The Times Magazine 49he found it impossible to outrun what he had
been through. He was confused. “I remember
looking at girls and fancying girls but thinking,
‘But I’ve been with a boy. Does this mean I’m
gay?’” he says, frowning. This confusion was
compounded by the shame he felt over the
fact that, for all the fear and physical pain
Lyttle had caused him, there had been moments
that had given him pleasure. “All my life I’ve
felt so ashamed and so embarrassed and so
small because of this,” he says. “It was very,
very hard for me to accept.”
A self-loathing began to set in. He hated
himself for having been tricked by Lyttle’s
lies about what lay in store at “big school”.
He hated himself for being so credulous and
passive. When his house was empty, he would
stand in front of a mirror and punch himself.
“I’d look at myself and think, ‘You’re a faggot.
How could you let anyone do that to you?’”
His temper became shorter and shorter.
And then, as he entered his teens, something
happened that would change the course of his
life a second time. He and a friend were walking
down a school corridor when one of the bullies
from his estate began to approach them. His
friend urged him to double back, and normally
he would have done. But this time, Hancockrefused. “I said, ‘No.’ I kept walking. And as he
approached, I just let one go,” he says, miming
a hard jab. His fist connected, the bully hit
the floor and didn’t move. “I knocked him out
cold. When I threw that punch, I was letting
years of anger and years of torment out. But
it went round like wildfire. That I was now
the hardest lad in the school.”
The problem was that Hancock had no
desire to be the hardest lad in his school. Not
least because other boys from other schools
would show up to test themselves against him.
So he would fight them. And win. “It got me
into trouble,” he says, grinning. “But there was
no way I was going to let myself be humiliated
like I did when I was younger.”
His father guided him towards boxing
where he quickly excelled. He represented
England at amateur level and impressed his
trainers with his single-mindedness in the
ring. One coach observed that he fought with
a ruthlessness you rarely see in such a quiet
and polite young man. “He used to say to
me, ‘You’re a dark horse. You’re an absolute
gentleman, a diamond. But when you get
unleashed you flip.’ And he said he’s not seen
many people who have that inside them.”
What nobody knew was that he was
using boxing as a vent, repeating that schoolcorridor knockout punch again and again and
again. Whenever he felt himself flagging in
the ring or gym, he would hear the voice of
Lyttle in his head, taunting him. “I’d hear
his snigger, I’d hear his laugh and I’d see his
smile. It’s like his smile was imprinted on me.”
He turned professional at 21, competing
as Callum “the Hitman” Hancock. But he
did not just take the nickname his childhood
tormentors had bestowed upon him. He had
already started to make good on the tearful
promises he had made over a decade earlier:
that when he was bigger, he would make them
pay. And so, one by one, he began to track
them down and enact revenge. “If I had a
mission in my life, it was to get them back.”
He would hang around in Eckington pubs
on the lookout for the bullies from his old
estate. If he saw one of them nip to the gents,
he would follow them. “And I’d just leather
them. Absolutely leather them. And if anyone
asked what had happened, I’d just say that
he’d started on me,” he says, explaining that
Eckington is the kind of place where disputes
are often settled like this.
Sometimes, he would take his dog for walks
near to where he knew some of these people
lived. On one occasion, he saw one of the
worst culprits coming towards him. “He was
with his girlfriend, had his top off and had a
dog chain in his hand,” he says. He opened his
mouth to speak but was unconscious before he
was able to finish his sentence. “All he got out
of his mouth was, ‘Do you remember...’” says
Hancock. “I saw him twice after that. And
I beat him up two more times as well.”
This cycle of reprisal continued. Many of
his targets had, like Hancock himself, moved
up to Sheffield. Some had turned to drug
dealing or become involved in other criminality,
which only made him feel more justified in his
actions. “It used to wind me up, seeing them
driving around in their flash fancy cars, but
they’re still putting fear into people,” he says.
Hancock would conceal his face, knock on
their front doors and the second they opened
it, start to rain down blows. “I’d drag them
onto the settee, pin them down and squeeze
their windpipe. I’d look at them and say, ‘I told
you I’d get you back,’ and then I’d pull my
hood back so that they could see who it was.”
He would beat them, choke them, demand
answers. Why, he would hiss, had they done
all those things to him as a boy? “They would
say they were sorry. That they didn’t realise
what they were doing. That they were getting
told what to do. That they were getting bullied
too,” he says. Their answers never really
provided any closure. Even the satisfaction
of seeing their fear and pain was fleeting.
“I’d get a rush of adrenaline. A good buzz. But
afterwards, I didn’t feel anything whatsoever.”
In his mind, though, this was all just
practice. He had become convinced thatLyttle helped him finish building the den.
Hancock describes what happened next. Many
of the details he shares are horrific, but, in
precis, Lyttle, who was four or five years older
than him, began by exposing himself. Using
a combination of persuasion, intimidation
and lies, he started to molest the ten-year-old
Hancock. “He kept saying, ‘This is what you
do at big school... This is what you do when
you get older... You need to learn.’”
Hidden from view, Lyttle then raped
Hancock, who was paralysed with fear.
“Everyone talks about ‘fight or flight’, but
you’ve also got ‘freeze’ and ‘flop’,” he says.
“And with sexual assault, a lot of the time it’s
freeze or flop. Looking back now, I was just a
young lad who was scared stiff and didn’t want
to get hurt. And I also believed what he was
telling me. I absolutely believed him.”
Once it was over, he was left “a mess
on the floor” of his den. A second assault
involving Lyttle occurred some months later
in woodland. Hancock had been trying to hide
from Lyttle up a tree, but he was spotted. “He
just pulled me down,” says Hancock.
For the first few years following his rape,
Hancock says he tried to shut the memory
away. But as he reached adolescence and
began to develop his own sexual desires,
‘The older I got, the harder it was
becoming. I could no longer live with it’