Children still being groomed
CHILDREN are still being sexually abused at the hands of grooming gangs, a new investigation has found.
One whistleblower revealed that police had the names of more than 100 paedophiles on a database but failed to act, while young rape victims said the authorities refused to believe their stories.
The scale of ongoing suffering in towns where gangs have previously been convicted of abusing girls, such as Rotherham,telford and Rochdale, is revealed in a GB News documentary called Grooming Gangs: Britain’s Shame, the result of more than a year’s work by investigative journalist Charlie Peters.
Former detective constable Maggie Oliver, who runs a charity supporting survivors of sexual abuse, told him that authorities are still failing victims. “This is going on today.we’ve been approached by 60 victims in the past three days.”
She recalled investigating the case of Victoria Agoglia, 15, who died of an overdose while in the care of social services after being injected with heroin by one of her abusers.
Ms Oliver said: “We had 100 paedophiles on a database that we knew were raping children. We had about three dozen children that we had identified as being abused.”
Following a period of compassionate leave after her husband fell terminally ill, Ms Oliver returned to work to find none of the abusers had been convicted. She said: “I couldn’t get any answers. All I was told was there was insufficient evidence to prosecute – and I knew, because I had been working on that job from day one, we had the evidence.”
Youth worker Jayne Senior was manager of a project in Rotherham called Risky Business that helped girls who were being sexually exploited. When it reported abuse to the authorities, nothing was done.
“We were told we were breaching the human rights issue. But it was never the human rights of the children, it was the human rights of the perpetrators.”
One victim, “Samantha”, from Telford, told GB News: “I remember when I was 16, my social worker told me that if you are physically abused, why are there no bruises? And that perfectly sums up how I was treated by those in positions of power.”
A Home Office spokesperson said: “We are determined to end the scourge of grooming gangs.
“We have taken significant action to improve how the police and other frontline professionals tackle these vile gangs and support their victims to rebuild their lives.”
‘No abusers were convicted’