Latest news with #grooming
Times
3 hours ago
- Times
Bradford is the grooming ‘hotspot' of the UK, victim warns
Fiona Goddard was just 14 and living at a children's home when she was targeted by a grooming gang based in Bradford. She was plied with drink and drugs, repeatedly raped and 'in effect used as a prostitute' before falling pregnant to one of her abusers, a court heard. Nine Asian men were jailed for committing 22 offences against her in 2019, but six years on she believes predators continue to plague her home town. PA 'It's definitely still going on,' Goddard, now 31, warned this week as she described Bradford as the overlooked hotspot of grooming in the UK. She is among thousands of young people who may have been failed by authorities over the past 20 years, according to campaigners who claim the problem here could dwarf similar scandals in Rochdale and Rotherham. A dossier compiled by a child abuse lawyer and a Bradford-based MP maintains that up to 8,000 children were at risk of sexual exploitation between 1996 and 2025. Baroness Casey of Blackstock, whose audit of grooming cases this week prompted a national inquiry into the issue, said she would be 'surprised' if Bradford was not one of the first areas to be investigated. With the spotlight finally falling on the city and its surrounding suburbs, The Times met survivors, campaigners and residents who fear child sex attackers have become emboldened by the nation's attention focused elsewhere. Speaking as families enjoyed ice creams and water fights in the warm weather on Thursday, Goddard welcomed the new inquiry but stressed that the authorities must not view the issue as purely historical. She revealed that within the last fortnight alone at least two incidents have left local parents seriously concerned for the safety of their children. On June 10, West Yorkshire police arrested a 70-year-old man on allegations of sexual assault after a report that two children were inappropriately touched at a park in Allerton village, three miles from Bradford. Footage of the arrest, seen by The Times, shows the suspect trying to escape by reversing his car down a residential road at high speed as officers chase after him on foot. The man was taken into custody and later bailed with conditions. Five days later, on Sunday evening, officers were again called to a report of a suspicious vehicle in Wibsey village, south of Bradford, after residents claimed teenage girls were being supplied with 'alcohol and balloons' in the back seats. Officers interviewed two men inside the car and searched the vehicle, before issuing them with out-of-court disposals for possession of class C drugs. Another victim of a Bradford-based grooming gang who bravely waived her lifelong right to anonymity is Scarlett West, who is now 20. Despite living in Tameside, about an hour away in Greater Manchester, she was routinely ferried to Bradbury by her abusers before finally breaking free from their influence two years ago. Marlon West, her father, said the abuse is now 'worse than it's ever been' because perpetrators have exploited 'political correctness' to create a culture of silence in the UK. Scarlett, who attended a private school, 'went off the rails' after being physically attacked by a gang of boys at a bus station. Vulnerable, she was befriended by an older white woman who allegedly groomed her and introduced her to a group of predominantly British-Pakistani men. 'Scarlett was being trafficked around the country to a number of places, but Bradford, she was taken there hundreds of times,' her father said. The area 'is on a different level', he added, because it 'has not had the limelight' like other areas and the criminals 'believe they can get away with it'. Both Goddard and West, who do not know each other and suffered abuse a decade apart, said that snooker clubs in the city had been hubs of grooming activity. At least one has been closed down by police over allegations of child sex offences. When The Times visited the site of another club identified this week, it had also shut after going out of business. It is now used as a youth club. Its new owner, who asked not to be identified, said he was saddened but not surprised to learn of the building's history given the area's reputation for grooming. Goddard said she believes the 'dynamics' of grooming operations 'are changing' as the public becomes more vigilant to vehicles loitering on street corners. 'Rather than just pulling over in cars and seeing them on the street, they're [now] getting in touch with vulnerable people on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok,' she said. • Officers at Greater Manchester Police who specialise in child exploitation agreed. Grooming is 'evolving' and has become a 'broader' issue than it was two decades ago, they said, driven by the ease with which predators can now contact vulnerable children on the internet. Many traditional routes used by offenders — through care homes or schools, for example — have been 'closed' by better safeguarding, the force said, but the digital world was 'where the opportunity is'. 'Exploitation is still happening,' Detective Superintendent Alan Clitherow, head of the force's major child sexual exploitation investigations, said. 'It's still happening here, it's still happening nationally. We're constantly having to keep pace with how it's evolving.' But he said the grooming gangs phenomenon does 'not look the same today' because law enforcement is better equipped to tackle it after learning 'a lot of lessons' from various reviews. 'You're therefore not going to have the same level of long-term bespoke offending, but that doesn't mean that it's not happening,' he added. Detective Chief Inspector Dan Hadfield, who leads the force's online child abuse investigation team, said there were still 'definitely people working together in a certain town', but that offenders now often operate across borders thanks to the internet. 'It's not as focused as it once was,' he said. In Greater Manchester, white men are overrepresented in online child abuse cases, accounting for 82 per cent of suspects — a higher proportion than the local white population of 76 per cent. However, Asian men are disproportionately represented in group-based child abuse cases — those involving multiple perpetrators or multiple victims — and make up more than half of such offenders. Robbie Moore, the MP for Keighley and Ilkley who helped to compile the dossier about Bradford, accused the local council of obstructing independent insight into the scale and nature of sexual offending. He said: 'It defies belief that over two decades ago since my predecessor Ann Cryer first bravely exposed the grooming gangs crisis right here in Keighley, the Bradford district has still never had a full independent inquiry.' Susan Hinchcliffe, leader of Bradford Council, said: 'This is an appalling crime that blights victims' lives. In Bradford we take this extremely seriously, so I welcome the renewed focus on this nationally. 'We work hard with the police to identify historic victims of CSE [child sexual exploitation] to get them justice and provide support. So far this has resulted in 52 perpetrators receiving prison sentences totalling 570 years. 'Over the last ten years we have published over 70 reports, independently authored reviews and data, including ethnicity data, for open scrutiny on this subject. We have nothing to hide.' Chief Superintendent Richard Padwell of Bradford District Police said tackling child sexual exploitation 'remains a top priority'. He added: 'We are taking a proactive approach and have invested significant resources into tackling exploitation and abuse. 'The work we have undertaken has resulted in hundreds of perpetrators now serving lengthy prison sentences totalling thousands of years. Many investigations are still underway, with more suspects set to stand trial between now and 2027.'
Times
11 hours ago
- Times
Sarah Champion: I'm seen by many as a racist. I'm the opposite
Sarah Champion did not go into politics to wage war against child sex abuse rings or become a voice for vulnerable teenage girls preyed on by gangs of men of predominantly Pakistani origin who groomed, trafficked and raped them. When she became the Labour MP for Rotherham she did not know they existed. 'I had been running the local children's hospice as CEO when I became an MP in 2012 and I remember reading an article about this 15-year-old Rotherham girl who had a baby by any of three different men and was seen as a little scrubber, and I thought that's not right. Then a girl was found dead in a river, and they said she'd gone mad. Finally, a young white girl came to us with a poorly baby and her boyfriend was a much older Asian man; the relationship seemed odd.' Champion became increasingly uneasy that she did not know what was going on in her own constituency. 'At one of my first council meetings there was an item under 'risky business' and no one would explain it … Then I was in parliament and there was a session at a select committee on child sexual exploitation and Jayne Senior [a social worker] was giving evidence and it was horrifying, I felt mortified that no one seemed to care. Afterwards she suggested we meet on a canal boat in secrecy, and she told me what had been going on.' Slowly, survivors began to contact Champion. 'They were all ages. I met someone in her early eighties in Rotherham who described it happening to her by a Pakistani-origin man when she was younger. I met another woman at the back of Costa Coffee in her early twenties who went through everything in detail. Gradually I was collecting all this information, but I didn't know what to do.' Senior gave her a list of the men she had reported as abusers and the list of people she thought were complicit in the cover-up. 'I went to the police and people in the council saying I had serious concerns about a number of people, but I didn't get any responses. It was hard to know who to trust and I was nervous of giving away girls' names away. My life became one of shadows and pseudonyms.' • Baroness Casey: I feel rage on behalf of the abused girls This was not a race issue for Champion. 'To me this was just child abuse. It wasn't an ethnicity thing. The names weren't typically white English names, but what mattered was they were perpetrators of horrendous crimes. I'm a sloppy lefty to my core; I believe in equality and diversity. I just saw them as criminals.' The MP strongly believes Rotherham police, councillors and social workers should have called out these men as abusers decades ago. 'If they had taken these cases seriously when they began being reported in the 1960s, rather than telling these women they were silly young girls, then there wouldn't have been the boil of frustration there is now. The criminals would have gone to jail, the story wouldn't have escalated across the country, the Pakistani community wouldn't be vilified as though all of them are walking around intent on abusing white girls. They have done a massive disservice to this country.' In no way, Champion says, should these young girls be expected to take the blame. 'I remember when I was 15 and my friends and I were so excited when one of us got an older boyfriend with a car, some children are enamoured by older men, they like feeling special — before it all goes wrong — but we need to protect them.' The Labour MP stresses that she does not think this is about paedophiles. 'This is about pubescent girls aged 10 to 15 who are being groomed, they aren't little kids, and that is partly why it is overlooked as there is confusion over the age of consent, but it is 16 and for a reason.' • Gangs raped 'lost' girls because no one cared Watching these abused children struggle, as they grow up, has changed her mind about prostitution. 'I would make it a criminal offence for men to buy sex and decriminalise the women. I shifted my view largely because of the girls in Rotherham. When they were no longer pubescent and their value started to drop, they were so damaged and desperate, many were forced to turn to prostitution. They didn't have the capacity for consent, either because of the violence or drugs or alcohol.' She had the law changed so from 2017 every child received sex education at school about the nature of good relationships and not just biology, but Champion found it harder to make the girls' stories heard. 'Once I'd been told about it, I would see it everywhere walking round Rotherham, I thought how can everyone else not see. Then I began reading reports round the country and thinking that's another grooming gang, yet none of them called them out.' She started to believe there was a pattern to cases being reported not just in Rotherham but Rochdale, Telford and Oxford. In 2017, after the conviction of a sex-grooming gang in Newcastle upon Tyne who were largely of Pakistani origin, Champion cracked. 'I did the BBC Today programme because I became so frustrated. They called the day before and I said I am going to say they are Pakistani gangs and they were very concerned. I went on and it was fine, there were no recriminations, just supportive messages. Then The Sun got in touch, and I wrote a piece for them. And all hell broke loose.' Champion had written: 'Britain has a problem with British Pakistani men raping and exploiting white girls.' She was forced to quit as shadow equalities minister under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn. She then said in an interview: 'What I'm really interested in is misogyny. It occurs in many different forms, but the most obvious forms are happening within some ethnic minority communities. I'm thinking female genital mutilation, forced marriage, honour-based violence and this type of child exploitation.' She was immediately branded a racist and for the past few years the abuse hurled at her from all sides has been relentless. 'It's the anniversary of [fellow Yorkshire MP] Jo Cox's death next week, I was coming through the Tube yesterday and this guy clocked me and put his hand in his pocket and I thought he was going to stab me. You have to recalibrate your head and accept that it is inevitable that someone is going to kill you. It's quite liberating, I am a fatalist. I went through all the panicking and alarms and it eats you up so you just have to resign yourself. The MP David Amess was also a friend so I know what can happen.' • How the child sex grooming gangs scandal unfolded over 20 years Amess was killed in his Southend West constituency. Is it worth Champion risking her life to keep raising the issue of grooming gangs? 'No. But I can't help it.' Does she now wish she hadn't become an MP? 'I genuinely can't answer that. I have tried to become a voice for those who don't have one. But the personal toll? It's living hell. The violence and threat of violence has got marginally better, but it has been horrendous.' The proliferation of grooming gangs dominated by Pakistani-heritage men, she tells me, is like the Post Office scandal and the contaminated blood scandal. 'Everyone now knows but no one does anything. The Times has been amazing and a few others. Once you start getting really involved you can't stop because it is such a devastating story. But there aren't 20 people behind me saying, 'I will take the baton, you have a break now'. The sacrifices and compromises you make to do this aren't worth it for most people.' Does she still worry even now after Baroness Casey of Blackstock's 200-page report was published this week into grooming gangs that she will be seen as a racist for saying they are predominantly made up of men from Pakistani families? 'I think we can now say more, I wrote a letter to The Times this week using the words Pakistani heritage, but I still thought long and hard about doing that in case people misconstrued it.' She must find it hard that it took Elon Musk tweeting to get politicians to focus on the abuse again. 'I jokingly say I will dance with the devil if it gets the ultimate aim and that is the closest I have come to doing it. His intervention has promoted more discussion … But I get upset when the right uses what has happened to these girls as a political tool.' Many on the left have warned that people like her are stirring up racial tensions and the bigots will use it to hound ethnic minorities. 'Trying to hide what is happening isn't helping anyone. I had a Pakistani female constituent come to me because she had gone to the police about her husband who had been abusing young girls the same age as her children. She had then been completely ostracised by her community for bringing shame on them and was getting terrorised in her home and wasn't getting enough protection … They must live with these men. How those in authority think not dealing with the crime is helping the Pakistani community is mind-blowing to me.' New generations are also suffering, she says. 'I started getting young women coming very distressed because they were having their babies taken off them because social services had decided they were unfit mothers. They would tell me 'I think it is because my boyfriend is Pakistani, and the council is racist'. But it's almost the opposite. The council was afraid to call these men out and saw the victims as having made bad lifestyle choices.' Does she feel that this is as much a class problem as a race problem? 'I don't think it is just working-class girls who have been sucked in, but they are less likely to know how to raise their voices and get people to listen. I've sat with their mothers who say, 'What do I do? I can't chain my daughter up.' One of the groomers' methods is to divide families and get kids put into care so they are even easier prey. I know one parent who had the money and could send her child to a relative out of the region to break the cycle of abuse. So, if you have some cash, you have more options.' But many remain stuck with the perpetrators of their misery, living in the same town. 'One of the girls who first talked to me said that the same gang members were coming up to her with her 12-year-old and taunting her, saying, 'Your daughter is about ready now,' and she was freaking out.' What haunts Champion most is that this kind of horrendous abuse is still going on over a decade after she became MP and tried to raise awareness. 'This is not in the past tense, we are still dealing with these cases in isolation, but they must be linked they are so similar.'' In her epic campaign to get attention for the victims, Champion has felt very alone. 'Andrew Norfolk, the late Times journalist, and Jayne Senior have been my two staunchest allies. When this all broke again I still only had two MPs get in touch with me.' • Andrew Norfolk obituary: Times reporter who exposed grooming gangs I ask whether she misses Norfolk, who died last month. her eyes well up. 'I normally do 12 to 14-hour days here but when I found out he died I was floored. I came home at 10.30pm and I couldn't stop sobbing. He was the only one who I could just talk to about it all without fearing being accused of being racist. Neither of us wanted to be known for this. I'm seen by many as the racist Sarah Champion. It's awful. I'm the opposite.' She hasn't had any therapy or help. 'I trained as a shrink; I appreciate the value of it, but I am not at a point where I can unpack this because I have too much to do. Andrew and I would get in touch when we needed each other. It was the knowledge that there was someone who understood what was going on and didn't believe I was nuts.' Champion has no children of her own. 'That has helped, I have one step of separation,' she says. She doesn't feel angry just lonely. 'It's not helpful to be angry. I just feel deeply disappointed and frustrated and wanted people to be better. I want them to give their best and they aren't. They take the job title and don't give a shit. I don't know how they can turn a blind eye.' When Sir Keir Starmer agreed to a national inquiry this week, she was pleased but when she switched on social media, she saw she was being monstered from both sides. 'Either I have done too much or not enough, I'm now blamed by left and right. But I hope the inquiry can take up the challenge. It's important that they are going back over 800 cases. 'People in the UK are very tolerant, but at our core we want to see fairness. If something is seen as unfair, we start kicking off so the fact that the law wasn't applied here without fear or favour is a big issue; the fact that people paid to do a job failed to do it, and worse covered up abuse, that's a big issue.' Wherever Champion goes in the world now, people ask her about the grooming gangs, she says. 'Unless we are seen to be dealing with it, this smear is going to be on our country and our reputation for years.'
BBC News
13 hours ago
- BBC News
'Devious and perverted' Bradford Imam raped boy at mosque
An Imam at the UK's largest mosque has been jailed for 13 years for raping a teenage Khan, 57, used his position at Bradford Grand Mosque to groom and assault the boy on five separate occasions during the 1990s. Bradford Crown Court heard Khan, from Sheffiled, had previously been jailed for 16 years in 2011 for sexually assaulting two boys in Stoke-on-Trent in Christopher Smith said: "You were a respected member of the teaching staff, but your outward respectful appearance masked a devious and perverted sexual interest in pubescent boys." The court heard Khan had attacked the boy, who was aged between 13 and 16, in his office at the mosque and on a Smith said he had then "secured his silence" by telling him "he would not be believed" if he reported what had happened."Regrettably, opportunities were missed to bring your offending to an end when other individual members of staff found you in suspicious circumstances but failed to to report matters to others as they should have done so," he said Khan had gained the trust of his victim's family while "silently betraying their trust" and "destroying their son's life". Khan's offending only came to light in 2019, more than 20 years after the abuse took pleaded guilty to raping the boy on the first day of his well as the 13-year sentence, Khan was told he would serve an additional three years on licence following his release. Listen to highlights from West Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North.
BBC News
a day ago
- BBC News
Ampleforth College monk jailed for sexually abusing two boys
A "manipulative and controlling" monk who sexually abused two pupils at a North Yorkshire public school has been jailed for seven James Callaghan, 71, abused his position of trust when he preyed on the teenage boys at Ampleforth College, a Catholic boarding school, Durham Crown Court heard. Callaghan, of Moortown, Leeds, was found guilty of 12 counts of indecent assault on one pupil in the 1990s and one count of sexual assault on another teenager in the as Father James at the college, Callaghan will be subject to an indefinite sexual harm prevention order and will be on the sex offenders' register for life. The older victim, who cannot be named for legal reasons, read out a statement during the sentencing hearing. "Father James was manipulative and controlling," he said. "My life was hijacked when I was just 14 and I have been dealing with the fallout ever since." The court heard how Callaghan groomed the boy and engineered ways to be alone with him, took him out of school for meals and gave him complainant described to police how Callaghan would "take on the role of a boy I had a crush on" and they would kiss and simulate told police he "hated the sexual bit of it" and realised as an adult it "wasn't right", the Teesside Crown Court trial previously second victim described how he suffered from nightmares and panic attacks."I looked up to him, I trusted him," he said in a statement. "He chose to violate my boundaries; first to groom me over a period of time and then to sexually assault me."Judge Richard Clews, sentencing, told the defendant right-thinking people would "recoil in horror" at the idea of a Roman Catholic priest having a sexual relationship with a boy. David Lamb KC, defending, said Callaghan had no previous convictions and he had expressed remorse for his actions after conviction. The school, described in court as "the Catholic Eton", said it had "overhauled" safeguarding systems and actively offered help to survivors of a statement, it said: "Ampleforth College deplores abuse and offers a heartfelt apology to the victims and their families for the profound suffering and pain that Michael James Callaghan has inflicted upon them."We acknowledge past failings and feel great sorrow at the terrible betrayal of trust."It said the monk left the school in 2018 and it fully supported the police investigation, which started in Con Alison Morris, of North Yorkshire Police, said: "Not only did Callaghan abuse his position of trust in the most appalling way, taking advantage of vulnerable boys he should have been caring for and protecting, he denied his offences throughout. "He showed no remorse for the pain and suffering he caused." Listen to highlights from North Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North.
The Sun
2 days ago
- Politics
- The Sun
Rochdale grooming gang fiends who abused girls as young as 12 still living in UK as Pakistan REFUSES to take them back
TWO prolific Rochdale grooming fiends are still living in the UK - because Pakistan refuses to take them back. Qari Abdul Rauf and Adil Khan were part of a nine-strong gang of Asian men convicted of sex offences against vulnerable girls in 2012. 5 Up to 47 girls as young as 12 were plied with alcohol and drugs and gang-raped across Rochdale during a two-year reign of terror. Then-Home Secretary Theresa May ordered the pair to be sent back to Pakistan in 2014 as it would as it would be "conducive to the public good". But ten years later, Rauf and Khan still remain in Rochdale where their victims are forced to live alongside them. It has now emerged Pakistan is refusing to take the predators back, The Telegraph reports. An official claimed it would be "extremely difficult' to allow in such dangerous criminals. The battle has also been further complicated by Rauf and Khan renouncing their Pakistani citizenship. After they both exploited a loophole by ripping up their passports, they became "stateless", which can block a deportation. Rauf and fellow gang leader Khan, who got a 13-year-old girl pregnant, lost a lengthy fight in 2018 against deportation alongside a third member of the gang, Abdul Aziz. They subsequently launched another bid - insisting the order breaches their human rights as they both have wives and children in the UK. Their appeals were rejected but both have remained in Britain ever since. Sources for the Interior Ministry have said "progress" could be made if the UK were to take part in talks. They also suggested returning direct flights to the UK by its national airline PIA, which were suspended for safety reasons, could help. But UK officials said this suggestion had not been raised in discussions. The subject of grooming gangs has been thrust back into the spotlight this week following a bombshell report by Baroness Casey. The scathing review found councils, police and the Home Office repeatedly "shied away" from dealing with uncomfortable questions on the ethnicity of rapists who targeted young girls. Rauf and Khan were ringleaders of a prolific grooming gang in Rochdale, which has been plagued by sexual exploitation. Khan got a 13-year-old girl pregnant and trafficked another girl, 15, to others - using violence when she complained. He was sentenced to eight years in 2012 and released on licence four years later. Dad-of-five Rauf trafficked a 15-year-old girl and raped her in a secluded area before taking her to a flat in Rochdale where others had sex with her. He was caged for six years and released in November 2014 after serving two years and six months of his sentence. A Home Office spokesman said it would do 'everything in our power' to deport foreign nationals who commit 'heinous' crimes in the UK. He added: 'The UK and Pakistan are working in partnership on shared migration and return priorities. "Both countries recognise and respect our common obligations to return those with no right to remain in our respective countries." 5 5
