"WHEN I just turned 13, I got raped by a group of guys who were going to another high school." Twenty-one-year-old Lisa Solan's pretty, young face is expressionless as these words leave her mouth.

There is no spark of anger, no shadow of sadness in her eyes — normal reactions, one would think, for most rape victims — as she speaks about this horrific crime that eight years ago signalled the end of her innocence.

At the time of her ordeal, Lisa was a second-form student at Clarendon College in May Pen. She said that a male student from another school, whom she thought was her friend, committed the ultimate betrayal, raping her and then turning her over to his friends for them to have their fun with her in what is commonly referred to as 'battery'.

Lisa told the Sunday Observer that she had been asked by the friend to 'follow' him somewhere. He took her to another friend's house where she was taken into a room where he forced her to have sex with him. Her terror was magnified when he invited his friends to join in.

"It was one person first and then afterwards him call in the rest of them and they tried to cork up my nose and force open my mouth, because they wanted to have oral sex with me," she said.

"I tried to scream and when I tried to scream one of them pushed his penis in my mouth...

"I was fighting and carrying on, one of them give me a box, mi see stars. And I was crying and fighting an' dem never even sorry for me and everybody take dem turn until they decide they finish with me," a dry-eyed Lisa told the Sunday Observer.

As with many rape victims, she was overcome by feelings of shame and was too afraid to tell anyone what had happened to her, not even her mother, whom she described as very strict and who had her own troubles — a single parent struggling to raise Lisa and her two brothers.

"She probably wouldn't believe it if I did tell her," Lisa mused aloud.

She said she never reported the incident until much later, when her life became really messed up from a sad cycle of abuse, violence, run-ins with the law and incarceration. Her ordeal, she said, was not an uncommon occurrence at the time. "Is not me alone, you know, it was an in-thing for them (the rapists), them used to run 'battery' on girls all the time...," Lisa claimed.

She said she was forced to change schools because her attackers began spreading the word about what they did to her and were bragging about it. Her grades dropped and she started hanging out at her friends' homes when she should have been at school.

"Every day I was being bullied. Mi just couldn't tek it, mi start feel suicidal and mi just stop go school and go to mi friend yard," she said.

Today, Lisa, who seems highly intelligent, said she can reflect on how the gang rape caused her behaviour to change dramatically, much to her mother's distress and confusion. Lisa and her mother — whom she alternately curses and sympathises with throughout her conversation with the Sunday Observer — began to fight more often, with the daughter running away from home when she couldn't take the conflict anymore.

"She grow us without a father and she just frustrated and angry, you nuh... three of us, I'm the last one. She was just frustrated. ... if she say something to me and it sound harsh, I would just leave and she wouldn't see me for weeks," said Lisa.

Then, against the odds, she was gang-raped again, by older men this time.

"Because of people saying things and this and that and I just didn't know how to deal with it, I went away the day and never come in until night. My brother told me that I shouldn't come in the house, because my mother going to beat me, and when she beat me she nuh have nuh mercy," Lisa said.

She told the Sunday Observer that once again, she trusted a friend to give her somewhere to stay for the night. But, she claimed, a man in the household made advances to her. She said she told him 'No'.

"Him say to me, 'Well, you can't stay here then, you haffi go home'. But mi couldn't go home. Him set up some big man pon mi. Mi think mi woulda dead! When dem si say mi look like mi a go dead, dem stop."

The young woman said they carried her to a house that had been abandoned mid-construction and washed her off and left her in the bushes in the middle of the night. She claimed she was more afraid of something else happening to her out there at night, than facing her mother, so she eventually found her way home.

"Mi did fraid, fraid of my mother bad. You see when parents mek dem pickney fraid of them is not a good thing, you not going to tell them anything. When mi go home, mi dirty and smelly and all a dat... and mi mother she deh a gwan bout 'Look pon you... a nuh my pickney dat!' So she a behave."

When asked by the Sunday Observer how her mother could not have seen something was wrong, Lisa was quick to defend her.

"She never know, still. She just feel seh is bad mi want to bad and to do my own thing. But she did everything out of ignorance, still," Lisa said.

Incredibly, a third incident of sexual violence was to follow. She accepted a ride from some male friends after a sporting event at her new school. Night had fallen and they said they were going her way. They took an unexpected detour.

"Dem divert and go somewhere else..." Lisa paused briefly mid-tale, and bit her lip, as if in deep thought, before continuing in a monotone. "As one finish, one come in, so one done, another come in... a just so it go," she said, her voice trailing off.

The repeated gang rapes might prompt some to say that lightning doesn't strike in the same place twice, much more three times or more as in Lisa's case, but president of the Jamaica Psychiatric Association, Dr Yvonnie Bailey-Davidson — who does not know Lisa's circumstances — said many rape victims make themselves vulnerable to repeated abuse, by unknowingly getting into potentially dangerous situations.

"Sometimes people who are raped lose their sense of proper boundaries; they don't sense danger and do not exercise proper decision-making in order to avoid dangerous situations," said Dr Bailey-Davidson.

Lisa, she said, needs to be taught risk-management skills and how to look out for herself.

The rapists were never brought to book because Lisa kept the assaults to herself. In the meantime, her behaviour grew worse until her mother was at her wits' end about what to do with her now uncontrollable daughter.

"This is typical with rape victims," Bailey-Davidson explained. "Some of them develop adjustment problems, fear of the male of the species, sexual promiscuity, aggression problems. Parents can't manage them, so they end up in state care."

This is supported by Lisa, who said, "Is like she (her mother) couldn't take it and she report me to the Child Development Agency."

But the traumatised girl said she wasn't about to trust even the state-appointed social workers with her painful truths and the intervention was useless.

"They came to the house and they wanted to know what was going on, but mi never trust dem, never trust dem," she said.

Little did she know that her mother and the social workers were planning a more intensive intervention, one that included sending her to a girls' home.

"One day she (her mother) threaten me and tell me she carrying mi to doctor, and when I look, is courthouse I end up," Lisa said with a wry smile. "I put on my uniform to go to school and she said I not going to any school this morning.

"When the judge saw me, is like she had favour wid me more than the other juveniles there. She saw that something much more was happening with me. I was afraid, but I tried to tell her (about the rapes)."

But she said her fear got the better of her and she couldn't explain herself properly. Luckily for her, the judge decided that the likely option, which was the Glenhope Place of Safety on Maxfield Avenue in Kingston, wasn't the right place to send the juvenile.

She was given another court date, which, she said, made her stressed-out mother irate, creating a scene in court.

"She say 'how you sending her home?' She started to get boisterous in the court and the judge had to tell her to calm herself or she was going to put her out."

But Lisa didn't turn up for court. She ran away again, staying with friends. Eventually she returned home, but the arguments with her mother escalated into fist fights.

After a particularly bad quarrel, Lisa sneaked through her bedroom window and found a barber in town and, on a whim, shaved her head. When she finally got home, a neighbour warned her not to go over to her house. But Lisa said she smelled smoke and when she got to the backyard, her mother was heaping all her belongings onto a raging fire.

"She burn up everything mi ever own in my life," Lisa stated, a stone-like expression on her face.

Angry, sad and confused all at the same time, with no one to talk to, Lisa said she and her brothers had a falling-out, culminating in what, by her description, was a vicious fight that only ended when she broke a bottle to use as a weapon and the police were called.

After spending a harrowing night on the police station's guardroom floor, Lisa was taken away to Glenhope.

"I hear the girls screaming out 'fresh meat' and 'new juvie' and mi start get scared. One of them say 'no, she pretty, mek she stay, wi nah trouble her', but everybody who come after mi get beat up," she said.

Sharing a bed in an overcrowded dorm was unlike anything Lisa had to endure before, and she said she struggled with dirty bathrooms and food tainted by roaches or flies.

For her first three months at Glenhope, she claimed no one came to visit her.

"I had to steal, had to beat up the other girls and take away their stuff when they get their visit. Remember, my clothes burn up so I never go in with anything. I used to beat up the other girls in their sleep, beat them bad and take out all my frustrations," she confessed.

"When mi steal dem things, mi just line it up fi dem si next morning and none of dem can't come and say 'this is mine', or mi gi dem another dose (beating)," she said.

This rage, according to Dr Bailey-Davidson, is also a common trait among child victims of rape.

"Many people who have been raped are full of rage and act out and take it out on other people or themselves," she told the Sunday Observer.

She added that in some instances this rage is uncontrollable and is triggered by things such as perceived betrayal. This is exactly what happened with Lisa, who, soon after her arrival at Glenhope, used her intelligence to elevate herself to become a gang leader, running the institution's dormitories through sheer violence and with the help of girls who had been charged with serious crimes, including murder.

"This is the first I am ever going to say this, but we were planning to kill this girl in her sleep but it never worked out, because of this new girl weh did come she wouldn't go to her bed. So the following morning we beat her up," Lisa confessed.

She said the girl was "an informer" who was once part of their inner circle and had started giving away their secrets.

"She and my friend was friend and them fall out and she a go a court and most likely she would get fi go home and wi never want her fi go home... My friend who charge for murder and another girl who charged for wounding, they came and the three of wi beat up the girl. She couldn't even stand up. They had to rush her to hospital cause she was bleeding from her vagina."

Lisa was criminally charged for that act of violence. She was just 15 years old