17 May 2014
Jane is desperate to escape from the man who has tricked her into his plush apartment in a smart part of London.
In her account of events that were under criminal investigation five decades later, she found herself locked in his toilet. “Slicked-back” has already locked the apartment, pocketed the key, and is hammering the toilet door.
Bars on the window block her escape. Desperate, she peers outside. “Nobody going past,” she recalls.
“Eventually, I knew that I could not stay in the toilet forever. I was frightened about his becoming angrier, and carrying out his threat to break down the door.”
“I was very frightened. And, eventually, I realised that I was going to have to get out of there if I was going to get out of the flat at all.”
“I could not get out. I could not get past him.”
Jane decides that she has no choice: she unlocks the toilet door.
“He was between me and the front door. He had been kicking the toilet door, and threatening to break it down, and he was becoming angrier and angrier. What do I do? Push him to the limits? Would I even get out alive?”
“Once I came out, he turned me towards the bedroom, and walked behind me.” Jane is “struck dumb” with terror. Weighing less than seven stone, she has no chance of fighting off “slicked-back”.
“I do not have any memory of words spoken,” she says. “My memory is that I came out like a lamb to the slaughter, as it were… I think that the state of mind that I was in when I came out of the toilet-
“I just shut down.”
Slicked-back directs her to the bedroom.
It is in darkness. Her attacker seems at ease. He guides her on to the bed.
All she can smell is the grease of his slicked-back hair.
“It was dark in the bedroom, and I could not see much. I just remember him on top of me, and being very forceful.”
He rapes her.
“I cannot remember whether I undressed, or whether he undressed me. I am not certain that I was even fully undressed, or whether he simply lifted up my dress before he attacked me.”
“It lasted just a few minutes. But they were long moments in my life.”
“I just remember him on top of me and inside me. It lasted minutes.”
“Afterwards, he brought me a glass of water, and I fell straight to sleep. That is not something that I had thought about, after all these years.”
“I realise that he must have drugged me, because I fell straight to sleep. And I was asleep until he awoke me in the morning because he had to go out.”
That morning, still in a daze, Jane left the apartment. She trailed behind the man, and quickly turned onto a different street. Once out of his sight, she hurried away.
Jane agonised over whether to report the attack to the police. She concluded that she should not. “Back then nobody believed a young woman when she made such claims. There was a stigma attached to rape.”
“I had agreed to meet this man on a blind date. I was already sexually active. Who was going to believe that a high-flying professional man would act like that? It was a different era.”
Jane could not even bring herself to tell her flatmate, or anyone else, about her ordeal.
She associated London with the dreadful experience, and moved abroad for several years after finishing at college.
Looking back decades later, she said: “It was so well planned, and he really did not have any emotion.”
She returned to Britain, and met “Michael”, her long-time partner. But it took her several years before, in around 1987, she had the courage to tell him about what happened two decades previously.
Jane, a member of the Labour party, was astonished to see slicked-back go from young professional to Conservative MP, then a cabinet minister.
In the autumn of 2012, the UK saw a sea-change towards sexual abuse – especially by prominent people. Jane decided that she would report a former cabinet minister to police.
Exaro is protecting the real identity of “Jane” and “Michael”.
Related Stories : Child sex abuse, ‘Fernbridge’ and ‘Fairbank’: Exaro story thread
