More grooming gang victims contact MP
After waiting for 18 months, MP Lucy Allan has finally won her call for an inquiry into child grooming gangs in Telford. She tells Margarette Driscoll why the issue of race slowed it down
THE Conservative MP who helped uncover the Telford sex abuse scandal has said she was repeatedly told it was nothing to worry about, as it emerged a dozen more victims have come forward.
In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph, Lucy Allan, the Conservative MP for the Shropshire town, said she is still regularly being contacted by young women who say they have suffered at the hands of grooming gangs.
Police are investigating 12 new claims of sexual abuse in Telford, where up to 1,000 children are believed to have been abused since 1981.
Mrs Allan, who has been campaigning against child sexual exploitation in Telford for 18 months, said: “What upsets me is that everyone kept telling me ‘it’s all fine’. I was told there’s nothing to worry about. It wasn’t fine, it was still happening. We need to look into this properly and find out why. Why did we turn a blind eye? Why didn’t we believe these girls?”
She added: “I’ve had a huge number of emails just this week from girls saying ‘This happened to me’.”
The 53-year-old MP also reveals that after discovering that gangs of Asian men had been targeting young girls she felt too scared to address the issue of race in such crimes, and at one point was accused of having tried to stir up racial tensions.
The issue of grooming in Telford dates back to the Eighties and ended in tragedy when Lucy Lowe, a 16-year-old girl, was burned to death with her mother and sister when Azhar Ali Mehmood, her abuser, set their house on fire 18 years ago. He is serving a life sentence for murder.
A dedicated independent inquiry will now be held into child sexual exploitation into the town.
In a statement, West Mercia Assistant Constable Martin Evans said the force was pleased women were continuing to have the confidence to come forward, adding that the latest cases referred to “non-recent” child sexual exploitation offences.
Last summer, a 19-year-old girl appeared at Lucy Allan’s office in Telford and told a horrifying story. She had been groomed six years earlier, at the age of 13, by a 35-year-old Asian man who had raped her, then forced her to have sex with other men. She had been raped and abused many times since, terrified by the threat that her mother and sister would be harmed if she did not comply.
She had tried to talk to the police a few times, but was not sure they had believed her. It was the same with social services. She was desperate.
“She came across as very credible and genuine,” says Allan, who by then had met a number of young women telling the same story. “She didn’t even know my name, she’d just got in a taxi and said ‘I want to go to the MP’s office’. She needed help.”
Her story added to Allan’s suspicion that the grooming of vulnerable girls in Telford – which had supposedly been stamped out following Operation Chalice, a West Mercia police investigation that put seven Asian men behind bars in 2012 – wasn’t over.
She called the police and insisted they come and take a statement. The Crown Prosecution Service is now pursuing a prosecution against the men who allegedly abused her, which will come to trial later this year. It is just one of 46 sexual exploitation cases currently “live” in the town. Last week, Theresa May agreed to Allan’s request for an inquiry into the sexual exploitation of girls in Telford, after a series of revelations about the violence and depravity involved came to light.
Even though Allan has been campaigning on the issue now for 18 months, the first cases of grooming in the town date back to the Eighties. And some have ended in tragedy, most notably Lucy Lowe, a 16-year-old girl who was burned to death with her mother and sister when her alleged abuser, Azhar Ali Mehmood, set their house on fire 18 years ago, a crime for which he is now serving a life sentence.
“I did not know anything about that case, so when that girl came to see me and told me she was scared, I did not appreciate how real the threats could be,” she says. “I’m finding out new things all the time. A fellow MP has just told me he prosecuted a case in Birmingham a few years ago involving two girls from Telford. “They were groomed in Telford, then taken to Birmingham for sex, so they’re not part of the Telford police figures as the crime happened elsewhere.
“I’ve had a huge number of emails just this week from girls saying, ‘This happened to me’.”
When Allan moved to Telford five years ago (she won the seat for the Conservatives in 2015), the assumption was that the awful cases of gangs of Asian men preying on vulnerable young white girls – as they had in Rotherham and Rochdale – had been dealt with. The men convicted by Operation Chalice in 2012 had received long jail sentences for charges ranging from sexual activity with a child (a 13-year-old) to controlling child prostitution. Mubarek Ali, the ringleader, was given 22 years.
Around the same time, nine men were convicted of sex trafficking and having sex with under-age girls in Rochdale. Ten more men were convicted of similar offences in Rochdale in 2015. The following year eight men were jailed for sex offences against girls in Rotherham.
A clear pattern had emerged, of Asian men grooming young white girls who were seen as willing participants by the police and social services, who chose to believe girls as young as 13 had made a “lifestyle choice” to become child prostitutes.
“It’s symptomatic of an attitude that allowed this to happen,” says Allan. “People say to themselves, ‘well, of course it’s consensual, she got in his car, she took the cigarettes, she took the money, she came back for more…” without joining the dots and asking why a 14-year-old has a 35-year-old ‘boyfriend’.” Post-Operation Chalice, the local council and police began putting new procedures in place that would ensure training for social
‘Yes, white men abuse, but this gang element is associated with Pakistani culture’
workers and police officers so no more girls could fall through the net. But it now appears the abuse continued and one victim last week talked of “violent rapes” taking place in recent months.
It was claimed last week that as many as 1,000 girls may have been abused, going back to the Eighties. Police dispute that figure, which is a calculation made by an academic, but Allan says she is sure that “hundreds” of girls have been abused.
“What upsets me is that everyone kept telling me, ‘It’s all fine’,” says Allan, 53, who had been regularly kept abreast of the new procedures the council was putting in place. I was told, ‘There’s nothing to worry about, Lucy, it’s fine’. It wasn’t fine, it was still happening. We need to find out why. Why did we turn a blind eye? Why didn’t we believe these girls?”
Allan was first alerted to the issue in September 2016 when a 24-year-old victim of a gang in Telford came to see her. “Her story was so shocking… She said, ‘Is there anything you can do to break the silence?’ I said: ‘Yes, a lot.’” She started at Prime Minister’s Questions with a call for a “Rotherhamstyle” inquiry into the town. May was privately sympathetic, but it was not possible to go ahead with an inquiry unless the local council agreed. It would not agree, arguing that it already had adequate training and procedures in place and that the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, chaired by Alexis Jay, would look at Telford.
So began a war of attrition, with Allan refusing to give up her call for an inquiry. The council then wrote a “shocking letter to the Home Secretary, signed by 10 men” saying the Jay inquiry would conduct a review of events in Telford. After months of badgering, Allan established that the Jay inquiry did not intend to look at Telford in any great detail.
Allan was then accused of stirring up racial divisions by pointing the finger at Asian men when child abuse was perpetrated by people from all backgrounds. “At that time, I hadn’t even mentioned race, I wasn’t brave enough,” she says. “The cultural difference has been underplayed because the police tend to conflate child sexual abuse, which can happen in the family, with child sexual exploitation. By not distinguishing between the two you don’t identify that the grooming and the gangs are of Pakistani heritage while someone who abuses a child at home might be a white step-parent.
“Even I was too readily accepting of, ‘Well, the stats say lots of white men perpetrate abuse…’ Yes, white men abuse, but this gang element is associated with Pakistani culture. Recognising the problem is the first step to tackling it.”
A report by the think tank Quilliam late last year found that 84per cent of men convicted of being part of grooming gangs since 2005 were Asian. The researchers discovered paedophiles from different backgrounds operated in different ways. “It’s important we talk about it because the problem won’t go away, ” said Haras Rafiq, its co-author.
How to counter it is the big question. The revelations last weekend were a watershed. Telford council capitulated and May finally approved the inquiry. Allan’s in-box began to overflow with messages from grateful victims and families. “You graft away, banging your head against the wall and come up against endless obstacles and bureaucracy, then suddenly you make a little step forward that will really change people’s lives. You remember why you are an MP.”
It was a moment – but only a moment – to savour. May said she hoped the inquiry would take place as soon as possible. Now, Allan’s job is to make it happen.