THE front room of a small terraced house in Middlesbrough has been turned into a makeshift bedroom for a mother who sleeps on a cramped sofa next to the front door every night as she is so frightened of anyone else hurting her daughter.

Hopes of rebuilding the teenager’s life have been shattered by bullies who have mercilessly taunted her at three schools she has attended since she was groomed and abused by a 32-year-old married taxi driver.

“People say kids are cruel but they have called her white trash, a slut, whore, and she only slept with him for a free lift home.

“She hasn’t been to school for a year now so she’s not going to get any GCSEs which makes me angry and very sad.

“The biggest message I want to get out there is to urge parents to look at their children’s Facebook pages and privacy settings, I still look at my daughter’s now. Do not add people as ‘friends’ unless you know them personally and alarm bells should ring if messages are sexual.”

Christmas 2013 is a time the heartbroken woman would rather forget. Her daughter, who had just turned 14, was having a sleepover at a friend’s house with two other girls, but after being noisy, the friend’s father threw them all out at 2am.

They ended up wandering the streets before flagging down a taxi, but had no money to pay. The driver said if they ever felt they were in any danger then to call him and they added him as a friend on Facebook.

“About three weeks later she said she was going to the corner shop, but after half an hour, she hadn’t come back so I went onto her Facebook account and found about 300 messages between her and a man who listed lots of children as ‘friends’ on his page. Alarm bells rang.

“When I confronted her, she denied everything, but a friend of hers told me something was going on so I sat her down and called her bluff saying I’d told the police and he’d admitted everything. She said ‘I’m sorry’ and cried.

“He had taken her to Stokesley and abused her in his taxi in a layby. He said that if she didn’t go along with him he would throw her out into the middle of nowhere. He convinced her he loved her and they were going to run away to Turkey and live happily ever after.

“For three weeks he got inside my daughter’s head. He told her he loved her, but he abused her, she’s still trying to get her head around that.

“She still has days where she gets angry for no reason.

“The stress does her no good and she breaks down and cries hysterically. She had to take to the witness stand for four days at the trial, but I needed her to do it for closure and so he could pay for what he had done.”

She added: “We were threatened online during the case. On the last day, I had a message saying we would be knifed when we got to court, so we had a police escort.

“I was called a drug dealer and another post said ‘like mother like daughter’.”

Shakil Munir, 32, from Middlesbrough admitted exchanging explicit messages with the girl, but said he never sexually abused her. He was sentenced to eight years in prison in February.

The mother said of her daughter: “She overdosed on tablets after the verdict was delivered. If there had been other drugs in the house she’d have taken those too. She’d had enough.

“I had a breakdown and I’ve lost my job to look after her, it has been devastating.”