THE parents of two of the victims in the Oxfordshire child abuse case have spoken about the devastating effect it has had on their lives. Yesterday the Old Bailey heard victim impact statements from the parents of Girl 1 and Girl 3. They spoke of the “irrevocable” damage their children suffered at the hands of their abusers. One mother even suffered a stroke due to the stress of trying to keep her daughter safe from harm.

GIRL ONE'S MUM

She went from being a sweet, open child to a secretive and frightened child.

I think the damage done to her by these men is irrevocable.

They took my daughter’s teenage years, which almost seems obvious, but those teenage years were stolen from me too.

As a parent it is your job to protect your children, keep them safe, defend them and guide them into adulthood.

All I feel is a mixture of sadness and failure, even though I fought as hard as I could for my daughter.

When she went missing I would report her to the police and have countless nights awake wondering about what had happened to my little girl.

Nothing helped to allay my fears, especially the state that she would come home in – dirty, ripped clothes, smelly, with chapped lips. They were all clear signs that something was happening to he outside the home.

But it was me and her dad that were being scrutinised, judged and assessed by the professionals who somehow thought it was our fault.

You love your children unconditionally and you automatically know when something is wrong, but then you are made to feel by the professionals that you are wrong, inadequate, overreacting or just wrong.

I confess I felt a sense of vindication by the court’s findings against those men, but it doesn’t take away the feeling of being condescended to or just plain insulted by the professionals that dealt with us.

I could recount countless incidents where I have been frustrated and upset and insulted by the various professional bodies. But I would not have been subjected to all of this if these men didn’t have a taste for having sex with young girls.

It is their behaviour that has brought about the distress, upset and anger, fear, helplessness and impotence I have felt over the years.

My life is forever changed by what they have done to me and because of what they physically and psychologically did to my daughter.

In conclusion having read this you are able to begin to understand the despair we felt. We live each day trying to get by without dwelling on this.

We had this every day it was happening, but even when she was finally safe we were unable to talk about it.

GIRL THREE'S MUM

I don’t think she will ever get over it. She lost half her childhood, almost all of her secondary education and was subjected to the most appalling horrors, some of which she has still not spoken about.

She has totally changed.

She cannot relax, is hypervigilant and finds it very difficult to be on her own. She is still very emotionally dependent on me.

She suffers from nightmares, panic attacks and flashbacks.

Despite being the victim she carries with her a great burden of shame and embarrassment about what happened.

She feels she can no longer risk having friends in case they find out about it. She has the same worries about any new boyfriend.

When this case started up she became so anxious and distressed that she had to give up her college course and as a consequence abandoned the career she was hoping to pursue.

When I adopted her, I knew I would have to work hard to establish a real bond and win her trust. I didn’t know I would be struggling against the influence of a gang who used every tactic to turn her against me to such an extent she became seriously violent towards me if I tried to stand between her and them.

They also encouraged her to steal from me to pay for drugs or transport.

Hunting the streets for her night after night and driving all over southern England to pick her up when she surfaced from the latest trafficking episode took its toll physically and emotionally.

I suffered a small stroke in 2007 that was put down to stress. I also developed chronic insomnia, which required medical intervention.

The disruption to our lives and the amount of time it took to try and keep her safe meant that I gradually had to cut my working hours to such an extent I had to re-mortgage the house to take some equity out just to keep us afloat. I used up all my savings during this time as well.

In 2010, the threats from the gang became so real that we had to sell our home and flee Oxford.

The threats became so violent in the end that we moved even before we had a new home and we had to go and stay with family for several weeks, putting our belongings into store.

The day before we finally left Oxford she had a phone call in my presence, from an associate of the gang threatening to cut her face off, decapitate her baby and slit my throat.