A couple of times he stood up intending to leave but let them talk him into staying on. They promised him they would be going out themselves soon, would take him to the train station, and to appear friendly asked him a few questions about himself, claiming to know people in the tourism industry and in television who could help him find work. Then the courier and one of his friends hauled Darren into the bedroom, drew the curtains and forced themselves on him.
'Did you struggle, ask them to stop?'
'They made me go with them, I didn't want to. This friend of his wasn't very clean.'
'Did they force you to have sex?'
'They didn't threaten me with a knife or anything.'
Whatever his experience before that Saturday night, his innocence was gone now. 'Are we talking about oral or anal sex here, Darren?'
'Yeah.'
'Which? Both?'
'Yeah.' When they had finished abusing him, drunk, drugged, and exhausted he rolled himself up tightly in one of the sheets and lay on the floor by the wall where he slept. The next morning, his body was sore and aching. He hunted around the room for his clothes, dressed, crept out and used the toilet. The courier was in the lounge watching television, and Darren ran past the room door, down the stairs and out into the street. A terrified old lady he stopped near the end of the road gave him directions to the Underground station. From there he rang me.
Since he had not been threatened, tied up or locked in the flat, what he had gone through sounded as though it fell short of kidnapping and rape. Certainly he had been taken advantage of, but he had not put up physical resistance. Slipping capsules into his coffee was a nasty trick, but he had no witnesses or evidence to prove it had happened. If he had not wanted to take part in later events, why had he not walked out, and why had he gone back to the flat a second time? However confused and unsure of himself he was, surely he could have slipped away from them in the pub, or run off in the street on the way back to the flat? 'Do you want me to call the police?'
'What for?'
'What you've described sounds like you were drugged and raped. What if the next boy they pick up is even younger, the drugs and alcohol prove too much for him, and instead of bruises and a sore backside he ends up in hospital? You're sure none of them hit you, held you down, used force on you, threatened to get you if you told on them?'