Turkish pair groomed nine girls for sex in rural town
TWO men who groomed at least nine girls in a rural town were able to continue their campaign after the authorities failed to spot scores of warning signs.
Two of the teenage victims gave birth to their abuser’s children after having abortions and miscarriages.
A report yesterday showed that a host of agencies had failed to recognise and prevent the teenagers’ exploitation in Yeovil, Somerset. And an expert claimed child sexual exploitation should not be regarded as an urban phenomenon because it is also affecting children in rural areas.
A serious case review was launched after two Turkish men were jailed last November at Bristol Crown Court.
Mehmet Citak, 34, of Bradford Abbas in Dorset, was jailed for 20 years on two counts of rape and seven counts of sexual assault.
Ahmet Kurtyemez, 29, from Swindon, was jailed for 12 years on one count of rape and six counts of sexual assault against six victims, aged 14 and 15 at the time.
Between 2010 and 2014, Kurtyemez and Citak ‘systematically abused’ the childrenfrom their base in a barber’s shop in Yeovil, a town of 45,000.
The review focused on two girls because concerns about both of them were reported to various agencies but nothing was done.
They both gave birth to children fathered by Citak and believed they were in longterm relationships with him.
But they were ‘ subjected to physical, sexual and emotional abuse as part of a controlling relationship’.
The report said: ‘Both children had several pregnancies, ending in miscarriage and termination, prior to having a child by one of the perpetrators.’
Yet experts did not realise the sex was abusive because the girls had been manipulated into considering the men as their boyfriends. Kurtyemez and Citak also forced them to take drugs and beat them up if they refused. The Somerset Safeguarding Children Board report found that 14 opportunities were missed by Avon and Somerset Police, a clinical commissioning group, Yeovil District Hospital, Somerset Partnership Trust, and Somerset County Council. It said: ‘What is surprising is that even when the age difference of the sexual partner was known by police and social care to be ten-plus years, no action was taken purely on this basis. Moreover, when the girls lied and gave ages variously three to seven years older, this was accepted without reporting concern.’
There have been at least seven cases in recent years where grooming gangs, often involving men from the Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Indian communities, have sexually exploited white girls in places including Newcastle upon Tyne, Rochdale, Rotherham and Oxford.
Sally Halls, of the Somerset safeguarding board, said: ‘The public perception is that child sexual exploitation is something that happens only in big cities.
‘The uncomfortable truth is that it can happen to children of all backgrounds in communities across the country, including a rural county like Somerset.’
She added: ‘A great deal has changed and improved in Somerset since these offences.’