BEATENUP INSIDE
Convicted sex trafficker attacked by fellow prisoners
SEX trafficker Carolann Gallon has been attacked in prison after fellow inmates discovered her vile crimes.
And the only woman jailed as part of the Operation Shelter grooming gang probe has had to move jails after she became a target for other women prisoners, the Sunday Sun can today reveal.
Gallon was locked up for six years after a judge heard how she provided vulnerable girls, some as young as 13, to a network of vile sex predators in Newcastle’s West End.
She was initially held at Low Newton’s women’s prison in Durham.
However, the 23-year-old’s family has told the Sunday Sun she has since been moved almost 150 miles to HMP Styal, in Cheshire, after constant taunting from female convicts in Low Newton.
And Gallon’s problems have continued at her new prison, where she was assaulted on Sunday.
Today as police investigate the attack, which left Gallon with minor injuries, the shamed trafficker’s dad has opened up about his daughter’s prison hell.
Jimmy Gallon said: “People have found out what she’s in for and she’s getting grief. She got moved from one place to another because she was getting picked on, then she rang me saying she had been assaulted by someone in there. She cries every time I speak to her.
“It’s awful for me because I feel so helpless. She’s my daughter and I just feel like there’s nothing I can do for her.
I really miss her but my hands are tied. It’s just heartbreaking for me.”
Gallon was one of 18 people convicted as part of Northumbria Police’s Operation Shelter, which probed the exploitation of vulnerable young women and girls in Newcastle’s West End. She is the only woman and the other convicts were men of Asian or Eastern European descent.
Newcastle Crown Court heard how the men would prey on vulnerable females and lure them to parties where they were plied with drugs and booze before being used for sex.
Gallon was arrested as part of the investigation and pleaded guilty to three counts of trafficking for sexual exploitation.
During her sentencing hearing, Judge Penny Moreland was told that Gallon left one young woman with learning difficulties with Abdulhamid Minoyee and told her she was in safe hands – only for him to rape her when she fell into a drug and alcohol-induced sleep.
And a 13-year-old girl, who was in local authority care, was found at Gallon’s home after she ran away.
The prosecution said Gallon took the teen to a home on Sceptre Place in Elswick ‘knowing or believing’ she would be sexually exploited.
Gallon, of Hareside Court, Newburn, Newcastle, and a man also picked the girl up from another children’s home when she was 14 and took her and another girl to various houses where parties known as ‘sessions’ were taking place. Older men provided the girls with drink and drugs. The girl later told her care worker a man had sex with her against her will and afterwards Gallon had “mocked her”, the court heard.
The victim said Gallon told her her “family would be chopped to pieces if I spoke out”.
Jimmy however, maintains his daughter is as much a victim as they other girls and was being manipulated by the men.
“I have always said she needs help, not punishment,” he said. “They could have put her on a tag. I would have taken full responsibility for her. She could have come to live with me. Prison is not going to help.”
Gallon was the second eldest in a family of six children, while Jimmy has 17 children to four different women. Her dad, who lost both his legs to diabetes, said she was a bright caring child, but went off the rails as a teenager when she began drinking in the homes of older men in the West End.
“She was all right as a young lass, but it was since she got in with this lot that she changed,” said Jimmy. “Those men were just using her.
“I think they saw her as an easy target, I don’t think she knew what she was doing.”
He added: “When she was young she wanted to be a vet or a nurse. I just wish she had done something with her life. She could have. She was quite bright. She’s got a good head-piece. I tried my best to stop it. I had been to a couple of places that she had been and I got the police a couple of times because they were giving her drink.”
But former steel worker Jimmy never imagined his girl would ever be involved in such serious crimes.
“I knew she’d gone off the rails. But this is the last thing you would ever expect your daughter to go to jail for,” he said.
Jimmy is now planning to move to Keighley in West Yorkshire and hopes his daughter will join him there following her release.
And the devoted dad believes it is not too late for Gallon to turn her life around.
“She’s still my little girl,” he said. “I will make sure she stays on the straight and narrow when she gets out. She wants to start a new life and she can move away with me.”
The decision to charge Gallon, of Hareside Court in Newburn, was taken by the UK’s senior law officer the Director of Public Prosecutions.
Thanks to the bravery of those they targeted, 18 people, including Gallon, have now been jailed for their roles in the sex exploitation network that brought shame on Newcastle’s West End.
They were all snared through Operation Shelter, part of Northumbria Police’s wider exploitation initiative Operation Sanctuary.
Northumbria Police’s former Chief Constable, Steve Ashman, said the DPP became satisfied that Gallon was involved in the criminality, and not a victim herself.