Scandal of town’s 1000 abuse victims
Call for probe as girls as young as 11 raped by gangs
MPS demanded a fullscale inquiry last night into a major child sex abuse scandal.
As many as 1,000 children could have fallen victim to grooming gangs operating in the Shropshire town of Telford for more than 40 years. While sex grooming rings in Rotherham are thought to have targeted around 1,500 victims, that was in a community of around 260,000. Telford’s population is just 170,000.
New details emerged yesterday about the scale of the scandal, which has allegedly seen girls as young as 11 lured away from their families then drugged, beaten and raped.
The original police probe in 2010 identified more than 100 potential victims, most of whom were young white girls, that had allegedly been abused between 2007 and 2009. But that inquiry – Operation Chalice – was closed after seven Asian men were jailed in 2012 for a total of 49 years for charges against four girls including rape, trafficking and prostitution.
In 2013, Ahdel Ali, then 25 and Mubarek Ali, then 29, of Wellington, Shropshire were sentenced to 18 and 14 years respectively.
Following their convictions, five other members of their gang changed their pleas to guilty. Mohammed Ali Sultan, then 26, Tanveer Ahmed, then 40, Mahroof Khan, then 35, Mohammed Islam Choudhrey, then 53, and Mohammed Younis, then 60, were each jailed for between 30 months and seven years.
However, according to a new investigation, the scale of the abuse is much greater than these seven men, has been going on for longer and has been mishandled by the authorities.
Yesterday it was claimed that 12 victims had now named more than 70 alleged abusers, and that violent rapes were still taking place in TelAllan,
‘Mishandled by the authorities’
ford just months ago. Evidence was allegedly unearthed to show that local social workers first knew of abuse in the 1990s, but police took a decade before launching a probe.
Previously unseen files apparently showed that council staff viewed abused and trafficked children as ‘prostitutes’, not victims, and that the authorities had failed to keep details of abusers from Asian communities for fear of ‘racism’.
Three murders and two deaths were also linked to the scandal, according to evidence seen by the Sunday Mirror. One 16-year-old girl, Lucy Lowe, was killed in 2000 along with her mother and sister after her 26-year-old abuser, Azhar Ali Mehmood, set fire to their house.
Another 13-year-old girl, Rebecca Watson, who died in a car accident, had already suffered two years of abuse, it was claimed. Meanwhile, one of her friends, Vicky Round, died aged 20 in a drugs incident after allegedly getting hooked on crack cocaine by a grooming gang.
Last night, Telford’s Tory MP, Lucy who has previously called for a Rotherham-style inquiry into the allegations, called the latest claims ‘extremely serious and shocking’.
‘There must now be an independent inquiry into child sexual exploitation in Telford so that our community can have absolute confidence in the authorities,’ she said.
The estimate of up to 1,000 victims was calculated with the help of Professor Liz Kelly, from the Child and Woman Abuse Studies Unit at London Metropolitan University.
Telford and Wrekin Council said: ‘All agencies continue to work very closely together and this remains our top priority.’
Assistant Chief Constable for West Mercia Police, Martin Evans, said: ‘Tackling such horrific offences is the number one priority for police in Telford and we (aim) to prosecute anyone who sexually offends against children whether that took place today, yesterday or decades ago.’