HOW TELFORD
2yr inquiry will seek answers for the victims
COUNCIL chiefs in Telford turned down a £150,000 grant that could have saved hundreds of child sex abuse victims, it has emerged.
A furious insider claimed officials were worried that accepting the funds would bring shame on the town by highlighting its grooming problem.
Victims last night slammed the move to scrap the initiative, which aimed to help professionals spot the signs of exploitation and trafficking.
The money was offered in 2010. Since then 268 local children have been referred for support after they were exploited.
One victim, first targeted in 2014 at the age of 15, was assaulted so violently her ribs were broken. She was trafficked to other towns across the Midlands to be raped by dozens of men.
The victim, now 20, said: “I’m really angry that the council turned this money down. It could have helped me a lot.
“Why would the council not want to do something like this? I was being abused for two years before any professional got involved with me.
SADNESS
“If people had been trained properly, they might have started asking why I wasn’t turning up to school and why I was going to nightclubs.
“I’ve been through hell and it could have been stopped if someone had just asked the right questions.”
A council source told the Sunday Mirror: “It was a real missed opportunity. Telford was screaming out for this project but we felt some people didn’t want to highlight the town as a problem area.
“Our greatest sadness is that we could have stopped some victims from being abused.”
A Mirror exposé last year revealed that as many as 1,000 girls could have been abused and trafficked by Telford gangs over four decades.
The Labour-led local authority was forced to agree to a public inquiry after our revelations.
But the grant – worth £151,983 – was rejected when the council was under Tory control. At that time a police probe found 100 girls could have been targeted in just two years.
Staff were advised that the EU would contribute 80 per cent of the project’s costs after the local authority successfully applied for funds in 2009.
The bid came three years before the mass abuse of girls was highlighted by the conviction of nine men in Rochdale – in the first UK prosecution of its kind.
Our source said: “This project was a real chance to lead the way. We were excited about what it might achieve. We knew child sexual exploitaAN independent inquiry into Telford abuse is set to begin after a threeyear campaign by the Sunday Mirror, victims and their families.
We first called for a probe in 2016 and local Tory MP Lucy Allan raised the issue in Parliament.
But 10 officials from West Mercia Police and Telford and Wrekin Council wrote to then Home Secretary Amber Rudd to say an inquiry wasn’t needed.
The council did a U-turn after the Mirror’s 18-month investigation into Telford abuse.
Former judge Tom Crowther has now been appointed to lead the probe and has pledged to leave no stone unturned. Starting later this summer, it will look at offending from 1989 onwards and is expected to take up to two years due to the volume of witnesses and data.
The inquiry will also look at the response of police, schools, the NHS and children’s homes – and how whistleblowers were treated. And it will examine the role taxi drivers and takeaway workers had in trafficking victims.
We feared they didn’t want to highlight certain ethnic minority perpetrators
tion was about to become known as a huge issue across the UK. The whole country could have learned from us.” The grant was part of the Daphne project, a European initiative aimed at combating violence against women and children.
The council would have had to fund 20 per cent of costs, though a leaked memo seen by the Mirror shows experts advised the authority that seconding existing staff to work on the programme would cover the cost.
But the council withdrew its bid in late
TELFORD INSIDER ON REASONS FOR TURNING DOWN CASH