Carolann was a victim, says her dad
DAD SPEAKS OUT AS HIS DAUGHTER FACES JAIL FOR ROLE IN VILE SEX ABUSE
CAROLANN Gallon’s dad has revealed how his teenage daughter was sucked into the Operation Shelter grooming gang.
The 22-year-old is facing jail after admitting trafficking girls for the sex exploitation network that could have targeted up to 108 vulnerable victims.
But Jimmy Gallon believes his daughter was manipulated by the vile perverts and said she was now terrified of going to prison.
The 63-yearold said: “She was a victim and she should have been treated like one. They manipulated her. She didn’t know she was doing anything wrong.
“I want people to know she’s not the person she’s been made out to be.”
Gallon is one of 18 people convicted as part of Northumbria Police’s Operation Shelter, which probed the exploitation of young women and girls in Newcastle’s West End. She is the only woman and the other convicts are 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 pleaded guilty to three counts of trafficking for sexual exploitation.
But jobless Mr Gallon, who lost both his legs to diabetes, believes his girl was as much a victim as the others.
And he even once called the police himself after becoming worried that she was attending parties organised by older men, fearing she too was being groomed.
He said: “There were always parties going on in the West End and like the other girls Carolann got pulled into them because the Asian men were giving her booze. Like the other girls she started inviting lasses she knew to go along as well and like the other girls she was given alcohol.
“The only thing that’s different to the other girls is that Carolann ended up being charged and put behind bars when the other lasses were quite rightly treated as victims. She’s as much a victim as any of them and she is frightened and distraught at what’s happening.”
Gallon was the second eldest in a