Abused As I Prayed…

…but telling her story was the first step for Nabila in her long fight for justice.

Nabila Sharma*, 41

W Midlands

Pulling on the heavy black scarf, I covered my long hair as Mum had shown me. But no matter how modestly I dressed for the mosque, I knew the imam would still want me to go upstairs to his private study-bedroom. The disgusting touching and kissing would start again.

Sure enough, when the other children were leaving…

‘Nabila, come up to clean my room, and practise reading your prayers,’ he ordered.

Four years earlier, aged seven, I’d started having after-school lessons at our local mosque to study the Koran.

We all had to respect our teacher, the imam. But his straggly grey beard had old food stuck in it, and his sarong was so loose we could see his black pants when he sat down.

The imam was harsh and beat kids with a stick if they hadn’t studied. As a slow learner, I was terrified of being hit.

But the imam praised me. ‘You’re clever, Nabila. You know your prayers already.

‘As a reward, you can clean my study after class.’

The other girls looked at me enviously. They thought it was an honour. But upstairs, after I’d finished cleaning his dirty room, he began to stroke and kiss me, squeezing my cheeks.