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

The police just don't care about women or girls.

I strongly suggest to people posting personal experiences on this thread that they be very careful what they post. Another thread was recently posted asking women to share experiences of being groomed and it was deleted and the poster banned.

Sadly, there are perverts out there who love to hear your stories.

That's what they like to tell people.

Fact is, they didn't give a shit because it was teenage girls doing what they believed was what teenage girls did. They weren't trying to 'not be racist', if anything, they looked down on those girls even more because they were 'with' non white men.

But it's probably more palatable to say 'but we couldn't do anything because it was racist to say so' than 'we didn't do anything because we think they're just the bog standard teenaged slappers we didn't care'.

I was at HS in the late 00's - the school was fed from all the surrounding villages. Mostly farming villages. This was in the Midlands.

Men (and they were men, often like aged 20-25) from local towns (and sometimes Birmingham) were picking up 14/15 year old girls from school. They would also drive around the villages and stop to speak to girls, and quite often tried to convince them to get into their cars etc. I knew too many girls getting their booze and things from these men. They literally prayed on the naivety of these girls (though at the time, none of us would admit we were.)

The parents, parish council, rando. villagers were absolutely reporting this, consistently. It never stopped.

Now the same villages have issues with County Drug lines trying to recruit the teenagers. Thankfully, the police have been far better at stopping this.

I've name-changed for this, but yes. High Wycombe, mid 90s. My home life had been stressful so I spent lots of time walking around the streets. I met a very young and good-looking British Pakistani lad. He took me to hid uncle's house (bloke in his 40s?) and asked me to have sex with him. Then he took me to meet a local heroin dealer who was absolutely terrifying and I ended up as his girlfriend.

Lots of presents, lots of trying to get me to move to Reading. I was aware of other young white girls at the time who were prostitutes, so it must have been happening already.

I knew loads of men from that community, and no women at all.

When I wanted to leave, they threatened to set fire to my house and kill me and my family.

I remember very clearly sitting in a cafe at night, with multiple adult Pakistani men. My ex-bf turned up and demanded I leave with him. I refused to as I was terrified he'd kill me (he had said he would). The adult men in the cafe all said I had to go with him. Not one person stood up for a terrified 16 year old. I will never forget that for as long as I live.

I ended up on heroin. Dropped out of school. Multipe suicide attempts. It took me a very long time to rebuild my life.

When the Rotherham story came out my dad says he and fellow lawyers in his city had been trying to flag their concerns for decades but key people in the abusing groups had powerful friends in the police and press etc (and no doubt in the legal profession too)

He wasn't in a very famous rock group was he? 😉

London in the early 2000s. Golborne Road area. Looking back, a friend of mine was definitely groomed by one of the usual (older) suspects. Thankfully she never got pregnant as a result, as far as I know. Attempts were made on me but I gave short shrift as I was informed about their attitudes towards western women from a very young age.

A friend gleefully confided how she and another friend had ran out of money for a taxi and the end of a night out so got a ride home with police officers. Police officers who gave them more alcohol, asked for and received oral sex, and then 2 officers had sex with one of the girls.

We were all 16 - I knew it was grim and sordid and an abuse of power at the time, but my friend thought it was all very exciting and went on a couple of dates with one of the officers “because he was nice and hadn’t insisted on sex”.

Yes.
I was at secondary school in the early 2000’s and it was pretty much in plain sight. No one ever did anything about it, it was just girls with “older boyfriends” 🤨 But considering at least one of the teachers was also abusing the some of the older female students (myself included) I’m not all that surprised that nothing was ever done about any of it.

For clarity, the person I met first didn't instantly take me to have sex with his uncle, we became "friends" first.

Like a previous poster, girls involved in prostitution were just seen as slags.

Later, I lived in Birmingham, where I had a "normal" boyfriend from the British Pakistani community. His mum and sister were both lovely; his dad refused to meet me as I was a "white slag". I feel that there was definitely this stereotype amongst some men from this community at the time, and that this was widely discussed in their social networks, and this led to them not feeling guilty when abusing females.

I was definitely groomed as a teenager, by men up to twice my age (all white). It took me a very long time, even in adulthood, to get the fact that I was child and it was them that were in the wrong, not me. Also happened to friends of mine. I wasn't aware that they were part of any 'gang' (although there were a group of them that would travel from the nearest city to come to our houses when our parents were away). There wasn't really any entrapment - I didn't feel I couldn't get away, but it was still wrong.
It was normalised at the time, as others have said - seen and ignored by teachers and even parents to some extent. My neice is the age now that i was when this started, and I'm so glad we're more aware of these things.
As a 14 year old, I thought I must be mature and sophisticated for a nearly 30 year old to want me as a girlfriend. Now of course, my perspective is very different.
When I saw the Tim Westwood stuff on the news, I was about as surprised as I was when about Boris Johnson telling lies.

@User135644 @NeverDropYourMooncup

I agree. I’m never persuaded that the police were worried about appearing racist 🤨. Judge them by their actions, institutionally I don’t mean as individuals.
I’m much more persuaded that services didn’t see these girls as children or vulnerable but instead saw them as uncouth, promiscuous and worthless.

My friend was fair game because she was out underaged drinking and glammed up. They weren’t concerned for her welfare or acting with compassion to a young person who was stranded.

I was a teenager in the 70s. The world was a very different place back then. Age 14 we used get dollied up, make up, sky scraper platform shoes, go in pubs. As long as you looked old enough, nobody cared. A lot of girls seemed to have older boyfriends, probably around their early 20s, I'm not convinced that some of these young men actually knew the girls were only 14/15, as they looked more like 18/19.
I had a brief thing with a 19 year old lad, when I was 15, (my parents didn't know) to me it was a but of a badge of honour, as a lot of girls fancied him

Yes it went on in south east London where I was at school. This was 1990-1995. One girl with learning disabilities was picked up by lots of different men. She got pregnant at 14/15 and wasn't sure what colour the baby was going to be.

Yet I don't think we registered it as abuse - not sure what the teachers thought as the men picking her up weren't discreet about it!

The misogynist, police were paid their cut. Fuck all to do with "worried about being called racist".Hmm I can't believe that anyone is taken in by that lie.

I agree @TooBigForMyBoots . Having read some of the detailed reports its very clear this was corruption and misogyny not a fear of being racist.

Once in 1991 when a flight to the US was cancelled. I had to stay overnight in a Gatwick hotel. So did the Pakistani mens hockey squad. They harassed me constantly - it is hard to describe how incessant it was - and came to the hotel bedroom door with gifts and hockey shirts etc for me. It felt like one of them was trying to broker a deal with me . I had to ask the hotel manager to move my room and was moved somewhere secret. I was 21. I appreciate I was not a vulnerable child but it has made me sensitive about the dynamics of power.

I'm from West Yorkshire and this was going on as early as the 70s. I was at secondary school from 76 and remember girls being picked up at 4pm by much older boyfriends in flash cars. When we were 6th form age we used to get into nightclubs in Bradford, Leeds and Keighley underage and saw it all going on then too. Local MP, Anne Cryer, tried to bring it into the open and tackle it, but was discredited by the far right and the police, sadly.

Agree with this

This thread is really depressing. It's awful to hear how some of you have been abused.

I am not a pervert thanks (in fact I'm a MNer of about a million years but I NC regularly for the same reasons as a lot of posters), but I understand the warning.

And I specifically didn't ask for anyone to share details of actually being abused themselves, I was just more generally interested in if it was something other people had been aware of when growing up. With no social media back then it was not possible for young people to connect the dots and see the magnitude of it the way they might be able to now.

If you look at my other posts from today (about pizza sauce, threading a sewing machine, and baby names, off the top of my head) it might reassure you of my non-pervert status...oh no you can't, because MNHQ fucked up advanced search

Yes things went on. The worse one I remember was a girl in my class when we were about 13/14 who used to visit the ' nice elderly ' neighbours a husband / wife probably aged 60s .
For some unfathomable reason the wife would be at home downstairs and he would be upstairs with said girl , him in the bath , and her wanting him off for money .
I can remember her asking some of us if we wanted to visit with her .😕

I wasn’t accusing you of being a pervert, I was just pointing out that a very similar thread was created yesterday where a lot of posters shared some very personal stories and I was concerned for the people sharing. Sorry for not being clearer.

I did AS you and got nothing which was what concerned me initially! 😀

In my 40s I can now see that there was plenty of inappropriate things going on, but at the time I was clueless.

Teenage girls bring picked up by older boyfriends at lunchtime from school. Is other girls thought they were terribly grown up, and the teachers thought they were slappers.

My mother was very protective of me indeed. I found it stifling, but in hindsight I think she was very much aware of how men behaved but it wasn't something anyone talked about, so daughters were smothered and protected. The ones who couldn't be protected were written off.

In my early 20s I had some awful boyfriends though. At the time they seemed decent. In hindsight they would have had nothing in common with a woman 15 years younger than them who looked incredibly young for her age.