Drug addict who lured victims for the abusers
A WOMAN who recruited young victims for Asian men to sexually exploit has continued to invite girls and older men to her flat while on bail, neighbours said yesterday.
Carolann Gallon, 22, known to friends as Chucky, was a polite and helpful child before she became involved with the sex gang, a family friend claimed.
But her family background was chaotic. Her father, who lost his legs to diabetes, has 17 children with four women, two of whom are a mother and daughter he was in relationships with simultaneously.
When Gallon began going to the gang’s parties she went off the rails and became addicted to drugs, the friend said.
In 2015, she admitted three counts of trafficking for sexual exploitation. She and 13 others will be sentenced next month.
Her father Jimmy Gallon, 63, yesterday said his daughter was a victim of the gang and that she was ‘frightened and distraught’. But neighbours said she was still entertaining older men, who have regularly been seen staying overnight at her £380-per-month council flat in Newcastle in the past two months. On other occasions Gallon has had teenage girls there, locals claimed.
A neighbour, who has lived in the block for several years, said: ‘Every time I went out I used to see two gentlemen through the window. First someone of Asian origin and then two black Africans. There was a time when
she used to have two female friends aged between 15 and 18.
‘They were frequently in the house, the Asian guys … about 30 to 35. I used to see the guys all the time going in and coming out. I actually thought she might be a lady of the night.’
Another neighbour claimed a member of the grooming gang was living in the flat for around a month in 2011. He suggested the man may have fathered one of Gallon’s two children, adding: ‘When she first came here she was with a young Pakistani guy. It was about four years ago and she was pregnant.
‘He disappeared, I think he’s one of the gang. He was about 19 or 20 and he was there for a few weeks.’
Gallon’s father defended her, saying: ‘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 … The only thing that’s different to the other girls is Carolann ended up being charged 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 … It broke us when she was charged.’
Mr Gallon added: ‘I knew about the parties, everybody did.
‘But when I found out Carolann was being given drink, I had it out with [the man who had given her alcohol] … I also contacted the police and told them what was happening in that house but nothing was done.’
He said Gallon, who is unable
‘Nothing like the girl I remember’
to read or write and acts as his carer, ‘was too young to know what she was getting into’. ‘They manipulated her, had her approaching girls, but she didn’t know she was doing anything wrong,’ he added.
Gallon – whose sexuality ‘has switched several times’, according to a family friend, has five siblings, aged 16 to 24. Her mother remarried and lives in Newcastle.
The friend said: ‘Jimmy considered himself a Jack the lad when he was younger and he has kids all over. At one stage he was living with a woman and started having an affair with her daughter, who was in her late teens. He has three kids to the daughter and two to the mother.’
The family was ‘very unsettled’ when Gallon was a child, the friend said.
‘They lived in Ashington, Chester-le-Street, Walker and Fenham in Newcastle and in North Shields – it was hard for the kids, they never settled.
‘Carolann was a nice kid. She was polite and helpful, often tidying up.’ The friend added: ‘I lost touch with her but the last time I saw her she was so different. She and the person she was with were clearly on drugs, and she told me she had spent three days taking speed.
‘She looked a mess, nothing like the little girl I remember and people told me she had gone off the rails.
‘It was about six years ago, the same time as she got involved with these Asians. That can’t be a coincidence. Something turned a homely, polite young lass into the person she has become.’