Demand as 1,000 girls as young as 11 are raped in new sex scandal
Yesterday Telford’s Conservative MP Lucy Allan branded the latest reports “extremely serious and shocking”.
She said: “There must now be an independent inquiry into child sexual exploitation in Telford so our community can have absolute confidence in the authorities.”
Dino Nocivelli, a child abuse solicitor, said: “The survivors deserve an inquiry. These children were treated as sexual commodities by men who inflicted despicable acts of abuse. They need to know how abuse took place for so long and why so many perpetrators have never been brought to justice.”
Sheila Taylor, of charity The NWG Network, said the Telford atrocities could be as big as the Rotherham scandal. Victim Lucy Lowe, 16, her mum Eileen and sister Sarah, 17, all died after abuser Azhar Ali Mehmood, 26, set fire to their house. The taxi driver first targeted Lucy in 1997 before she gave birth to his child when she was just 14.
Their baby daughter was inside at the time of the fire, but survived. In 2001 he was jailed for their murders amid claims they were to terrify other victims to stay silent. Meanwhile one schoolgirl, who remains anonymous, said she was driven to attempt suicide. She added: “I was scared my family would die like Lucy’s.” In 2002 another schoolgirl – Becky Watson, 13 – died in an unexplained Telford car accident. It later emerged she was abused by an Asian grooming gang. Her mother Torron said: “Girls like Becky were treated like criminals. If Becky’s abuse was properly investigated by the authorities more girls could have been saved from this hell.”
In Rotherham, around 1,400 girls, mostly under age, were abused over two decades by Pakistani men. Now experts estimate in Telford around 1,000 girls have been abused.
The calculations were carried out by Professor Liz Kelly at London Metropolitan University. She said: “We have an unfortunate capacity to choose to forget.”
Vile
In 2013 seven men were jailed following Operation Chalice, one of the few police inquiries into the subject.
Mubarek Ali, 34, and his brother Ahdel Ali, 27, were handed a 26-year sentence after the pair sexually abused, trafficked, prostituted or tried to prostitute four teenagers.
Yesterday Telford and Wrekin Council said: “Child sexual exploitation is a vile, evil crime. It’s an issue right across the UK and has been for a long time.” Telford would be covered by a national review.
West Mercia Police admitted making errors saying it is boosting numbers to tackle the “horrific offences” as a “number one priority”.