Quite a lot about the taxi trade's modus in the second piece here in particular
Telford scandal: Over 1,000 girls abused and raped by Asian gangs while police looked the other wayhttps://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fw ... igating%2FPlus, survivor Samantha Smith waives her anonymity to speak to The Telegraph about her years of 'silence and shame and victim blaming'More than a thousand girls were sexually abused by gangs of Asian men in Telford while police dropped cases like a “hot potato” for fear of inflaming racial tensions, a damning report has found.
For at least 30 years, abusers in the Shropshire town “thrived” as their appalling crimes went unchecked by the authorities, who were more concerned about political correctness.
An investigation - commissioned in 2018 - accused those whose job it was to protect children of repeatedly “turning a blind eye” and “ignoring obvious signs of child sexual exploitation”.
The results of the three-year inquiry laid bare how vulnerable children were targeted by men - often local taxi drivers - who bought them alcohol and cigarettes before convincing them they were in loving relationships.
After “brainwashing them”, they then abused and raped them, issuing death threats if they threatened to expose the abuse.
Witnesses told an inquiry how West Mercia Police had appeared “frightened to question or challenge because they didn’t want to have the finger pointed at them, saying they were being racist”.
In its findings, the report said the force’s decisions were impacted by “fear of complaint” or “because of concern about the impact... on racial tensions”.
Children accused of being prostitutesThe report also criticised the council’s “disastrous” decision in 2006 to suspend taxi licensing enforcement, which was also “borne entirely out of fear of accusations of racism”.
In some cases, the children themselves were blamed for the abuse and accused of being prostitutes.
The lack of a response by the authorities only emboldened the perpetrators to continue the abuse, the report concluded.
Seven men were jailed in 2013 following Operation Chalice, a police probe into child prostitution in the Telford area.
Tom Crowther QC, who chaired the inquiry, said: “Countless children were sexually assaulted and raped. They were deliberately humiliated and degraded. They were shared and trafficked. They were subjected to violence and their families were threatened.
“They lived in fear and their lives were forever changed.”
He said for decades the abuse had continued even though the council and West Mercia Police (WMP) had been “aware of it in detail”.
He added: “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.”
Both the council and the police have apologised to the children affected.
Tried and tested ‘loverboy’ method used to exploit young girls for decadesBy Martin EvansAs far back as the 1970s, vulnerable girls living in the Shropshire town of Telford were easy prey for gangs of largely Asian men, who groomed, exploited, raped and in some cases even killed them.Operating in plain sight, the exploiters were emboldened by the fact the police and local authority seemed uninterested in investigating the appalling crimes.
More concerned about inflaming racial tensions than protecting children, West Mercia Police repeatedly failed to listen to the victims or challenge the perpetrators, a damning report has suggested.
It is estimated that more than 1,000 children fell victim to the abusers, while only a handful of men were ever brought to justice.
Coming after the child abuse scandals in Rotherham, Rochdale and Oxford, the report published on Tuesday laid bare the scale of the failures by those whose job it was to protect the vulnerable.
For decades the abusers - who were mainly Asian men - operated with impunity in the Telford area, even setting up a “rape house” where victims were ferried to be attacked.
The paedophiles used a tried and tested approach to target and exploit their victims - employing what became known as a “loverboy” method.
The grooming often began when the girls were in their early teens, but sometimes when they were even younger.
Men would deliberately seek out vulnerable children and would quickly win them round by offering them lifts or by buying them alcohol and cigarettes.
One victim described how the typical abuser would aim to meet as many girls as they could, particularly those on the edge of friendship groups or who seemed to be craving attention.
Taxi drivers worked together to dupe girlsThe local taxi industry, largely operated by Asian men, in the town, played a pivotal role in the abuse.
The report detailed “numerous accounts of children being subjected to unwanted sexual attention in taxis, which led in some cases to rape or other serious sexual assault by the driver”.
The report also found that taxi drivers had worked together to dupe girls.
“Asian men will pick up a girl in a taxi when drunk, stop at a shop, supposedly to buy a drink, and then drive off, leaving the girl abandoned,” one witness told the inquiry.
“He will then call other men, one of whom will pick the girl up, thereby ‘rescuing’ her, with the others driving to a pre-arranged location in readiness for the second taxi to bring the girl there in order that all the men can rape her.”
The gangs even targeted girls during school lunch hours, picking them up and dropping them off with little concern that their activities would be noticed.
Fast food outlets in the area were also a gateway for abuse. Upstairs rooms at takeaways were used “for committing serious sexual assaults” and girls were given weekend jobs and then taken upstairs to be raped.
The abusers would convince the girls they were their boyfriends and despite the often vast age difference would force them to engage in sexual activity.
Many girls became pregnantMost abusers would not use contraception and many of the girls became pregnant.
Some were encouraged to have terminations but others did go on to bear their abusers’ children.
In one such case, a girl called Lucy Lowe was targeted by taxi driver Azhar Ali Mehmood when she was just 12-years-old.
She gave birth to her first daughter when she was just 14 and was pregnant with her second child in 2000 when Mehmood, 26, poured petrol into her home and set it alight, killing her and two other members of her family.
He was jailed for life in October 2001, but showed little remorse and despite the shocking details of the case, little was done at the time to investigate whether such sexual exploitation was evident elsewhere in Telford.
Other victims received death threats, with abusers often quoting the case of Lucy Lowe as a warning of what could happen to them if they did not comply.
Tom Crowther QC, who chaired the inquiry said: “The nature of the crimes often involved brainwashing young people into believing they were in meaningful, loving and reciprocal relationships, even if such apparent reciprocity involved them engaging in things that deep down they knew they did not want to do.
“Although some children spoke to professionals about their situations, for some time those professionals failed to understand that these ‘relationships’ were exploitative.”
When the authorities did investigate allegations of exploitative relationships, they failed to focus on the role of Asian men for fear of being “too politically correct”, the report said.
West Mercia Police were described as dropping cases like a “hot potato” if complaints were made against Asian perpetrators because it fell into the “too difficult category”.
Police decisions ‘influenced by assumptions about race’One witness who submitted evidence said: “It seemed to be ... it was because of the ethnicity of the people involved they felt as if the police were frightened to question or challenge because they didn’t want to have the finger pointed at them, saying they were being racist.”
The report suggested the police and local council placed a higher priority on avoiding inflaming racial tensions than protecting the vulnerable.
The report stated: “I am satisfied that in some cases the decisions of West Mercia Police officers about whether or not to investigate a particular piece of intelligence or complaint were influenced by assumptions about race.”
On Tuesday night West Mercia Police issued an unequivocal apology to all the victims of the abuse.
Speaking on behalf of West Mercia Police, Assistant Chief Constable Richard Cooper, said: “I would like to say sorry. Sorry to the survivors and all those affected by child sexual exploitation in Telford.
“While there were no findings of corruption, our actions fell far short of the help and protection you should have had from us, it was unacceptable, we let you down.”
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