Birmingham Council 'buried' report into link between Asian private hire drivers and child exploitation Researcher says her critical report into child grooming involving girls in its care in the early 90s had all links to ethnicity removed
Birmingham City Council 'buried' a report linking Asian private hire drivers to child sexual exploitation victims 23 YEARS ago.
Researcher Dr Jill Jesson was asked by the authority to look at the issue of child prostitution involving girls in care back in 1990.
The following year, after six months' research, she produced a critical report which showed child protection failings by social workers and other agencies.
Her report also highlighted claims that some Asian private hire drivers were linked to the sexual exploitation of young girls in care, including some who had been cautioned for prostitution offences.
Yet when Dr Jesson presented her draft findings to a steering group, she was ordered to remove all reference linking ethnicity and the private hire trade.
Incredibly, her amended final report was never published. A meeting planned to discuss it was cancelled - and all copies were to be destroyed.
The Birmingham Mail has now tracked down Dr Jesson, a respected academic, who spoke about her research and the missing report for the first time.
"I was employed to do the work because I think they thought I would be objective," she said. "I was told to reveal what I saw.
"I did - and some people didn't like it.
"There was a link between the sexual abuse of the girls and private hire drivers in the city. I thought at the time I did the work that there was an issue with race. Most of the girls were white.
"I was asked to take this link out, to erase it."
Recent child sexual exploitation scandals in Rotherham and Rochdale revealed how young white girls were abused by gangs of Asian men. An official report into Rotherham, where up to 1,400 victims suffered sickening abuse, said many offenders had been private hire drivers.
Dr Jesson said: "Every time a news item has come on about sexual grooming of young girls and girls in care, and the link, too, between private hire drivers, I have thought 'I told them about that in 1991 but they didn't want to acknowledge it..'
"I think the problem has got worse and worse over time."
Dr Jesson was hired by the council to conduct the Government-funded study into the health issues of child prostitution involving girls in care. She identified 20 girls in care at that time who authorities believed had become involved in child prostitution.
“It wasn't called grooming then, it was called prostitution," Dr Jesson said. "The girls were all aged between 13 and 17 and were all under the care of Birmingham City Council social services."
The city council commissioned me to carry out the piece of research because they knew there was a problem. I was employed to ascertain the scale of the problem. They wanted to quantify it so social services could manage it."
Yet from the beginning Dr Jesson faced difficulty obtaining information, with some social workers misguidedly covering for girls in their care.
She said: "I was not helped by the fact that social services had inadequate recording methods. That was a big problem and my report was also critical of the council's policy around tackling the problem."
''The 20 girls identified had all come from troubled homes and most had beensexually abused by family members. Around 15 of them were white, while the rest were mixed race.
“Yet once in care the young victims suffered further abuse after being groomed by older 'boyfriends'
"A friendly young man would pick up the girl, say he loved her, buy her presents and before she knew it she was being shared around his mates," said Dr Jesson.
The links between city taxi drivers, believed to be private hire drivers, and the young girls was initially made clear in the report - until the researcher was ordered to take the detail out.
Dr Jesson said: "It was written in the social services' notes of the girls that the girls had told about taxi drivers being one of the features of what was happening to them."
“I thought there was a link between Asian taxi drivers - private hire drivers they were - and the girls who were getting the cautions for prostitution.
I put that in the report and was asked to remove that, too."
"The role of the police seemed to be to find girls who were reported asmissing. Their job was to find the girls, bring them back to the homes, but then the staff running the homes would just let them walk out again."
report was shelved, buried, it was never made public."
Birmingham City Council's Peter Hay, Strategic Director of People said: "This is a matter which was discussed in full and in public over 20 years ago.”
source:
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/bi ... nk-4653502
Login
Register
FAQ
