Specialist team to assess scale of Telford sex abuse cases
The move comes after allegations that the scale of grooming and sexual exploitation in the Shropshire town, given its population of around 150,000, may be the worst case of its kind in Britain.
Academics and the Sunday Mirror newspaper have claimed that up to 1,000 young vulnerable people may have been abused since the 1980s.
West Mercia Police have said they don’t recognise the figure and it has been “sensationalised”.
Since the revelations, Telford’s MP Lucy Allan says more victims have approached her for help.
Now Telford and Wrekin Council leader, Shaun Davies, has called in a team from the NWG Network, which is an organisation specialising in tackling child sexual exploitation (CSE), to make an immediate assessment of their live sexual exploitation cases.
“The work it will do is ensure that our live cases, the ones that are currently in operation, there’s 46 young people that we are working with right now who are are victims or who are at risk of becoming victims of CSE, are getting the support that they can,” Mr Davies told Sky News.
Tasnim Lowe, whose mother Lucy was killed in a house fire alongside her grandmother and aunt in 2000, has welcomed the move.
Tasnim’s father Azhar Ali Mehmood, who was part of a grooming network, was the person who set fire to the house and is still in prison over their deaths.
His daughter, who is now 18 and campaigning on behalf of survivors of abuse in Telford, told Sky News: “The authorities, they need to buckle down and admit they were wrong.
“A lot of people lost their lives and a lot of families and victims went through horrendous pain so I think they need to realise the scale of the issue.”
Beyond the live ongoing cases, there are intense arguments over what kind of inquiry should now be held in the town.
The Conservative opposition group on the council have argued for a Rotherham style inquiry that should be commissioned locally.
Cllr Nicola Lowery, who is part of the group, told Sky News: “From my connections in the community, I know that there are still cases of survivors that haven’t yet come forward to the police, or have and don’t feel they have been listened to.
“So we absolutely think that as a Conservative group who proposed an inquiry to be held and commissioned by the council, we just feel that is the most appropriate way we can get on with that inquiry.”
The council leader has told Sky News the scandal in Telford may actually be harder to unravel than what happened in Rotherham because it has occurred over a longer time period and doesn’t centre on council run care homes.
Cllr Davies said: “I think that the independent inquiry that we had report to this council in 2013 was similar in nature to the Rotherham inquiry, I don’t think that has answered the questions we have in front of us in our communities right now.
“I think therefore that it needs to be something more than Rotherham.”
Cllr Davies is hopeful that the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) will establish a “truth” project in the town within the next two months and has said he would welcome a Home Office commissioned inquiry that would compel every agency to give evidence.
The Home Office though has indicated that while IICSA will examine the abuse in Telford it is down to local authorities to decide if they need a separate inquiry.