Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Lucy had sex age 14.. why wasn’t that child abuse investigated?
Family tell how police snubbed pleas after death
told me he was prosecuted for the most serious crime. He should not come out.”
One victim told us she spoke to West Mercia Police after Lucy’s death, giving details of the grooming network targeting schoolgirls. She claims that she told officers she was a victim but no probe was launched.
The woman was also a close friend of Becky Watson, the next Telford grooming victim to die.
Becky was targeted at 11 and died in a road accident at 13. The man at the wheel, a friend of her abusers, was jailed for dangerous driving.
Abuse victim Vicky Round was a pal of
Becky’s and was abused by the same gang, who got her hooked on crack aged 12 and heroin by 14. She died aged 20 of a drugs incident.
Her older sister, Emma Leneveu, claims Vicky’s abusers threatened an attack like the one on the Lowes if she spoke out. She said: “I wanted Vicky to go to police but she was terrified her abusers would set our house on fire and kill me and our mum.”
Sheila Taylor, of the NWG Network, worked on the Rotherham Inquiry. She said: “When children are sexually exploited, they are at risk of a whole range of harm, including death, because of the type of violence and the introduction of drugs and alcohol. Any death of a young person where there have been concerns about them before should trigger some professional curiosity and a deeper look at the circumstances.”
The three families are calling for a public inquiry in Telford, similar to the one in Rotherham – which revealed 1,400 girls were abused in the Yorkshire town.
West Mercia Police launched Operation Chalice in 2009, more than a decade after social workers became aware of the scale of the abuse.
It led to seven paedophiles being jailed but officers later revealed they identified some 100 victims and 200 perpetrators from 2007 to 2009.
But an 18-month Sunday Mirror probe found disturbing evidence that abuse went on in Telford over four decades and the total number of victims could hit