Telford child sexual exploitation scandal

The Telford child sex abuse ring consisted of a group of men who were grooming local children for sex between 2007 and 2009 in Telford in the English county of Shropshire. Up to 100 girls are believed to have been affected and around 200 perpetrators were suspected. According to the Home Office, as of 2015 Telford had the highest rate in the UK of sex crimes against children.

In a series of trials stretching over two years and concluding in May 2013, seven men, mainly British Pakistanis, were convicted of sexual offences against four girls aged 13 to 16. The offences included rape, controlling child prostitution, causing child prostitution, and trafficking for the purpose of prostitution.

In 2018, Investigations by Daily Mirror have revealed that the extent of the Telford grooming gang was far more vast than had previously been revealed, with up to 1000 girls, most of them White, having been victims of trafficking, drugging, beating, rape and even murder by members of the group and other groups, who are suspected to number in the hundreds, making it the largest of any grooming scandal to date. As in similar grooming gang cases, the perpetrators were overwhelmingly of South Asian and Muslim ethnos and religion. Also similar with other grooming gang cases is the authority's refusal to investigate leads for fear of being seen as racist, with police having known about gang activities since the early 1990s. Many of the social workers and the victims involved in the investigation testified that the police and local council were unwilling, unhelpful and sometimes intentionally obstructive of their efforts to report and arrest the perpetrators, with "Council Staff [having] viewed viewed abused and trafficked children as 'prostitutes' instead of victims", "police failed to investigate one recent case five times until an MP intervened", a victim dropping out of pursuing an investigation against her abusers because she “didn’t feel she was being emotionally supported” by police, and a victim claiming that "officers discouraged her from pursuing her request for evidence after she told them she was speaking to The Mirror."

The MP for Telford, Lucy Allan has demanded an independent inquiry, stating that “There must now be an independent inquiry into child sexual exploitation in Telford so that our community can have absolute confidence in the authorities,"

Operation Chalice

Location of Shropshire

Further information: Localised grooming

West Mercia Police set up "Operation Chalice" to investigate allegations that local girls were being groomed. Officers believe that up to 100 girls were affected between 2007 and 2009.

According to a Channel 4 Dispatches investigation, "The Hunt for Britain's Sex Gangs" (2011), police were told that men in Telford would "ejaculate and then urinate in children's mouths". There were also allegations of "gang-rape by queues of men while girls were held hostage for hours, sometimes days—all the while being forced to listen to the screams of girls in other rooms with other men".

Convictions

Name	Age	Conviction	Sentence
Ahdel Ali	25	"one charge of rape, 11 charges of sexual activity with a child, three charges of controlling child prostitution, one of inciting child prostitution, a charge of inciting a child to engage in sexual activity and meeting a child after grooming"	18 years
Mubarek "Max" Ali	29	"four charges of controlling child prostitution, two of trafficking in the UK for sexual exploitation and a charge of causing child prostitution"	14 years
Mohammed Islam Choudhrey	54	"paying for sex with a Telford schoolgirl"	2 years 6 months
Mohammed Ali Sultan	26	"having sex with two teenage girls, one of whom was 13 years old"	7 years
Mohammed Younis	61	"allowing his flat to be used as a brothel by allowing a man to have sex with a girl who was being controlled as a prostitute"	2 years 6 months
Mahroof Khan	35	"having sex with a 15-year-old girl"	30 months
Tanveer Ahmed	40	"controlling a child prostitute"	2 years 6 months

Call for inquiry

In September 2016, the Conservative MP for Telford, Lucy Allan, called for an inquiry. She said she had had a meeting with a victim of the abuse, who told her that many of the worst offenders had not been prosecuted and were still living in the area. Allan said that she would be asking the prime minister, Theresa May, to take action.

See also

• List of sexual abuses perpetrated by groups