How the people in failed the victims

THE Huddersfield grooming gang prosecutor said there is ‘regrettably a sense’ that the authorities ‘did not do enough’ to protect the victims.

Richard Wright QC said: “The friends and families of many of these girls were deeply worried about them and concerned as to where they were and why they would disappear from home for long periods of time, when as we now know they were in the company of the defendants.”

Parents took to the witness box in Leeds Crown Court to tell juries how they were unable to control their children, who refused to explain what they were getting up to out of their houses.

One parent even had to resort to sitting on a girl because it was the only way to stop her from leaving the house.

Girl B was found in a ditch after being plied with drink and ecstasy and her mother later found her in hospital.

Girl N threatened to swallow a sim card to stop it from being handed in to the police.

But these were not the actions of girls who had choices.

Many of the victims were acting out of fear of repercussions and sometimes even protecting their parents.

With parents out of their depth, the responsibility to intervene and protect them fell to those with more experience - schools, social services and the police.

Opening the trials, Mr Wright said: “The sad truth is that these children were, at the time of these offences, by and large deliberately avoiding home and people in positions of authority.

“Indeed, it was the very fact that they were disconnected from the usual support networks available to children and young people that made them attractive targets for these men.

“There is here regrettably a sense that those in authority who handled the concerns of parents or friends expressed at the time of these offences did not do enough to try to engage with these girls and find out what was happening to them.”

He added that some of the victims had been ‘so corrupted’ by the grooming that they ‘didn’t think they wanted or needed help from anyone.’

Following the relaxing of reporting restrictions, Kirklees Council announced that it has launched an independent review into the abuse scandal.

The names of the secondary schools and colleges that the victims – who are entitled to lifelong anonymity – attended cannot be named as it risks identifying them.

The victims did not all go to the same school and attended multiple secondary schools and colleges in Huddersfield.

Speaking exclusively to The Examiner, Girl C said her school ‘didn’t give a s***.’ She said: “I skived school all the time. “I’d speak openly about the men and partying with them.

“It was just normal to me, it wasn’t something I hid. I thought the men were friends.”

She was later sent to an ‘alternative’ school and she admits: “Those teachers were the best though, honestly.

“They tried to help, I just didn’t listen to anyone.”

Girl A said the men even had the audacity to outright take her out of school. When asked how often this would happen, she said: “Most days at school.

“I would kick off to go into isolation so I could leave school.”

On one particular occasion, Amere Singh Dhaliwal, one of the ringleaders and Girl A’s main abuser, picked her up from outside the school.

She said: “They texted my phone and told me to come out and if I didn’t come out they would come into school.”

She was taken to woods in Brackenhall where she had to give another man oral sex and dropped back to school. She was gone for about half an hour.

The court also heard one of the complainants, who ended up not giving evidence in court, had spoken to a teacher about what she experienced when she was driven around by two men who tried to make her engage in sexual contact and went to one of the ‘parties.’

There was evidence the police were aware that something illegal was going on - from parents reporting their children as missing and call-outs by witnesses to random traffic stops and linked crimes such as assaults and robberies.

Police officers once spotted two Asian men in a baby’s bedroom.

It happened during a ‘game’ of truth or dare in which two females were ‘dared’ to touch each other. They went upstairs but the men followed them and two went into the bedroom of the occupant’s baby where an indecent photo was taken of her.

Girl A said: “Police were at the door