They were intentionally humiliated, shared with others and trafficked, independent investigators conclude. Telford is a city of about 140,000 inhabitants, just northwest of Birmingham.
Children were blamed
The investigation followed reports in the Sunday Mirror newspaper in 2018 of older reports of sexual exploitation. It has since been established that the abuse could continue because the children were blamed, not the perpetrators.
Teachers and youth workers were discouraged from reporting child sexual abuse. Police feared investigating some Asian men who committed abuse would cause racial tensions in society.
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During the study, victims said that adult men did their best to gain children’s trust before “relentlessly betraying that trust by treating them as sexual objects or merchandise.” Apologies have since been issued from the police and government.
More scandals
Telford is the latest revelation in a series of sensational sexual abuse cases in Britain. In 2014, it had already been revealed that 1,400 children had been sexually abused in another city. Another notorious case was that of television presenter Jimmy Savile, who assaulted hundreds of children unmolested.
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