I was sexually assaulted by my hairdresser at 13 and it wrecked my relationships with men for years to come: LUCY CAVENDISH

It all started when I was 13 years old. I had just enrolled at my new secondary school – a state grammar about 20 minutes away from my home in middle-class Buckinghamshire. I lived with my parents, my older sister and my two older brothers, and like most teenagers, I wanted to fit in. I played netball. I rode ponies. I was a clever girl who was trying not to be too clever because that would make me unpopular. I didn’t think I was particularly pretty and I was surrounded by very pretty, very thin girls. I wasn’t a confident teen – but life was still good. Safe, happy, on track. But that autumn everything changed. Very unexpectedly, my father just left. One day he was there in the family home, the next he was gone. It was devastating. I went from feeling secure and ‘normal’ to lost, lonely. It was all compounded by the fact our family essentially carried on as usual, not really telling anybody. This was the late 1970s and divorce was very stigmatised back then. Neither of my parents had been brought up to talk about their emotions, and so this seismic shift took place in our home without much explanation or even acknowledgement. I couldn’t confide in anyone, even my closest friends. I see now that it left me horribly vulnerable to another, deeper, blow to my childhood. One day, as I went to the shopping arcade in our local town, I noticed a new hairdressing salon. I hadn’t ever been to one before. My mother used to cut my hair into an unflattering pudding bowl style which I was growing out as I could see the other girls at my school didn’t have hair like that. Some of them dyed theirs. One of them, who I thought was particularly pretty and trendy, told me that she had modelled for a hairdresser in her local town, which sounded impossibly glamorous. Today, aged 59, it makes me so sad and angry to know that as a child of just 13, I felt responsible for the actions of a grown man, writes Lucy Cavendish So when I saw this rather modern, newly opened salon, I went in to ask what they could do with my hair. A tall dark-haired man in his 30s came over to talk to me. He was slim-hipped, handsome, with his shirt slightly unbuttoned. He smelled delicious. He told me his name was Ali and that he and his brother Shabs had been hairdressing for years in their native Turkey. His brother was at the back of the salon and gave me a wave. Ali sat me down in a chair and spun me around to face the mirror. He asked me what sort of style I wanted and spent quite a lot of time running his fingers through my hair and fluffing it up. ‘You’re such a pretty girl,’ he said, ‘but your hair is terrible. Who’s been doing it?’ I told him my mother and he laughed. I’m not sure why – perhaps because he was so warm and flattering, perhaps because he seemed so unlike anyone else in my predominately female, buttoned-up world – but I also told him my father had left home. I remember he gave my shoulder a squeeze. It turned out they were looking for volunteers on which to try out new styles. ‘Why don’t you come and for model for us?’ he asked. I was so excited I said yes immediately. I imagined myself going back into school and telling everyone that I’d been asked to be a model just like the cool girls in my class. One minute I had long straggly hair, the next I had a bouncy bob and honeyed highlights. ‘You look beautiful,’ said Ali. Gone was the ugly duckling. The person looking back at me in the mirror was someone sophisticated, soignee. I barely recognised myself. ‘I love it,’ I told him. After that, going to the hairdressers became part of my routine. Sometimes I went weekly. Ali never charged me. He said I could have the haircuts and styling for free because I was ‘modelling’ for the salon – although none of the endless photos he took with his Kodak camera were ever put on the wall. Over a period of a few months – as I grew to trust him – I started telling him everything about myself. Although I was making new friends at school, it was early days. At home my two brothers were busy doing sport and my mother was ferrying them around endlessly. My sister had a boyfriend and they were very wrapped up in each other. Ali was attentive. I told him I missed my father and that I was lonely. He seemed to understand. Sometimes he would give me a hug or stroke my hair. One time he kissed the top of my head. I was a clever girl who was trying not to be too clever because that would make me unpopular. I didn’t think I was particularly pretty and I was surrounded by very pretty, very thin girls He was so kind that I thought he really cared about me – like a benevolent uncle or even an older friend. But after about six months something changed. His attention went from being kind to being more demanding. He started kissing the back of my neck when he thought no one was looking. I felt confused, awkward. One time I saw Shabs look over at him while Ali was brushing my hair and running his hands through it. He gave Ali a very dark look. I now suspect that Ali had done this sort of thing to other underage girls before and that his brother was aware of it. Then one day Ali rather furtively told me that he’d got some new hair products at his flat in a nearby town. He suggested I go with him in his car so we could style my hair with these items and then he could do a photoshoot in his flat. Part of me knew that wasn’t the reason he was inviting me into his home. Yet I was also terrified that if I said no, he would drop me as a model. The idea of going back to a world in which I was yet again the ugly duckling was unthinkable. So that’s how I found myself in his two-seater sports car being driven to his bijou apartment. Even though it was many decades ago, I remember it very clearly. It was done up in 1970s decor – browns and oranges – and seemed very neat and tidy. He mixed me a drink (I didn’t see what he put in it) but I didn’t actually drink it. Then he got out some clothes – essentially lingerie – and suggested I got changed. He was murmuring, ‘You will look so pretty, so pretty’ and kept coming towards me. He hugged me, pulling me closer and closer. He was beginning to put his hands underneath my clothes. I started feeling incredibly nervous, on the edge of panic. I told him I didn’t want to wear lingerie. I was too young for this; it wasn’t right. I remember pushing him away and seeing the anger in his face. ‘We are in my flat,’ he said. ‘No one else is here.’ He started hugging me and trying to put his hands under my clothes again. I could feel his hands heading towards parts of me that I didn’t want him to touch. I started to cry, standing there like a block of wood while he groped me. I sobbed that I wanted to leave. I told him I hadn’t done anything with anyone ever. I was 13, a child. I hadn’t even kissed anyone. But he absolutely wouldn’t have it. He tried to kiss me, but I kept turning my head so his lips landed on my cheek. They were wet and fleshy. He was making these horrible moaning noises. It was terrifying. Then suddenly there was a knock at the door. Ali pushed me towards the loo. ‘Stay in there,’ he hissed. It turned out to be a plumber who was coming to look at all the flats because someone had said there was a leak. Ali told the man to come back tomorrow, but he wouldn’t leave. He had to see all the flats, he said, and he was coming in. Ali told the plumber to give him a minute. He came into the bathroom and hissed at me to get out and go down the fire escape at the back of the building. I didn’t need any excuses. I ran out. Five minutes later as I was walking out of the car park, Ali picked me up. He didn’t speak to me. He was furious, white-lipped. There was no more loving talk, no rubbing of my shoulders. Suddenly he saw a car coming towards us. He pushed my head down towards his groin. ‘That’s my wife,’ he said. ‘Keep your head down.’ Wife? I had no idea he was married. He’d never said anything and I had just assumed he was single. I had done nothing, of course – I was, in fact, his victim – but the shame I felt in that moment was overwhelming. By the time we got back to the salon, I was in such a state of distress that I got out of the car and ran home. The next day I woke up and felt absolutely terrible. I’d had torrid nightmares about being locked up in a dark place underground. In rational moments, I told myself I’d had a lucky escape, but inside I felt horribly dirty and guilty. I constantly questioned myself. Had I led him on? Was it my fault? With very few friends at school, I withdrew from life. I avoided going anywhere near the salon. If I saw his car, I froze. But inexplicably, I also missed him – the attention and the care he had given me. It was an overwhelming cocktail of conflicting emotions. Eventually, after six months of spending long evenings alone in my bedroom, my eldest brother, who was then 17, sat me down and asked what was wrong. The relief was palpable. It all came spilling out. ‘You should go to the police,’ he said. With hindsight, his belief in me and his deep outrage on my behalf was one of the clearest expressions of love I’ve ever witnessed. But this was the 1970s. Going to the police without being physically injured felt absurd. There was little public awareness of predatory paedophiles or grooming. These things were typically swept under the carpet or even laughed off. But this incident left a deep scar. In the wake of what we’d today unhesitatingly describe as the sexual assault of a minor, I developed an eating disorder. I wanted to retreat from puberty and hide again in the relative safety of childhood. Starving myself flattened any hint of curve. The idea that a man would look at my body with desire made me shiver with disgust and fear. Today, aged 59, it makes me so sad and angry to know that as a child of just 13, I felt responsible for the actions of a grown man. Indeed, for most of my 20s – and well beyond – I found it hard to have healthy relationships with men. That didn’t mean I didn’t have sex – I said yes many times when I wanted to say no – but instead that I felt wary and distrustful of men’s motives. On the one hand I really wanted to be loved, and so I got involved with men I shouldn’t have. But on the other hand, if I met someone who seemed to be genuinely lovely and caring, I would freeze, refusing to believe that they weren’t being duplicitous. At the age of 24 I ended up in an abusive two-year relationship with a man just because I didn’t know how to say no. It would take four decades, during which I had two long-term relationships and one marriage, before I really learned how to stand up for myself. And it’s only now, after ten years of therapy – including my own training as a therapist and coach – that I have finally been able to trace much of my behaviour to this ‘relationship’ with Ali. These types of experiences shape us for ever. They can happen to anyone – and they undoubtedly have happened to many women and girls. But when you don’t think anyone will believe you and will instead dismiss your distress as a bit of innocent slap and tickle, you just keep quiet. If I had been able to tell my parents or speak to my friends, never mind the police, about being groomed by a man nearly 20 years older than me, perhaps my life would have been very different. All I know is that the relationship with that hairdresser at such a vulnerable age made me see the world as slippery. From that moment on, I couldn’t trust the ground I stood on nor the men I met. Society has changed and we no longer turn a blind eye to such behaviour. But it still happens in the shadows, where we can’t see it. The solution, in part, is to shine an ever-brighter light on it. Foster the kind of relationship with your child that makes them feel able to talk to you about anything. Don’t let them sit alone in the dark, like I did.