Huddersfield’s darkest hour
■ Police failed to protect child victims from town’s grooming gang ■ Calls for change in culture so that cries for help are believed
OPPORTUNITIES WERE missed to protect 15 girls from sexual abuse at the hands of 20 predators in Huddersfield over a period of seven years, West Yorkshire Police has conceded.
As details of one of the most extensive street grooming gangs yet uncovered in the UK can now be revealed, the authorities again face uncomfortable questions about whether they have failed young victims in the past.
Rotherham MP Sarah Champion, who has for many years campaigned against street grooming gangs, said: “We still need to see a change in culture where victims who try to report child abuse are believed, just as they would expect to be if they reported any other crime.”
Sixteen men have so far been jailed for more than 200 years for their part in the cynical abuse of girls in the town from 2004 to 2011, with a further four found guilty and awaiting sentence.
The series of three trials, which took place throughout this year at Leeds Crown Court, had until now been subject to reporting restrictions.
Ringleader Amere Singh Dhaliwal, 35, was jailed for life earlier this year and told he must serve a minimum of 18 years in prison by a judge who said: “Your treatment of these girls was inhuman.”
Prosecutor Richard Wright, QC, told one of the trials: “There is here regrettably a sense that those in authority who handled the concerns of parents or friends expressed at the time of these offences did not do enough to try to engage with these girls and find out what was happening to them.
“It might be said by way of balance that so corrupted was the thinking of some of these girls as a result of the extensive grooming to which they had been subjected that many at the time didn’t think they wanted or needed help from anyone.”
West Yorkshire Police yesterday told The Yorkshire Post that the victims of the men “not only felt they were in relationships but believed those relationships were far more special than others would appreciate”.
A spokeswoman said: “These manipulated victims would be proactive in diluting any suspicion and unfortunately the signs and symptoms appreciated today were not as easily understood, recognised or appreciated during the years these victims were abused.
“With knowledge held now and the victims providing the missing details not known 10-plus years ago, it is clear opportunities were missed and it is those opportunities that we now seek and develop to protect children from abuse.”
Kirklees Council has now commissioned an independent review into historic child sexual exploitation (CSE) in the town.
In a joint statement with the Kirklees Safeguarding Children Board made outside Leeds Crown Court yesterday, the council’s Director of Children’s Services Steve Walker said: “It is important to reassure members of the public that these crimes took place a number of years ago at a time when – as we know from cases in other towns and cities – the issue of CSE was not well understood.
“Since then, lessons have been learned.”
However, he said, they were not complacent and had asked independent expert Dr Mark Peel, a former Professor of Social Work at Leicester University, to undertake the review to identify whether there were any further lessons they could learn.
He declined to answer members of the press when asked whether they had failed the girls.
Ms Champion said she didn’t “want to hear about ‘lessons learned’, I want action to keep our children safe”. She added: “I hope the country is finally waking up to the scale and prevalence of gangrelated child sexual exploitation. More needs to be done to prevent this vile crime.”
OUR FIRST thoughts today are with the young victims of the Huddersfield grooming gang who were subjected to a level of sexual abuse that defies understanding. The youngest of the 15 girls subjected to degrading abuse on an industrial-scale by a grotesque group of 20 depraved paedophiles was just 11.
Yet it is to the immense personal credit of the victims that they not only came forward, but had the fortitude to withstand a tortuous legal process and bravely relive their ordeal in court, in order to finally bring the perpetrators of these vile crimes to justice.
Aged between 11 and 17, they were targeted because of their very vulnerability, plied with drink and drugs, and then used and abused over seven years – and the seriousness of the sentences passed down to their abusers reflects the scale of child sexual exploitation that did take place.
However, these victims will need every possible support as they come to terms with what, to them, is a life sentence. It’s also testament to the persistence of those in the police and other justice agencies that successful prosecutions were mounted.
And, while these chilling crimes started in 2004, it is, nevertheless, important for some form of wider inquiry to be held to better understand how the victims came into contact with their abusers and whether anything more could have been done to prevent these inhumane crimes.
West Yorkshire Police, for one, accepts that opportunities were missed in the past to protect victims of CSE, but says better working practices are in place. It’s right that these protocols are scrutinised. And, inevitably, it will mean difficult questions having to be asked, specifically the background of their abusers, and parallels with similarly grim cases elsewhere. Nevertheless, the number one priority should always be the plight of the victims – and making sure that all public agencies are working together to lessen the likelihood of such reprehensible behaviour occurring again.