The man stayed away for two weeks but attacked her again on his next visit. "He did it one or two more times, I can't remember," she said. Then he stopped visiting.

The once bubbly girl started to withdraw from her friends.

"I started to cut my hands and wrists," she said, showing the scars on her left hand. "Every time I bled, I hoped I would bleed more and my wounds would get infected and that would be it."

Whenever her mother or teachers asked about her bandaged wounds, she would say she fell. "I just wanted to kill myself. I didn't know if I should tell my family or my teachers. My reputation in school had always been good."

A teacher who had taken her to hospital on a few occasions finally managed to coax the truth out of her.

"She sent me to the A&E and had a talk with the doctor. I was told that I would be sent to IMH and the police would come later," she recalled.

At the mental hospital, the police questioned her in the presence of a doctor.

Her mother, brother and grandmother visited her a few days later. "I didn't tell my mother about the rape then. I didn't want my family to judge me," she said.

Her family was not allowed to visit her after that. To her horror, the police told her that her mother had taken money from her attacker and might well have known about what he did.

"I was shocked. I only half-believed it," she said

After six weeks in hospital, she was sent to a girls' home, for her own safety.

After a couple of months, she returned to school. Although she was forbidden contact with her family, she managed to sneak out of school to meet her mother a few times.

"I told her what the police told me. She kept crying and denied it but she did tell me she had borrowed money from the man," she said.

Miss Azura continued to hurt herself.

"I was still having nightmares. The staff and social workers at the home were very nice but I couldn't accept that I was placed in a home with juvenile delinquents when I didn't do anything wrong," she said.

Her rapist got away. She said the police told her he could not be found.