Telford abuse scandal: up to 1,000 affected
Telford MP calls for inquiry after allegations that hundreds were drugged and raped over 40 years
Up to 1,000 children could have been abused in a sexual exploitation scandal of unprecedented scale in Britain, an investigation has claimed. Hundreds of children, some as young as 11, are said to have been drugged, beaten and raped over a 40-year period in the town of Telford, Shropshire.
UP TO 1,000 children could have been abused in a sexual exploitation scandal of unprecedented scale in Britain, an investigation has claimed.
Hundreds of children, some as young as 11, are said to have been drugged, beaten and raped over a 40-year period in the town of Telford, Shrops.
Lucy Allan, the Conservative MP for Telford, has called for an inquiry into child sexual exploitation, saying the latest reports were “extremely serious and shocking”. She has previously called for a “Rotherham-style inquiry” into the allegations.
“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 told the Sunday Mirror.
The investigation claims that allegations dating back to the Eighties were mishandled by authorities in Telford, who repeatedly failed to punish a network of abusers. Victims claimed that abuse, which has been linked to three murders and two other deaths, has continued. Lucy Lowe, 16, was killed in 2000 along with her mother and sister after her 26-year-old abuser, Azhar Ali Mehmood, set fire to their house. He was later jailed for murder.
The newspaper’s investigation alleges that social workers were aware of the abuse in the Nineties, but that it took police a decade to launch Operation Chalice, an inquiry into child prostitution in the Telford area in which seven men were jailed in 2013. It is also claimed that abused and trafficked children were considered “prostitutes” by council staff, that authorities did not keep details of abusers from Asian communities for fear of being accused of “racism”, and that police failed to investigate one recent case five times until an MP intervened.
A spokesman for Telford and Wrekin council told the Sunday Mirror: “Child sexual exploitation (CSE) is a vile, evil crime. Telford will be covered by the national CSE review. We welcome this.” Dino Nocivelli, a solicitor who specialises in child abuse cases, told the paper: “These children were treated as sexual commodities by men who inflicted despicable acts of abuse. The survivors deserve an inquiry. They need to know how abuse took place for so long and why so many perpetrators have never been brought to justice.”
The estimate of 1,000 potential victims was made with the help of Professor Liz Kelly, from the Child and Woman Abuse Studies Unit at London Metropolitan University.