Child abuse / prostitution in Glasgow - Times investigation

[norahnamechange]

The Times has published a shocking investigation into systematic abuse / prostitution of children in the Govan area of Glasgow.
Children, some as young as 5 / 6 , are being openly sold on the streets. They come from one particular group (the Roma community) and just as with Rotherham and other towns where we had systematic organised abuse, there appears to be the same lack of effective response from the Police / social services for fear of appearing racist / targeting a particular community?
I can't cut and paste but here's a link to one of their articles (behind a paywall):
www.thetimes.co.uk/article/govanhill-child-sex-trade-there-are-so-many-it-s-easy-pickings-for-child-abusers-m2swzc63h

Utterly appalling

Annoyingly the article is behind a paywall.

This is beyond awful.

Sarahjconnor
Hopefully someone will be along with a share token to share the details. And it's so awful that it will be picked up soon by the BBC etc.

And this may be of interest to you - posted it on another thread but it's relevant to what you say about your treatment as a woman 'whistleblowing' abuse:

www.telegraph.co.uk/books/what-to-read/rotherham-whistleblower-explains-why-sex-abuse-ring-was-covered/

A quick Google reveals story in The Herald in 2007!

@nonamechange I doubt the BBC will be picking it up any time soon. It doesn't fit their narrative.

Sorry to be a pedant, but it’s Govanhill (totally different area from Govan). If you google, this area has a lot of social problems.

Govanhill is the part of Glasgow represented by Nicola Sturgeon. It's not the same as Govan. (although close by).

There have been stories surfacing regularly about modern day slavery, trafficking and enforced prostitution for years. Nothing visible happening about it.

With share token:
www.thetimes.co.uk/article/children-sold-for-sex-on-streets-of-govanhill-db2gptfgx?shareToken=d207458cdbee4733207cdced03f6ef6a

This does not surprise me.

I’m in Victoria Rd in the heart of Govanhill quite regularly and I’d remarked to a friend about how many very young Roma girls I saw that were caked in make up, I’m talking maybe 7/8 years old.

My friend raised her eyebrows and told me that it was well known that many very young Roma girls were pimped out to punters.

I was totally shocked but wasn’t sure if it was just a nasty rumour...seems it might not be.

Just appalling.

We struggled to get Roma issues dealt with here too - central London. Here it’s an issue of aggressive begging with young children. Groups of women begging under the control of a gang master. They sleep rough on the steps of our school with one male minder. There may we’ll be forced prostitution (brothels are an issue round here) but I’ve not seen it.

We also found no one wanted to deal with it. Until they built a shanty town on Park Lane and then action was taken

We did start putting it to the police as an issue of people trafficking and child exploitation but without much success.

I'll be looking out for the story on the BBC.

I feel sick. How is such open abuse not being acted upon by the authorities? And I just can't fathom a parent offering their own child to be abused in return for money - I'd prostitute myself (as sick as the thought makes me feel) any day over that. No matter how destitute, I just can't understand or forgive that kind of vile betrayal.

I'll be looking out for the story on the BBC

It may take a while ..... keep breathing!

This is disgraceful. Why aren't social services stepping in and removing the kids?

This is the Herald article from 2007 - here.
Seems nothing has changed in ten years

Can barely write this. Govanhill leading to Govan on matchdays is notorious for this. So little happens at a macro level that Glaswegian men now just fight the pimps as there's deemed to be no point in telling the police.

There used to be a big council/Salvation Army strategy to tackle this. It's totally incideous though, the parents refuse any help offered to their children.

My friend worked in govanhill on a voluntary project, and one of the issues seems to be that it’s a closed community, run by a group of males. The could not engage with the women as they wanted to because they didn’t speak any English and they would always have a man in the room. The overcrowding is dreadful and the properties are generally in a very poor state of repair. There was a drone film from a few years back where you could see rubbish piled up to the window in the back courts. And with these unsanitary conditions come rats, disease and other problems. The Romanians have no recourse to public funds - they have to be “employed”, so lots of them sell the big issue and get money by other means. I don’t know how you solve it, but it’s dreadfully sad that living like this, and prostituting your children, is STILL a better option than going back to their home country.

What exactly is happening in their home country, which is worse than prostituting your very young children to pedophiles? I am having trouble thinking of anything.

I don’t think this is the right framework to understand the problem. Many Romanians will tell you this is not an economic refugee situation.

Isn’t this people from Slovakia and Romania?

If there are people living there, who are in such a bad way that escape to here and prostituting your kids is seen as understandable, then surely we should be even more horrified, and we should be talking about it. And doing something.

Why does it matter where they're from? NOTHING justifies pimping out your own young children to be sexually abused for money.