INVESTIGATES Professionals’ tragic catalogue of lost chances to end torment
POLICE
Witnesses claim police failed to fully investigate the circumstances of three deaths of abuse victims in the town in the 2000s. Operation Chalice was launched nine years after teenage Lucy Lowe was killed by her abuser in an arson attack along with her older sister and their mother. Underage girls – including those reported missing – were stopped in cars driven by their older abusers but they tell us that no questions were asked.
DOCTORS
Medical professionals are accused of failing to question why underage girls were having abortions, miscarriages and taking the morning after pill. One victim told us: “I was going into the doctors and the youth sexual health clinic to get the morning after pill, probably twice a week, and nobody even questioned anything. I had two abortions, still nothing was said.”
TEACHERS
Schools failed to act on reports that Asian paedophiles were targeting schoolgirls outside Telford schools as long ago as 2000. One teacher allegedly asked an 11-year-old victim if she was sexually active but did nothing about it apart from warning her not to associate with an older abuse victim.
SOCIAL WORKERS
A string of young girls were falling pregnant to older Asian men but we are told that social services failed to address the problem. One council report from 2013 admitted: “From the late 1990s professionals working in Telford and Wrekin had concerns about the nature of some of the child sexual abuse cases presented to them.” It states that the abuse only became a “priority” for the local safeguarding teams in 2009.