Over the course of 30 years, more than 1,000 children were sexually abused in Telford, where police and council officials “ignored” the abuse out of concern that looking into Asian men would “inflame racial tensions.”
West Mercia Police has apologized for their actions, saying they “came far short of the aid and protection you should have had from us,” to the children who were sexually exploited in Telford over the previous 30 years.
Assistant Chief Constable Richard Cooper said: “I would like to say sorry.” He was speaking on behalf of the force.
We apologize to the victims and survivors of Telford’s child sexual exploitation.
Despite the fact that there were no indications of wrongdoing, we failed to provide you with the support and security you deserved, and that was unacceptable.
It is crucial that we take some time right now to critically and thoroughly consider the report’s background and the suggestions that have been made.
An investigation has shown that over a thousand children were sexually exploited in Telford over the course of at least 30 years amid “shocking” police and council failures.
If West Mercia Police (WMP) had “done its most basic job” in responding to reports of such criminality, unnecessary suffering and perhaps infant deaths may have been prevented, according to conclusions released on Tuesday.
Due to a lack of efforts to protect children and look into offenders, child sexual exploitation (CSE) ‘thrived’ in the Shropshire town for decades and went ‘unchecked’ out of concern that looking into Asian men would ‘inflame racial tensions’
“The overwhelming theme of the testimony has been the horrific suffering of generations of children caused by the absolute cruelty of those who engaged in child sexual exploitation,” said Tom Crowther QC, the chairman of the inquiry.
“Victims and survivors regularly described to the inquiry how adult men first attempted to earn their trust before mercilessly breaking it and using them as sexual objects or commodities when they were minors.
“Numerous kids were raped and subjected to sexual assault. They were insulted and humiliated on purpose.
Both sharing and trafficking occurred. Their families were intimidated, and they experienced violence.
Their lives were irrevocably altered, and they lived in fear.
The council and WMP, among other organizations, were “known of it in detail,” he claimed, and “for decades CSE thrived in Telford unchecked.”
He continued, “Failing by agencies to investigate emboldened perpetrators; failure to safeguard put children at risk.”
As far as the council and WMP were concerned, several factors ‘appears to have contributed to this shocking failure to address CSE, including a focus upon abuse within the family, at the expense of extra-familial exploitation; over-caution about acting in the absence of ‘hard evidence’ – a formal complaint from a child – about exploitation; and a nervousness that investigating concerns against Asian men, in particular, would inflame racial tensions.’
The police “turned a blind eye and opted not to notice what was clear,” according to the chairman, who also characterized a “culture of not investigating what was seen as “child prostitution.”
‘It is impossible not to wonder how different the lives of those early 2000s victims of child sexual exploitation – and indeed many others unknown to this inquiry – may have been had WMP done its most basic job and acted upon these reports of crime,’ he said, adding that the lack of police action had emboldened the offenders.
It is therefore impossible, in my opinion, to come to the conclusion that there was a genuine possibility that unnecessary suffering and even child deaths could have been prevented.
He also criticized Telford lawmakers for their “glaring inability” to consider a response to child sexual exploitation as a “vital service” in the years before to 2016.
Following Operation Chalice, a police investigation into child prostitution in the Telford region, seven men were sentenced to prison in 2013.
A public enquiry was then ordered by Telford and Wrekin Council after the Sunday Mirror investigation in 2018 revealed that 1,000 children may have been sexually exploited in the Shropshire town over a 40-year span.
One of the seven defendants who were charged six years prior was sentenced to prison in 2019 together with three other males for assaulting a young girl who was “passed around like a piece of meat,” sold for sex, and raped.
When the abuse started in 2001, the girl was barely 13 years old. She described how she was made to perform sex acts in a churchyard, raped above a shop on a filthy mattress, and physically humiliated when she resisted their advances.
The three-year-long investigation examined claims made between 1989 and the present, but Mr. Crowther claimed to have also met with victims whose experiences went back as far as the 1970s.