Free Hailey's Story--She Was an Eleven-Year-Old Child. He Was Soham Murderer Ian Huntley. This is the Story of How She Survived by Hailey Giblin

felt uncomfortable and a bit out of place in his presence. In a way, looking back on it, he dared me to reveal my innermost thoughts. It was as if he was challenging all the boundaries with his invitation to reveal to him what little I could about my experiences with boys.
    With wide-eyed innocence, I looked back atHuntley’s unlocking eyes and asked, ‘Well, what do you mean about
daring
?’
    With his disarming manner, he prompted me with an example. ‘Have you kissed boys, sort of thing?’
    Embarrassed and with an uncomfortable shrug of my shoulders, I replied, ‘No, no. But I’ve played kiss-chase around the school playground.’
    This revelation, that I had kissed a boy, although just in a game, was something that I wouldn’t have wanted even my mum to find out about.
    Huntley was moving in on his victim: me. Huntley wasn’t your ‘abduct and assault’ paedophile. Exerting control, for him, was a gradual process and the start of that process was his pushing at the door of opportunity by saying to me, ‘I’ll tell you what, Hailey, why don’t we go for a walk? And we can climb some trees, because you’ve had a really boring life like me.’
    Alarm bells started ringing in my head about how Mum would go mad if I disobeyed her, so I replied defensively, ‘Well, I’m not allowed out of the end of the street!’
    Huntley deftly defused my reply with his charm. ‘Well, you said earlier that you were allowed out of the street with an adult.’ And then he pushed further, ‘Aren’t you?’
    â€˜Yeah,’ I replied.
    The boundaries of safety and the protective custody of the street were being whittled away by Huntley’saccelerated grooming of me so as to get me out of the street and to some secluded spot where he could carry out his sick wishes. He was talking to me as if we were both 11 years old when he pulled me into his make-believe world by revealing, ‘My mum, when I was your age, she was really strict, she wouldn’t let me do anything, and it’s so unfair, isn’t it?’
    â€˜Well, yes,’ I had to agree.
    All through our conversation I was sitting across the table from him. He was still, from time to time, gazing intently at the magazines. He didn’t make any effort to conceal this from me; he had this particular one right open in front of him.
    It was a Saturday and, by the look of him, he had decided it was a rest day, as I recall him having stubble on his chin; he was dressed in a T-shirt that was tucked into his jeans and he wore flat scruffy work shoes.
    I remember looking at his hair and thinking, God, you’re not that much older than me. Although he had jet-black hair, there were sizeable grey streaks running through it. This gave me the impression that he was already turning grey. He had mucky hands. He didn’t have aftershave on; he didn’t use a body spray either.
    When I went into the caravan that Saturday, there was dog hair everywhere and the musty smell of wet fur. Huntley had an Alsatian puppy called Sadie. It was the one Maxine Carr went on to keep after she wasreleased from her prison sentence for giving him his false alibi over the Soham murders.
    Huntley then skilfully referred again to my life in the street, saying, ‘You’ve a bit of a boring life, haven’t you? Your mum is really strict and so is your dad. They don’t let you go out of the street.’
    Then, cunningly, he threw a searching look at me as he probed further about what he had already touched on. ‘Have you ever climbed trees?’
    Knowing how angry my mum would be if she caught me doing that, I warily replied, ‘No. I’m not allowed to climb trees.’
    Returning to another of his themes, he said, ‘God, you’ve had a bit of a boring life, haven’t you, kid?’
    â€˜Well, yeah. Yeah,’ I replied nonchalantly.
    â€˜Yeah, and you wouldn’t