More Than 1,000 Children Abused By Grooming Gangs In Telford

Over 1,000 children were abused by sexual grooming gangs in Telford during decades of failures by police and authorities.

An independent investigation found that rape, sexual abuse, brainwashing, drugging and other crimes had gone “unchecked” in the city of Shropshire since the 1970s.

Similar findings were issued after a 2014 report on framing of gang activity in Rotherham and investigations in other cities, and the Telford report stated that child sexual abuse “exists today, and is prevalent throughout the country.” Is”.

The chairman of the investigation, Tom Crowther QC, said “obvious signs” of exploitation such as teen pregnancies and disappearances were ignored, as children were labeled as prostitutes or blamed for their “lifestyles”. And the criminals were set free.

They concluded, “panic about race was not investigated for exploitation,” as the perpetrators were reported to be predominantly Asian men.

“Teachers and youth activists were discouraged from reporting child sexual abuse (CSE). The perpetrators were encouraged and the exploitation continued for years without any concrete response.”

The investigation found that even after the West Murcia police operation began in 2009 and resulted in several lawsuits, the force and the local council “increased their specialist CSE teams to a virtual zero to save money”.

At least one victim of a grooming gang in Telford, 16-year-old Lucy Lowe, who was pregnant, was murdered and her death was used as a threat to silence the other victims.

He was killed along with his mother and sister by his abuser Azhar Ali Mahmood, then 26 years old, who set their house on fire in 2000.

Lucy had Mahmoud’s first child at the age of 14 and was abused by the age of 12, but she was not charged with any sexual offenses.

Contemporary media reports called Lucy his “girlfriend” and spoke of a “stormy relationship”.

Another victim, 13-year-old Becky Watson, was killed in an unexplained car accident in 2002.

Mr Crowther said failures by police, council and other officials had allowed “the horrific suffering of generations of children”, who were treated as “sexual objects”, to be either passed on for sex or were sold for profit by their abusers.

He said: “Countless children were sexually assaulted and raped. They were deliberately humiliated and humiliated. They were shared and smuggled. They were assaulted and their families were threatened. They were living in fear and their lives were changed forever.”

Mr Crowther said it would be “totally wrong and undoubtedly racist, equating membership of a particular racial group with a tendency to CSE”, and that there were perpetrators from different races, nationalities and backgrounds.

16-year-old Lucy Lowe was murdered by her abuser in Telford
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“A high proportion of those cases involved perpetrators who were described by victims/survivors and others as Asian or, often, Pakistani,” he said.

“The evidence clearly shows that the majority of CSE suspects in Telford were men of Southern Asian heritage.”

The report said there was “racial tension” in the local community over several issues, which the police and council did not want to “increase”.

The investigation took three years and covered the abuse that took place in 1989, although it uncovered accounts of victims who had been targeted back in the 1970s.

“For decades the CSE flourished uncontrollably in Telford,” said Mr. Crowther. “I noticed that references to exploitation became ‘generational’, considered ‘normal’ by perpetrators and unavoidable by victims and survivors, some of whose parents had gone through similar experiences.

“Such attitudes can only develop if exploitation is not properly recognized and challenged, and was not, in my view, for many years in Telford – as in many other towns and cities in England.”

The 1,200-page report found that the abuse was not hidden, and that police, schools and councils had known about it since the 1990s.

But warning signs such as repeated disappearances of girls, teenage pregnancies and reports in the local press of what was then called “child prostitution” were not properly responded to by Telford and Wreckin Council or West Murcia Police.

Meanwhile, the victims were reprimanded for their “lifestyle choices” and blamed for putting themselves at risk.

One survivor told interrogation how she was kicked out of school after becoming pregnant during abuse, and a teacher told her to “stop sleeping with these boys or she’ll never make anything of her own”.

The report said victims were often implicated using the “boyfriend model” of grooming, where they were targeted by older men seeking young and vulnerable girls.