Girl A: the truth about the Rochdale Sex Ring by the individual who stopped them: a CDA of a rape victim’s testimony

Abstract

As a result of one young woman's ability to speak out, nine men living in Greater Manchester were convicted in 2012 for sex trafficking of underage girls. Reports revealed that numerous vulnerable teenagers had been coerced into keeping quiet about this in exchange for various rewards, but, through one victim's account, we can visualise the torture endured at the hands of these men. In an interview on ITV, Girl A constructs her identity as a survivor who describes how she has been preyed upon. To show how she perceives her world, herself and other participants, this paper applies a CDA informed approach. The focus is on the TRANSITIVITY patterns (Halliday and Matthiessen 2014) employed in her discourse and that of the interviewers, with the aim of providing insights into how this system shapes the representation of a particular experience, in this case rape.