Grooming gangs/child sexual exploitation - was it going on in your area in the 80s/90s/00s? Did you realise?

[WhichBitchIsWhich]

Prompted by another thread about the Telford sex abuse scandal, I'm wondering how widespread this really was (and maybe still is but today's teenagers aren't likely to be on MN to answer).

I grew up in a small Midlands town and was at secondary school between 1993 and 1997.

It was definitely going on there at the time, though I've only realised the scale and true extent of it in retrospect.

Girls (working class white girls, to be specific) from our school would regularly meet adult men who they called their boyfriends outside the gates at lunchtime and "go for a drive" in their cars, coming back with a McDonald's a while later. They were often collected at the end of the day by the same men. Some of us recognised this as abuse (or at least as not okay). I remember discussing it with friends a few times as a teenager and we certainly knew these men were not "boyfriends" as the girls involved said. It certainly wasn't a secret, the staff knew about it and watched it happen but said or did nothing (I assume, as it carried on year after year).

Most upsetting to me was a deaf girl with learning disabilities who was in my form group, who lived in a local authority children's home in the next town over. She was pregnant at 15 and I still remember someone asking her in class who the father was and her replying "just some fucking [racist four letter word beginning with p and ending with i]" (apologies for even hunting at the word but it's what she said). She didn't come back to school after she reached about 6 months pregnant and I heard from another girl who had lived in the same "care" home that she didn't get to keep her baby.

I realise now as an adult what was almost certainly happening to her

I grew up in South Africa and had a boy in my class confide in me that he had been abused by a scout troop leader. I think it later came out that it was a group of them abusing kids. Sickening and so sad. I often think about it.

Also please don't turn this into a debate on Tommy effing Robinson being the only person to speak the truth blah blah, I'm not asking about adults perceptions or prejudices and failure to act, I'm wondering about how other children saw or didn't see what was going on!

Oh gosh, were you able to help him tell any adults?

Story of the girl with LD is awful 😢

It was going on in my midland town I was in the 00s.

I had friends in school who had ‘boyfriends’, who on reflection it was grooming. I remember going to a ‘party’ with one of my friends and it was her bf’s uncles and stuff and really fucking weird so I left. Some girls seemed to think it was fine though. God knows what was going on, I was pretty wild myself but wasn’t up for whatever was happening there.

My mum worked in education at the time and knew people who had researched it and they knew it was all linked up to takeaways and taxi companies.

The girl with LDs came to and from school every day in a taxi with another girl. The thought that the people running the "care" home she lived in were literally putting her into the car and waving her off with the men who were abusing her is beyond horrific but also quite likely now I think about it (bearing in mind this was about 1995, pre DBS checks and safeguarding as we now know it).

Yes.
I worked with young women leaving the care system and supporting them towards independent living and there was a group of men constantly sniffing round them. It was very challenging. One of these men actually tried to come into the house to try to talk to me . Get the support worker on side, get access to the vulnerable teenagers. Unfortunately for him, I saw right through his bullshit.

I wish I could tell you I was able to protect them but I would be lying.

It was a huge problem.

That's two of us in the Midlands who know for sure it was going on there. I don't remember seeing a case in the news from my specific area (yet).

I'm not sure of the extent of it or if it involved gangs but there were definitely girls with "boyfriends" who were much older who I now think were groomed and certainly not balanced equal relationships.

I was at secondary school, late 80s/early 90s. I saw it happen too. In particular, a beautiful girl (drop dead gorgeous) who was picked up every lunch time by a reasonably famous person. Gossip was that it was her boyfriend. Person was at least 25 years older than her but because he was a bit famous - everyone was in awe. I cannot believe the teachers just watched and let this happen. She was 13 when it first started happening. When I think back, I knew it was wrong. But no one said anything. It makes me sick just thinking about it. I often wonder how her life turned out.

Me and my friend, both aged 14, used to visit a local shopping centre in a Northern town on a Saturday. Large groups of Asian men used to hang around the bullring as it was known. They openly propositioned us and flattered us, promising all sorts, asking us to go for a ride in their cars with them, telling us to go to certain takeaways and we could "have some fun". It sounds terrible, but we were 14, naive and flattered. Sometimes we chatted to them but thank God it never went any further, as it did with other poor girls we knew. There was no such thing as grooming in those days (early 80's) but when I read about cases over the last few years I realise that's exactly what it was.

Yes I knew of a couple of girls in situations like that, including one who was pregnant at 16 by a man in his 30s tho I bumped into her about 5 years later and they were still together

But that was a distinctly different thing from the girls who were going in cars with men straight from school. That seemed.... almost.... coordinated?

Absolutely it was going on. I was groomed by more than one older man as a teenager and I certainly wasn't the only one.

Yes, and I’m going to be totally honest and say it never even crossed my mind it was abuse. In my mind, they were tarty, tough girls who could handle themselves.

I was in secondary in the early 2000s and it was definitely going on (school in NW England). Several girls I knew hung around with much older men outside of school - rides in cars, drinking, gifts etc. I remember once heading to restaurant that one of the men worked at before we headed to a party - he gave us a crate of alcopops. We were about 15/16. At the time I didn't really see it as 'grooming' - although I knew it was dodgy and wouldn't have told my parents! - but looking back now, of course it was.

I was in Stoke on Trent at the time.

I was made aware of grooming in the south east in the nineties, involving mainly taxi drivers. Police and social workers were definitely aware.

Also knew some social workers in West Yorkshire in the eighties. Found it impossible to stop men exploiting vulnerable young girls in care as the girls ran away to the men whenever they were brought back. Why the men weren't prosecuted is another issue

I know exactly what you mean. I was a bit of a girly swot type, not even slightly pretty or popular, frequently targeted and ridiculed by the girls in question. The general consensus among my friends was that the girls were too stupid to see what was really going on with these men so more fool them. But although we recognised it as abusive, we definitely didn't recognise the real magnitude or seriousness of it.

Just white men where I lived. Seemed to be normal once somebody hit 14 that they'd have a 22-28 year old 'boyfriend' waiting outside school in a big car and would invite friends to come and meet their boyfriend's mates straight from school (so wearing their uniforms).

Then they'd either disappear and never be seen again or, if their Dad wasn't around, they'd keep the baby and stay with or near their Mum (would have been thrown out if he was in the picture).

The main reason for it being white men also seemed to be down to their fathers - the standard thing was 'my dad says if I get pregnant by a black man, he'll kick it out of me'.

So I'm not incensed by any particular group. Because the group that's actually the problem is Men. Men who offended, men who brought them up to expect abuse and violence, men who created the fetish of the sexy schoolgirl who 'knew exactly what she was doing' and maintained the attitude that girls being abused weren't victims.

Ah ok, I was West Midlands.

I was an unpopular, swotty misfit and I was still targeted.

I grew up in York and it happened all the time

every lunchtime,two girls a few years younger than me,(would have been about 13)used to roll their skirts up,walk to the end of the drive and get in the car of a bloke aged about 25/30 and they’d drive off and come back 5 minutes before lunch finished
the teachers would shake their heads,tut and walk away while muttering about what ‘slappers’ and ‘tarts’ they where

we all knew-the parents,teachers,us kids,our parents and whoever lived in the area
the girls where the ones in the wrong-they ‘tempted’ the ‘poor little man’ who couldn’t resist/help himself and the sick thing was,it was not only ‘normal’ but it was the girls ‘fault’

it happened to other girls and not one thing was done to stop it-if they got pregnant it was hushed up,the girls slung out of the school for ‘bringing the school into disrepute’ and the man walked away without a backwards glance

in my year alone,4 girls ‘left’ and only one had her baby (I used to see her pushing her baby about in town)
fuck knows what happened to the other 3-we couldn’t mention their names without fear of punishment (never heard about them again-I’ll bet my last quid,they just got dumped outside the system and vanished)

my dd started secondary and I saw it with my own eyes-not that much had changed-the men where just a bit more sly about how they went about it and the teachers made noises about ‘safeguarding’ but didn’t do anything like as much as they should have done

Yes, it happened to me and was not uncommon in my area (London).

All exclusively white men. Never personally saw or experienced any grooming that wasn't white men.

I temped at a LA disabled workshop in the NW in the 90s. Thé production manager used to sexually abuse the girls who worked in light assembly. Also thé female heating engineer who came to service the boiler.

In the 1930s my late aunt was sent over the road to masturbate the manager of a local football club by her mother. It's been going on a long, long time.

Sent by her mother Jesus fucking christ. Yes I know it's been going on since forever, I'm just interested in the perceptions of other children and whether it was known/un-noticed/an open secret etc. One of my close childhood friends confided in me as an adult that her father had abused her right up until her teens - I literally had no idea. I had spent nights at their house and never noticed anything untoward or had any concerns over how he acted towards me. But that was very much behind closed doors, whereas the abuse I'm referring to in my OP was literally in plain sight and unmissable.

I'm a nurse who works within this field

This is happening in almost every single large town and city

The most vulnerable - children in care , children with disabilities, home schoolers , children with adverse childhood experiences, children from a home where mental health , alcohol or drugs play a part

Social care / police / health are absolutely swamped with trying to deal with the impact

Feels like we've not learned any lessons at all