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Obvious evidence of child sex crimes in Telford were ignored for generations leading to more than 1,000 girls being abused, an inquiry has found.

Agencies blamed children for the abuse they suffered, not the perpetrators, and exploitation was not investigated because of "nervousness about race".

The inquiry was set up after the Sunday Mirror revealed gangs had been abusing girls in the town since the 1980s.

Chairman Tom Crowther QC said the abuse had thrived unchecked for decades.

It makes 47 recommendations for improvement by agencies involved.

The report found agencies dismissed reports of child exploitation as "child prostitution".

Mr Crowther said: "The overwhelming theme of the evidence has been the appalling suffering of generations of children caused by the utter cruelty of those who committed child sexual exploitation.

"Victims and survivors repeatedly told the inquiry how, when they were children, adult men worked to gain their trust before ruthlessly betraying that trust, treating them as sexual objects or commodities.

"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. They have asked, over the years: how was this allowed to happen?"

Other key findings include:

Teachers and social workers being discouraged from reporting abuse
Offenders becoming "emboldened" by the absence of police action, with abuse continuing for years without concerted response.
Even after an investigation leading to seven men being jailed for child sex crimes West Mercia Police and Telford & Wrekin Council scaled down their specialist teams "to virtual zero" in order to save money
The investigation was known as Operation Chalice and saw two Telford brothers among those jailed. A court heard the brothers sexually abused, trafficked and prostituted, or tried to prostitute, four teenagers between March 2008 and December 2009.
The report found the most common way children were exploited was through a "boyfriend" model, where a child would meet a man, who would persuade them to become his girlfriend.

Perpetrators, it said, sought out "vulnerable" children and would begin giving them lifts, buying them food, alcohol or cigarettes which led to the children becoming involved in sexual activity with the men as a "favour" as payment for the gifts.

Most of those responsible for the abuse did not use contraception and "pregnancies were expected to be (and in many cases were) terminated", though some survivors went on to bear the children of their perpetrators.

In several cases, victims received death threats against them or their families if they tried to end the abuse,

The report references the case of Lucy Lowe,16, who died along with her 17-year-old sister,and mother in a house fire started by Azhar Ali Mehmood, 26, the father of her daughter. She had become pregnant at 14 to Mehmood.

The report continued to say children were often abused in nightclubs and takeaways with witnesses also describing a "rape house" in Wellington, Telford, to which young people were taken,

Within schools, it said, there was a "reluctance" to report concerning activity without "concrete proof" which was an "overly cautious approach", while "obvious" indicators like absences and changes in behaviour went unremarked by school staff.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-englan...shire-61983584

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Sickening