Police ‘failing to protect’ thousands of girls at risk of sexual abuse - Times report 10 years after it exposed grooming gangs

[stumbledin]

The “missing episodes” are recorded when parents or social workers cannot find a child known to be at risk of sexual exploitation and call the police. The majority of victims are under-age girls and many are thought to run away repeatedly to visit older abusers who groom them with money, alcohol and drugs.

The Times investigation also revealed:
• Children known to be at risk of abuse have gone missing more than 55,000 times in Britain over the past three years, with some as young as 11.
• Police intelligence reports admit “significant gaps” in knowledge around child sexual exploitation and a failure by some officers to record any information about suspects.
• One teenager with learning disabilities was filmed being abused by a group of men but police initially took no action because she claimed that it was consensual.
• High Court judges have complained to the government that councils are keeping child victims of abuse in caravans because of a lack of space in regulated secure children’s homes.
• Forces tried to cover up the failings by redacting potentially embarrassing findings in reports during a nine-month freedom of information battle with reporters.

... Two thirds of police forces ... recorded a total of 56,479 occasions when children at risk of abuse went missing since 2018. Forces reported that victims were most commonly aged between 14 and 16.

... A clear change of attitude in policing leadership has brought proper focus on the issue and hundreds of offenders have been prosecuted. But combating CSE is exceedingly complex. Many young people at risk of grooming do not consider themselves victims and do not want to make disclosures to the police. Some victims fear repercussions from their abusers, while others have moved away and are difficult to locate.

Just part of a very long article in the Times - sorry no share token www.thetimes.co.uk/article/police-failing-to-protect-thousands-of-girls-at-risk-of-sexual-abuse-0vfsqg36h

The article doesn't cover one aspect of this failure which is the Government's use of informal homes, ie basically private landlords providing bed spaces and nothing else, meaning that many children when found are often then places in houses where they are at much at risk as being on the street.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-56125222

(As a side note some councils try to house women escaping domestic violence in unregulated homes because there are so few refuges - and of course it is cheaper to put someone in a run down shared accomodation house where there are no support staff)

Placemarking to read in more depth. Thanks for this

basically private landlords providing bed spaces and nothing else, meaning that many children when found are often then places in houses where they are at much at risk as being on the street.

Probably even more at risk as men can abuse them with impunity when they are out of sight, behind the closed doors of a bedroom.

I felt sick reading this. Every tiny bit of progress seems to be washed away almost immediately by organisational indifference. I really have lost my faith in humanity.

Completely sickening.

It's girls and low socioeconomic status. It's contempt, misogyny, and the bizarre individualisation of responsibility onto the under-aged.

Trigger warning.

The scale of this has never been truly acknowledged by the authorities. The number of Gang members is the absolute tip of the iceberg as far a the number of rapes go.
I can remember reading in the expose in the Times in 2012 about a 15 year old girl brought from one town to another for sex with men. At six o'clock the cars started turning up, full of men. They sat in the cars, and cued up the stairs and along the landing waiting their turn.
In that one night 50 men paid to have sex with her. Lets call it what it was though. 50 men paid to rape a child. That's not gang members, that's ordinary men from their community. Not one of them were prosecuted. That's one girl in one house on one night.
50.
This has been going on since the 1970s

This may be a particularly egregious

This has been going on long before the 70s.

The difference is that we are meant to have different values, and a paid for care service to ensure that children aren't exploited.

Absolutely horrific.

I was at risk of care and didn't want to because heard things from friend in care. She ok in foster home with nice foster mum but knew other girls in bad places.
Now am adult in very violent relationship and went back after refuge because councils try to put you mixed sex housing and maybe violent men just from prison so trapped as disabilities. Think different if children under 18 and domestic violence and think rehoused safe from refuge but don't know and just hope so but definitely not safe for women without or grown up children.

The problem is there's no appetite in society generally to tackle any of this. This situation, care leavers. The recent reports about sexual assault and rape in schools. Etc etc etc

The recent stats that only 1.5 of reported rapes lead to CHARGE.

When it comes to sexual violence against women and girls there's hand wringing but in the end it's not apriority for anyone really.

And the media doesn't help. Just remembered the other thread. Children selling explicit stuff on only fans. Headline should be. Men buying explicit content from children. Police on way to them.

There's no appetite to tackle it at any level.

I don't know what to do really.

I'm sure I've mentioned this on other threads but this has been known about and ignored for decades. Back when Marie Clare used to employee real journalists they ran stories and interviews from concerned mothers/social worker, victims etc back in the late 90s early 2000s.