Why has this West Sussex family abuse case had so little coverage?

[JoyousOpalLemur]

This is from a few weeks ago but apart from it being covered on a local police website and a couple of local news sites, it's barely received any national coverage and nothing on BBC News, even BBC Sussex.

Five men and one women in West Sussex have been jailed for 100 years for 39 offences, including rape and child cruelty, against two girls.

The men were the girls' two adult brothers, their father, their uncle and their grandfather, and the woman was their mother.

In the police report it says the girls were both under the age of 13, but in the press reports it suggests that older sister was 12 when she reported the abuse to a teacher, and revealed it had been going on for six years.

When she told her mother of the abuse, her mother burnt her with cigarettes as punishment.

This, to me, is worse than the Josef Fritzl story, which was an international sensation.

https://www.sussex.police.uk/news/sussex/news/court-results/family-members-sentenced-for-abusing-two-girls-in-sussex/

Wouldn't know where to start on how bad that scenario would be for those girls.

This is the first mention I've seen of it. Those poor, poor girls. Horrific.

Not heard about this story, must be kept local!

Sometimes news stories get far less coverage than you might expect. It usually depends on what else is happening in the world at the time. The media will go for the biggest stories that day, and everything else is sidelined.

I know of this story. It has had a lot of publicity on various news sites and papers. It’s definitely been on the BBC.

I live in West Sussex and hadn’t heard about this

I guess because no one can be named due to protecting the victim’s anonymity, make it difficult to write a decent article on it? Absolutely horrific case .

Oh my goodness this is horrific 😢

Same. Such a horrific story :(

Have you got a link to it being on the BBC?

I couldn't find it anywhere on there. I searched police comments and key details and nothing came up, and asked AI to look and it said it couldn't find anything on any BBC site about this story?

I found this express article https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/2121175/girl-raped-abused-three-generations-own-family

It's highly sensitive, and the victims are real people. I'm not sure whether the public interest angle outweighs respect for the victims, also if there is no 'services failed them' angle it's less a lucrative story and more about prurient interest.

I imagine the first priority is to protect the two girls, and as pp said, difficult to report on the perpetrators without revealing their identities.

And will they want to stumble across headlines and articles like the one above when they are older and trying to move on with their lives?

That goes into much more detail than the police report.

That's a horrifying read.

Because of the age of the victiims. Let the story die so the girls can remain anonymous and get on with their lives.

What business is it of yours? Why so keen for details?

I’m in West Sussex and hadn’t heard about it until this thread!

Thats true and at the moment it seems to be all about the spoilt Ginger ex prince tantrumming that he has been denied tax payer funded security while he swans around the UK 🫤

That’s horrific

It will be to protect the children who need the time to rebuild their lives, hopefully with a new family, and continue their education.

Because it's one of the most shocking stories I've ever heard and I'd like to know what happened.

Why do you watch the news?

The girls welfare and anonymity are paramount.
The need to know what happenend doesn't come into it
I'm out of this one.

What more do you want to know? If you want all the gory details then shame on you. The priority is the welfare of the child victim’s, they aren’t there for your entertainment.

It is a truly horrific case. However, I don’t think it’s worth comparing it eg with the Fritzel case as all cases like this are equally horrific imo.

I think it’s impossible for the victims anonymity to be protected if any other details are known. The criminal
process has delivered sentences on these perpetrators but the system is putting the victims absolutely first here.