Nazir Afzal, talks to the BBC about Child Sex Exploitation and why we need to do more.
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Nazir Afzal, talks to the BBC about Child Sex Exploitation and why we need to do more.
A disproportionate number of victims of child sexual exploitation in Hounslow are Polish or from other Eastern European countries a council report reveals.
The report, which was presented before the council’s health and wellbeing board on Monday (July 16), highlights the worrying trend which mostly affects first generation immigrants.
According to children’s charity the NSPCC, child sexual exploitation, or CSE, can happen when young people may be tricked into believing they’re in a loving, consensual relationship when they are really being abused or exploited.
Some children and young people are also trafficked into or within the UK for the purpose of sexual exploitation and it can also happen to young people in gangs.
Victims might be invited to parties and given drugs and alcohol. They may also be groomed and exploited online.
Multi-agency groups working with Hounslow Council to tackle the problem, say they are trying to raise awareness of CSE within the Polish and other Eastern European communities and provide greater support for victims.
Ealing Council put together this list of some of the signs to look out for:
*Unexplained gifts
*Unaffordable new things (clothes, mobile phones)
*Drug use, alcohol abuse
*Physical injuries
*Going missing from care/home, running away, homelessness
*Disengagement with school, not in school, truancy, exclusion
*Repeat sexually transmitted infections; in girls repeat pregnancy, terminations , miscarriage
*Inappropriate sexual behaviour or knowledge that is outside of what’s expected developmentally
*Sexually risk taking behaviour
*Association with older men or older boyfriends
https://www.getwestlondon.co.uk/news/west-london-news/warning-signs-indicate-child-could-14938206
Telford & Wrekin Council has called on home secretary Amber Rudd to commission a public inquiry into cases of child sexual exploitation (CSE), specifically in Telford.
A number of reviews of CSE have already taken place in the borough but the council now believes only an independent inquiry commissioned by the government is now appropriate.
Seven men were jailed in 2013 for child prostitution in the town after the Operation Chalice investigation.
However, fresh allegations were made in the Sunday Mirror that up to 1,000 children could have been victim to abuse in Telford over the last 40 years.
Telford & Wrekin Council’s leader Shaun Davies (Lab) said: “I grew up in Telford and was at school when many of the horrific cases reported over the last few days took place. As a resident, a contemporary of those who suffered and now as a parent, these stories sicken me.
TEENAGERS facing “the seemingly relentless development of new technologies” have been taught about how to spot child sexual exploitation and grooming.
Issues such as consent, how to understand if they are being groomed, and what could happen if intimate pictures were sent online were covered in a youth conference with 13 and 14-year-olds from across Darlington.
The Young Persons Conference was developed by Darlington Safeguarding Children Board and was held at Darlington College, working with pupils and teachers, to complement what was being taught in school.
The event covered three workshops covering teenagers and their digital footprint – the trail that people leave online – how child sexual exploitation is manifested, and emotional wellbeing. The pupils were then challenged to create a display for their schools highlighting the most important messages from the conference.
Police are probing almost 200 cases of sexual exploitation in West Yorkshire amid fears of ‘another Rochdale’.
Officers in West Yorkshire Police’s Bradford District have 179 crimes where child sexual offences are a factor on their desks.
The area takes in the small mill town of Keighley – described as the nation’s ‘capital’ of child grooming.
The crimes involve 165 suspects and more than 100 victims.
Last year 12 men were jailed for more than 140 years between them for their part in the abuse of a single victim in Keighley.
The girl was repeatedly raped by the gang in encounters arranged by a violent drug dealer over 13 months between 2011 and 2012, when she was 13.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/west-yorkshire-town-centre-child-10548639
Scenes in the BBC’s new three part drama ‘Three Girls’, which is based on the true stories of victims of grooming and sexual abuse in Rochdale, will have been heart-breaking and harrowing for viewers to watch when it aired.
But the harsh reality is that we need programmes like this to be made if we are ever going to lift the lid on child sexual exploitation (CSE).
Horrific crime with lifelong effects
Often unseen, it is a horrific crime which may have lifelong effects on its vulnerable young victims.
It can happen to any young person whatever their background, age, gender, race or sexuality. And it can take place online or in the real world.
In some cases, young people are persuaded or forced into exchanging sexual activity for money, drugs, gifts, affection or status.
Sadly, many victims often trust their abuser and don’t understand that they’re being abused as they believe they are in a loving consensual relationship.
The sex crimes chronicled in Three Girls (BBC) are too abhorrent to contemplate in anything but the most abstract terms. So tremendous credit is due to Nicole Taylor, whose dramatisation of the Rochdale child grooming scandal conveys the unspeakable facts while maintaining a respectful distance from the suffering of the young women raped systematically by a circle of abusers and then dismissed by the police as underclass attention-seekers.
After the scene-setting horrors of the first episode, the second instalment recounted the events between the initial assaults and the ultimately successful arrest and conviction of the offenders. Yet, far from vindicating the authorities, Three Girls once again stood as a chilling and infuriating indictment of officialdom’s indifference to innocents deemed too marginal to matter.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/0/three-girls-episode-two-review-rochdales-damning-tale-sex-abuse/
