First I have heard of this. I wonder how many more such
horror stories there are that I am not aware of?
Anna Ruston was held for 13 years and brutally raped
by a Pakistani inside his family home,
but is now bravely telling her story
BY EMILY RETTER, Mirror
file photo
For 13 long years Anna Ruston was held prisoner inside her abductor’s home; she was beaten relentlessly and used a sex slave.
Her harrowing story, told for the first time today, has chilling echoes of those of world-famous kidnap victims Natascha Kampusch , Jaycee Lee Dugard, Elizabeth Smart, and Elisabeth Fritzl.
Yet this all happened in the UK.
Mostly locked in a bedroom, Anna’s only contact with the outside world came on rare hospital visits for brutal injuries and the birth of four children.
These innocents, the result of repeated rapes, would later be sold on by the monster.
Through these hospital visits, he would remain by her side, posing as her husband – yet she was too petrified to speak out.
Her ordeal was similar to that of the daughter of Josef Fritzle (Photo: Getty Images)
“I can still see that bedroom, the corner where I would rock in pain. Although after a while I stopped feeling pain, I think my body shut down,” she says. “And I can smell it – the can I used as a toilet, the garlic he reeked of. I got to the point where I didn’t know what life was.”
Anna only stayed sane, she recalls, by talking to her late grandmother – the woman who brought her up when her parents rejected her.
That, and by looking at a small ragged photo of her first boyfriend, Jamie, which she kept hidden under a floorboard.
Just 15 when first imprisoned, Anna, whose name has been changed for her safety, has never felt strong enough to give evidence to bring her captor to justice. The police have tried to change her mind, even revealing a later victim is willing to speak out if she does.
The house of 'Sweden's Fritzl'
But as part of her therapy, she has written her story in a new book, Secret Slave. She hopes, in time, she will be able to take her captor to court.
Anna told how she was a vulnerable teen staying with a friend of her mum’s before she was lured by Malik – an Asian taxi driver who worked at the Midlands rank where she helped out.
Malik is a Pakistani name, to be specific. I know that is no surprise to anyone from the Midlands area.
“My nana died when I was ten and my parents didn’t want me,” Anna explains.
Her story bears similarities to those of young white girls, often in care, who have been groomed by convicted Asian sex gangs across the UK.
“If anyone showed me affection I grabbed hold of that,” she adds. “Malik would ask me how I was. It was nice to have someone interested."
American Elizabeth Smart was kidnapped aged 14 (Photo: Reuters)
“When he asked me to go back to his house for tea he knew no one would miss me."
“There are a lot of vulnerable girls like I was. This could be happening on any street.” Anna fears it was because Malik was Asian that authorities she encountered during her captivity asked no questions.
She says: “Malik dressed me in his culture’s clothes, dyed my hair black, made me wear a scarf and keep my head down. When he spoke for me they thought it was a cultural thing. And I think people are scared to be accused of discrimination.” Sounding more broken than angry, she adds: “I feel let down.”
It was one day in 1987 that the cabbie asked blonde Anna to “meet his family for tea”, which she “thought was nice”. It was just two days after her 15th birthday.
She says Malik lived with his brothers, their wives, children and his mother.
Anna recalls: "They gave me milky tea and chapattis and even when Malik said I should stay the night I thought nothing of it, I assumed he would take me home in the morning.”
Natascha Kampusch was held in a basement for eight years (Photo: REUTERS/Police/Handout)
Instead, she says, Malik came into her room and branded her a “filthy white s***” who he would “make his own”. He turned on her with the most violent physical abuse and sickening rape imaginable, then locked the bedroom door.
This torture and pain would be repeated almost every night for 13 years.
One of his brothers also took to visiting her. And, seeing an opportunity to make money, Malik eventually prostitued her to men who would visit the house. Malik’s family turned a blind eye.
The wives were sometimes friendly, on occasion sneaking her painkillers. They would draw heavy kohl make-up around her eyes to hide her bruises.
“But they were scared to say anything,” she says. “They were being abused too.”
The only time Malik let up in his abuse was when Anna was pregnant.
Jaycee Dugard was held for 18 years (Photo: Channel 4)
She carried four children during her captivity. The reason for Malik’s apparent care soon became clear. He wanted to sell her babies – as she quickly learned after giving birth to her first, a boy.
Anna was overjoyed when she realised she was pregnant. She admits: “When you feel a baby move in your stomach you feel you have someone with you, you are not alone.” But when her firstborn arrived in hospital, Malik quickly got her discharged and whisked him away.
“I barely held any of my babies, I did not get the chance to be a mother to them,” Anna says.
Each time, she would be marched out to hold her children for health visitors. But once contact stopped, the baby would be sold.
“I do not know where they are,” she admits.
It seems astonishing that no professional raised the alarm when they met this mute, six-stone girl.
Once, the police visited the house when Anna’s screams were heard – but Malik convinced them all was fine. For herself, Anna says she simply became too terrified to escape.
“Twice I tried to get out of the back door but I got such a beating,” she admits.
Instead, she made regular attempts to kill herself – with painkillers, by throwing herself down the stairs, and even by trying to strangle herself with her scarf. “But I couldn’t bear the choking,” she says. Anna admits she would eventually have ended it all, had not finally been for the help of a health visitor.
Secret Slave by Anna Ruston is out today: RRp £7.99 Blink Publishing
She eventually plucked up the courage to write “help me” on a piece of paper with a date she knew Malik and his family would be distracted by prayers for the Islamic festival of Eid.
When her health visitor came to the house she dropped it on the floor. Anna remembers: “I think she must have had an inkling, because she put her foot on it, then picked it up.”
When the woman handed her a form to sign she had written on it: “I will ring the house phone three times when I’m outside.”
The plan had everything stacked against it, but by miracle, it worked.
As expected, the family were occupied with prayers, and after the phone rang Anna asked to go to the toilet – they let her.
Anna had planned to try the back door – but with an incredible stroke of luck, a key had been left in the front and she managed to get out to her rescuer. “I think Nana was looking down on me,” says
By the time they alerted police, Malik had already been in touch, claiming his “wife” had run away and “suffered severe mental illness”.
But eventually, Anna managed to get them to believe her story. However, she was too terrified to press charges.
I can understand her reluctance to charge Malik, but she needs to get past that and hopefully writing this book will help her. As long as he is free other girls are in danger. His brothers also need to be brought before the law as well as the women who helped keep her locked up.
But what really confounds me is why the police are not looking for her children born from Malik? They have the records of their birth from the hospital, they have his admission as the father, yet they don't have any idea where the children are! They don't need Anna's testimony to get a conviction here, so why are they not pursuing this angle?
Under police protection, briefly, she stayed with her mother who seemed unconcerned about where she had been. Neither of her parents made any attempt to search for her after she went missing nor had social services.
Anna’s salvation came when she met Jamie again.
Amanda Berry who was held by Ariel Castro (Photo: AFP)
Her old flame, who had also been away with the Army, was delighted to see her.
When she told him she had suffered anorexia and had been in hospital and moved away, he accepted that. The pair slowly re-built their relationship. “I struggled with anything physical for a long time,” Anna admits. “I only let him hold my hand.” But Jamie accepted her anxiety was down to her mental illness. Incredibly, it was only last year she told him the truth.
“He went away for a day, I thought I had lost him, that he would judge me,” she says. “But he came back and just hugged me.”
The couple have four chidlren of their own, aged 15, 11, eight and four. Like the ones she had in captivity they are two boys and two girls.
I say I only have four – although they could never replace those I lost,” says Anna.
Anna, who still suffers from physical injuries, as well as bulimia, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, which means she rarely leaves her home. “It is a hard life, my children and Jamie keep me going,” she says.
Anna hopes one day, along with being physically free, she will finally be emotionally free.
Evil kidnappers who held girls around the world
Ariel Castro
(Photo: Reuters)
Bus driver Ariel Castro kidnapped three women between 2002 and 2004 by offering them lifts and luring them to his home in Cleveland, Ohio.
Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight were chained to a wall in a windowless room and constantly raped and beaten.
Amanda, snatched at 16, had Castro’s daughter in 2006 and was “rewarded” by being unchained.
In May 2013, he left their room’s door unlocked and she went to the front storm door to scream for help from neighbours.
Puerto Rican-born Castro killed himself shortly after starting his life sentence in 2013, aged 53.
Josef Fritzl
Elizabeth Fritzl had seven children with her own father (Photo: Daily Mirror)
Josef Fritzl kept his daughter Elisabeth captive for 24 years behind eight locked doors in a secret basement at his home.
He assaulted and raped her numerous times, and Elisabeth had seven children by him.
Four joined her in captivity but one died. The other three were raised by Fritzl and wife Rosemarie – he claimed they were dumped on the doorstep.
Elisabeth was 18 when her dad lured her into the 600sq ft basement in Amstetten, Austria, on August 29, 1984.
At times, Fritzl shut off the lights or refused to deliver food for days as punishment.
Elisabeth only escaped in 2008 after one daughter fell ill and she begged Fritzl to let her visit the child in hospital. Police who had checked on a missing persons report detained the family at the hospital.
Fritzl was jailed for life. Now 81, he is held in a section for the criminally insane at a prison in Upper Austria. Elisabeth and her children live in an unnamed village in the country’s north.
Brian David Mitchell
Brian David Mitchell (Photo: Reuters)
Elizabeth Smart was aged 14 when she was abducted from her bedroom by Brian David Mitchell.
The religious fanatic had been hired by Elizabeth’s Mormon parents as handyman in their home in Salt Lake City, Utah. In 2002, he abducted her in the middle of the night and dragged her up a canyon, where she was chained to a tree and raped. Elizabeth’s sister, Mary Katherine, then aged nine, witnessed the kidnapping and gave police a description of the abductor.
Elizabeth was taken to Sandy, Utah – 18 miles from her home – and held by her captor and his wife, Wanda Ileen Barzee, for nine months. In 2003, Mitchell was arrested after someone recognised him from a photofit shown on TV.
Mitchell, was jailed for life and Barzee for 15 years.
Phillip and Nancy Garrido
Phillip Garrido was jailed for over 400 years (Photo: Reuters)
In June 1991, 11-year-old Jaycee Dugard was abducted while walking from her home in California to a school bus.
Her stepfather, who was waving her off, witnessed the kidnapping.
Jaycee was kept captive by Phillip and Nancy Garrido, inset, for 18 years. She was forced to live in tents behind her captors’ home in Antioch. Jaycee had two daughters with Philip, giving birth for the first time aged 14.
Nancy Garrido got 36 years for her part in the crime (Photo: Reuters)
Phillip, who was on parole for a separate incident, was caught in 2009, when he was seen with two young girls. His parole officers ordered him to a meeting, which he attended with the girls and an older woman, who was identified as Jaycee, then 29.
Phillip received 431 years in prison, while Nancy was sentenced to 36 years.
Wolfgang Priklopil
Priklopil threw himself under a train after Natacha escaped (Photo: Reuters)
Austrian Natascha Kampusch was kidnapped on her way to school by Wolfgang Priklopil in 1998, aged 10.
She was locked in a windowless cell beneath his garage outside Vienna and beaten, starved and abused. She escaped in 2006 after she was told to clean Priklopil’s car and she managed to run to a nearby house.
Priklopil killed himself the same day by jumping in front of a train and Natascha wept when she found out, leading police to think she had Stockholm syndrome.
Natascha released a book about her ordeal, 3,096 Days, in 2010 and a film was out in 2013. Earlier this year, it was reported she lives part-time in the house she was held in after Priklopil, gave it to her in his will.
HELPLINES
If you have suffered any kind of abuse and would like to talk to someone, these 24-hour freephone helplines and websites can help you:
Samaritans: 116 123 (across UK and Ireland), and samaritans.org
National Domestic Violence helpline: 0808 2000 247
The Survivors’ Trust: 0808 801 0818 and thesurvivorstrust.org
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