"Bod" <***@yahoo.co.uk> wrote in message news:***@mid.individual.net...
1,000 girls raped, beaten and some KILLED in UK's biggest grooming scandal
LABOUR run authorities failed to act in Britain's worst grooming scandal
according to disturbing claims in The Sunday Mirror.
As many as 1,000 children suffered from the abuse in Telford, West Midlands
and girls as young as 11 were taken from their families to be drugged,
beaten and raped by mostly Asian men in an epidemic that is still ongoing.
THREE people were murdered and two others died in tragedies linked to the
scandal.
Despite similar high-profile cases in Rochdale and Rotherham, authorities in
Telford repeatedly failed to stamp out a network of abusers.
Social workers KNEW of abuse in the 1990s but police took a decade to launch
a probe.
Council staff viewed abused and trafficked children as "prostitutes" instead
of victims, according to previously unseen files.
Authorities failed to keep details of abusers from Asian communities for
fear of "racism."
Police failed to investigate one recent case five times until an MP
intervened.
The scale of the abuse uncovered in Telford - population 170,000 - is feared
to be the most brutal and long-running of all.
The Rotherham toll was put at 1,500 - but that was in a community of
260,000.
Since 2015, the Telford Constituency has been represented by Tory MP, Lucy
Allan and she has now demanded a public inquiry and said our findings were
"extremely serious and shocking".
She said: "There must now be an independent inquiry into child sexual
exploitation in Telford so that our community can have absolute confidence
in the authorities."
Specialist child abuse solicitor Dino Nocivelli, of Bolt Burdon Kemp, said:
"These children were treated as sexual commodities by men who inflicted
despicable acts of abuse.
"The survivors deserve an inquiry. They need to know how abuse took place
for so long and why so many perpetrators have never been brought to
justice."
One 14-year-old, groomed and abused after her phone number was sold to
paedophiles, said: "I hated what was happening and my abusers made my skin
crawl but I was told that if I said a word to anyone they'd come for my
little sisters and tell my mum I was a prostitute.
"Night after night, I was forced to have sex with multiple men in disgusting
takeaways and filthy houses.
"I must have been getting the morning after pill from a local clinic at
least twice a week but no one asked any questions.
"I fell pregnant twice and had two abortions. Hours after my second
termination, I was taken by one of my abusers to be raped by more men.
The worst moment came just after my 16th birthday when I was drugged and
gang-raped by five men.
"Days later, the ringleader turned up at my house and told me he'd burn it
down if I breathed a word of what had happened."
Documents which will be passed to the Home Office reveals authorities knew
of the horrors a decade before investigating - and shows how they tried to
hamper the probe.
We presented our findings to Professor Liz Kelly, from the Child and Woman
Abuse Studies Unit at London Metropolitan University.
She helped estimate the number of victims based on figures gathered by our
investigators.
Prof Kelly said: "We are acting as if we didn't know about child sex abuse
rings. We have an unfortunate capacity to choose to forget."
Sheila Taylor, of the NWG Network, worked on the Rotherham Inquiry. She said
the true scale of the Telford problem might never be known because many
victims were unlikely to come forward.
She said: "There is probably a whole cohort of young people that are not
identified.
"We are good at identifying white girls but are less able to identify young
men, young people from ethnic minority backgrounds, from travelling
communities, or with learning or other disabilities."
A police investigation called Operation Chalice identified more than 100
potential victims abused between 2007 and 2009.
Cops also said there could be as many as 200 perpetrators - but just nine
were caged and the case was then closed.
Today our investigation reveals the authorities were told of the abuse
epidemic more than a decade before Chalice.
Our probe - backed by documents obtained under the Freedom of Information
Act - found two predatory paedophiles began targeting girls from a local
children's home in 1981.
One of the abusers earned thousands a night for years trafficking girls
around the country for sex with hundreds of men, according to one victim.
In another case, a 14-year-old was groomed by an 18-year-old Asian man in
1985.
After she had his baby he passed her to friends to have sex with and
allegedly rape her.
The girl, now 47, says she reported her abuse to the council and school but
does not believe action was taken.
She says her doctor said she was mentally ill and should take medication.
The vast majority of those targeted were young white girls.
One report commissioned by local Telford and Wrekin Council in 2013
admitted: "From the late 1990s professionals had concerns about the nature
of some of the child sexual abuse cases presented to them."
But it blamed "understanding and learning at that time" and "existing
procedures".
Two separate investigations were launched at the same time as Operation
Chalice after two victims named dozens more abusers.
The victim in one case - groomed at 13, sold for sex and gang-raped - said
she pulled out of the investigation because she "didn't feel she was being
emotionally supported" by police.
Another victim claims officers discouraged her from pursuing her request for
evidence after she told them she was speaking to the press.