It is a terrible ordeal for any mother to have go to court to fight for the future of her child, a torment made all the worse when the father has a history of abuse and violence.

For Sarah – not her real name – the stress was even greater. Because, in an impersonal courtroom, she was forced to sit barely six feet away from a man she thought was out of her life forever, a member of a ruthless Asian grooming gang that she says snatched her from a Tesco car park as a teenager and kept her as a sex slave for 12 years.

More agonising still, she says the five-year-old son they were fighting for was conceived through rape, part of a pattern of assault, aggression, controlling behaviour and degrading verbal abuse – including constantly being demeaned as 'white trash' – that she suffered at the hands of her abductors.

They're wrecking my life: Sarah, who feel betrayed by social services keeping her children from her

The Mail on Sunday can now reveal that this alleged rapist was, incredibly, given a say in the future care of the young boy, and could have a role in his upbringing, heaping fresh agony on Sarah – who, already suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and depression, had seen her child taken away from her by social services.

As if that was not horrifying enough, Sarah went through the torment not once, but twice.

After escaping her captors, she was tracked down by another man who she is convinced was linked to the gang. She claims he also beat and raped her, resulting in the birth of a daughter earlier this year.

Again, social services declared Sarah an unfit mother and took the baby away within 24 hours of her birth. Again, they sought out the father to give him a say in the child's upbringing. He wanted no part, and the baby was put up for adoption, to Sarah's great distress. She may never see her child again, and certainly not until she is 18.

'This pain caused by social services is in some ways worse than the pain caused by the gang,' she says. 'When they are taking away my children, it feels exactly the same as what that group did: the same threat, the same anxiety, everything. I am desperate to see my daughter.'

Throughout her captivity, Sarah claims she was raped, beaten and given sedatives by the gang, who forced her into three sharia marriages and made her have eight abortions.

Sarah's case was described by a member of the House of Lords last month as the most serious example of sex grooming to emerge in Britain. Crossbencher Baroness Caroline Cox told this newspaper: 'I agonise over Sarah's continuing ordeal. And it is appalling that she was forced to confront one of her alleged rapists at a court hearing where he was consulted about her son's future. How can the courts and social services allow this cruel treatment?'

Crossbencher Baroness Caroline Cox (pictured) said: 'I agonise over Sarah's continuing ordeal

Sarah, who grew up in the Home Counties, is the youngest of four children, born to a builder and a housewife. For legal reasons and her safety, her real name, where she was kidnapped, where she was held and where she now lives, must remain secret.

When she was lured into a car on an autumn afternoon, she was a quiet 15-year-old who dreamed of becoming a midwife. She had never had a boyfriend.

From the outset, her kidnappers were determined to make Sarah dependent on them. She says they hid her in various houses and severed her contact with the outside world by refusing her a mobile phone or computer. She was made to wear Islamic dress, learn the Koran and speak only the Pakistani languages Urdu and Punjabi.

In her years of captivity, Sarah fell victim to Stockholm syndrome, where a prisoner forms an emotional attachment to a captor, becoming particularly attached to the gang leader even though she felt her mind was 'being twisted'.

It was on only the second night that he first raped her. 'I was pulling back from him and I was scared,' she recalls. 'I felt angry, dirty and disgusted after he had finished.' While attacking her, he told her he had saved her from the gutter where white girls with low morals like her belonged.

They also threatened to harm her family should she try to escape, both tactics used by similar gangs elsewhere in Britain.

There were times over the years when Sarah's family came tantalisingly close to extracting her from the situation. Once, she saw her mother in a supermarket and they hugged and managed to exchange a few words, but the gang then bundled her away, and sped off in a car.

Monster sneered 'white girls belong in the gutter' as he assaulted her

That night Sarah was moved to a different town. In the car on the way, one of her abductors 'smashed my head against the dashboard and windows, which became splattered with my blood'.

For three hours each morning she had to cook, clean and iron for the gang. If she didn't, she says she was beaten. Out of the blue, the leader announced he had married her. 'I hadn't been to any ceremony but he showed me the Islamic wedding certificate signed by an imam at the local mosque,' she says.

Rape and abortions shaped her existence. When the leader tired of her, she was married off to another man – with whom she had her son – and later to someone else. She tried several times to escape, often running down the street only to be grabbed and dragged back to the house for a beating.

Once, she used her captor's mobile phone to call for a cab while he slept. 'When the taxi arrived I was in Islamic clothes. I raced out and told the driver, a white man who kept asking if I was all right because I was so pale, to take me to where my brother lived,' she said.

But the gang tracked her down, and again she was drawn into their clutches.

Eventually, however, she did completely extricate herself from her captors when, after a particularly savage beating, a neighbour called police. 'When the police arrived, I was still unconscious on the bed and had blood pouring out of my mouth.' She was rushed to hospital and her son was looked after by a family member. In hospital, she finally began to open up to police.

She assumed that the State would wrap her in protective arms. Instead, she feels the local authority involved in the case turned against her, exacerbating her distress.

Social workers referred to 'episodes of poor emotional presentation' which undermined her 'ability to care for her child'. They also questioned her ability to work with 'the professionals'.

Baroness Cox says: 'To take her children away from her at this point, after all she had endured, is particularly cruel and unfair.'

Inexplicably, social services invited the father of her son – a man Sarah says raped her repeatedly – to have his say on what might be best for their child. She had no idea that he would attend the family court hearing and she was sitting with her legal team in an anteroom when she caught sight of him through a glass-panelled door.

'He was staring at me in an intimidating way,' she recalls. She felt a familiar dread, her heart rate leapt and bile rose in her throat. 'I said, 'Oh my God, he's there.' We went in to the court and I could hear his footsteps behind me.

It made my skin crawl to see him in court

'He stood up and said, 'I want to know what has happened to my son, your honour.' I shouted 'Nothing, this is all to do with you lot', referring to the gang.

'And he just turned to me and smirked. I was so upset. That was one of the most unbelievable things that has happened.' It was decided at the hearing that the man should engage with social workers and be 'assessed' to determine whether he should have future access.

'It made my skin crawl to see him there, allowed to stand up and say his piece,' says Sarah.

She finds the decision to involve him obscene and feels equally appalled at the way social services went to great lengths to trace the father of her daughter.

Around this time, Sarah claims he sent her threatening text messages. In one she says that he claimed to have 'done a deal with social services' to place the child with 'a Muslim family' – although there is no evidence that this is true.

Sarah says: 'Every time the court contacted him, he threatened me, saying he would slit my throat, throw acid in my face, and say my family are going to get it.' He wanted no part of his daughter's upbringing, but social services still asked if he could suggest a friend or relative to take care of the girl.

But they refused Sarah's pleas to look after her daughter, 'even when I begged them,' she says.

She now feels as if right and wrong 'have been turned upside-down'. By her own admission, Sarah regrets some of her behaviour during her dealings with the authorities. But she insists they were born from frustration and that, feeling cornered, it was inevitable that she would fight to keep her children.

She says: 'People get PTSD after fighting in wars, but then they return to their families and can get help. I was never offered any real help – not by the State.

I agonise over her ordeal... To take her children away after all she endured is particularly cruel and unfair

'All the social services are interested in is to stigmatise me, to provoke me so they can say I cannot work with professionals, and use that to take away my children. Where were those social services when I, as a child, was kidnapped and raped for years? It is only now I am free that they rush to the scene to wreck what remains of my life.'

Her son, whom she is permitted to see for just four hours a week, lives with a member of her family under a special guardianship order.

But that is more than she will see of her baby daughter who has been put up for adoption. Sarah says that social services even tried to prevent her from saying goodbye to her baby, although a judge overruled that decision.

'I recently had a text message from social services saying, 'Do you want to say goodbye?',' she revealed. 'How insensitive.'

She is still waiting to hear when they will meet, while reflecting on all that she has lost. 'The other morning my friend came round with her eight-week old baby,' she said. 'It is nice to have cuddles but I was thinking imagine that was my little girl crawling around. What is she doing now?'

Police and social services abandoned her. It's cruel

Sarah believes that, given a little more time and care, she would make an effective, loving mother. Baroness Cox, who has become closely involved both in the case and with Sarah's family, agrees.

'I was at her home when her little boy came home from school and I saw their love for another,' she says. 'My pain at Sarah's ordeal is exacerbated by the knowledge that there must be many hundreds of girls suffering from the horrors of gang rapes in the UK today and, in many cases, the perpetrators are still living locally with impunity.

'The Government must ensure political correctness does not inhibit police and social workers from providing protection and help for women who are suffering in ways which would make suffragettes turn in their graves.'

Baroness Cox also put Sarah in touch with lawyers from the Christian Legal Centre who are helping with the case. Andrea Williams, its chief executive, said: 'Social services and the family law court system do not understand the violence and devastation of grooming gangs. Rather than bringing the aggressors to justice, the police and social services abandoned Sarah leaving her to suffer alone. It is cruel.

'Any civilised system would work to help Sarah to heal, not steal her children from her just as she is breaking free from a gang that has abused her for years. Instead the system has actively aggravated her trauma by ripping her children away from her and giving her rapists a voice in their upbringing.'

Both the local authority and the police force involved in Sarah's case declined to comment.