Long-awaited report into widespread grooming of children in Telford due to be published today

A long-awaited report into widespread grooming of children in Telford is due to be published.

An independent inquiry has been examining claims that up to 1,000 children were groomed in the town over a 40-year period.

The inquiry is due to reveal the scale of the scandal and identify if children were let down by the authorities in the town.

Holly Archer now works with other survivors of abuse to support women and children who have suffered. We’re not using her real name to protect her identity.

“I was 14 when my abuse actually started,” she said.

“And then my phone number was sold by boys my own age to older men who would then harass me and not leave me alone.

“I ended up being trafficked around Telford and the West Midlands and sold to men of every kind and that went on until I was 18.”

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She said threats of violence left her unable to escape.

“They’d threaten that they would rape my mum or my sisters. There was quite a bit of violence involved.”

She recalled the feeling of having no one to ask for help.

“Social services let me down, the mental health team, children’s mental health service – they let me down. My GP surgery, the police, because they would see us on the street and just drive past in the middle of the night and not even say anything,” she added.

“We were judged as being promiscuous or making those choices ourselves.”

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‘There were guns involved’

Joanne, not her real name, says her abuse began when she was aged around 12.

She dropped out of school and ended up being forced into prostitution by her abusers.

“I was getting arrested by the police. I was seen as a criminal,” she said.

Fear of violence left her feeling trapped.

“There were guns involved. Lots of weapons were used on me,” she explained.

There are girls in the town who did not survive their abuse.

‘The police must have known something’

Lucy Lowe died when she was 16 when her abuser set fire to her home.

Her mother and sister were also killed in the blaze. Her abuser was jailed for their murders.

Lucy had given birth to his child aged just 14.

Her uncle, Ed Lowe, believes their deaths should have been prevented.

“I think social services must have known something, the police must have known something,” he said.

“Were they turning a blind eye? Were they not doing their job properly? Certainly not. Because of what transpired afterwards, obviously, the death of my brother’s three family members, his wife and his two daughters.

“If they’d been noted then that a 14-year-old girl was pregnant, the school should have been involved, social services involved, then the police it’d have never happened. So they’ve been failed. And I think they’ve failed quite a number of people in this town.”

‘Nobody’s asking what’s going on’

Scarlett Jones, also not her real name, said attitudes need to change.

She said: “I was 15 when I gave birth. The stigma that was attached to that even in the hospital that I gave birth in… one of the midwives said to me who are the teddies for, you or the baby?

“School teachers telling me that I was promiscuous and I needed to stop that behaviour. Nobody asked me why, what was going on, what was happening to me.

“What I think is the issue is that the questions are still not being asked today. And these questions should be being asked. We’re labelling kids as bad and nobody’s asking what’s going on.”

Sky News has contacted Telford and Wrekin Council and West Mercia Police for a response.

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