Street grooming, a frighteningly effective approach
To bring victims into the system, the torturers use a very specific stratagem. An approach is put in place with the aim of conditioning children for sexual purposes.
The introduction is based on gifts. Cell phones, alcohol, cigarettes. These baits disguised as gifts are the Source of the dominant-dominated relationship which will grow exponentially. A bond that appears friendly but has immense power for humans is established. So much so that when the child feels trapped and wants to escape, she does nothing. For what ? Well, how can we denounce actions for which we have the impression of having consented from the start?
The telephone offered has a second function. The device is equipped with a new SIM card, which itself has a new number. From then on, the victim can be reached. By who ? The harasser having given him this poisoned gift, but also many other customers, therefore buying this number from the first man in the chain, in order to in turn become the child’s tormentor. Contact is then established, and extensive criminal logistics are initiated.
The plot draws its essence from the socio-economic background of the victims. The targets all come from disadvantaged backgrounds. A home that is not one or a foster family disinterested in the child’s education pushes the child to seek recognition elsewhere. But this elsewhere is terrible. “I was 12 years old when a man of Pakistani origin spotted me in the street. Things weren’t going well at home at all, and at first he was charming. But, very quickly, he raped me. Then he delivered me to his friends. At 13 I got pregnant and the father could have been any of these twenty men”, testifies anonymously a victim to the Parisian.
”It was very organized and very close-knit. Everyone seemed to know each other”, explains another painkiller to the Sunday Mirror in 2018. Indeed, Telford is facing a large-scale undertaking.
The “rape house”
Nightclubs are a treasure chest for criminals. Without being there to dance, men prowl around the buildings waiting for prey to emerge. Mark Berry, a volunteer in a café near the nighttime party center, witnesses the process. The girls are approached “blatantly”, he explains to the BBC in 2018.
Another key location for crimes: fast food restaurants. Some serve as meeting points between torturers and victims. Later, during the trial at Worcester Crown Court in 2012, a young girl described being sold to workers at a Telford restaurant to be raped. “I had forced sex with, sometimes, four people at the same time in these places”, she confided in court.
But the worst place of all, the one that haunts children’s nightmares is the “rape house”. This is what victims call the place where they spend countless days and nights being raped. The owner of these four criminal walls died in the 1990s without ever having been charged. “Night after night, I was forced to sleep with multiple men in this dilapidated house”, confided in 2018 a victim to the Mirroronce the affair was brought to light.
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Blackmail and retaliation
Regardless of the victim, criminals always have the same goal: to keep them silent and continue to exploit them. After years of ordeal, a victim confides in the press. “I went to take the morning after pill at a local clinic at least twice a week, but no one ever asked me about it. I got pregnant twice and had two abortions. A few hours after my second operation, one of my attackers came to pick me up to be raped by even more men. The worst moment was right after my sixteenth birthday, when I was drugged and raped by five men at the same time. A few days later, the head of the network showed up at my house and told me he was going to burn my house down if I didn’t say a single word about it.”, she describes Mirror. This testimony was taken up by numerous media. Blackmail is the key to silence. If a child decides to alert the authorities, the rapists promise to humiliate her in front of her family. How ? They will simply explain that their child, accomplice, is a prostitute. The victims come from backgrounds with little awareness of attacks. Under pressure and shame, they generally accept blackmail.
But some children rebel despite everything. This is where the retaliation begins. Blackmail is a weapon, but taking action is not only a threat. One night in August 2000, members of the Telford gang set fire to a house housing a family. Among her: Lucy, 14 years old and already a mother following one of the rapes she suffered. The young girl challenged herself to reveal what she was going through. The gang stopped their threats. This crime costs the lives of the two children present, including Lucy, and their mother. The members spared: the father of the family and the baby born from the rape. The perpetrator of the arson is Azhar Ali Mehmood, the child’s father. He was sentenced to life in prison for arson, but never charged with rape and human trafficking.
The message for other victims is clear: if they do not cooperate, their tormentors promise them the same fate.
40 years after the events began, the revelations by the press
It was in March 2018 that the scale of the crime came to light. The Sunday Mirror, a British newspaper, published an investigation which shook Telford and resonated throughout Europe. The media reveals the number of victims raised to 1000 and the 200 torturers. With the help of testimonies, the attacks they subjected them to repeatedly over nearly 40 years are partly revealed.
These late revelations led Theresa May, Prime Minister in 2018, to call for the opening of an independent investigation. The objective: to determine how it is possible that these criminal acts have continued for so long. How can we explain the inaction of the authorities?
Justice vs. the fear of racism
The independent investigation led by Telford Borough Council reaches a chilling conclusion in its final document named Report of the Independent Inquiry Telford Child Sexual Exploitation. “The exploitation was not investigated due to some nervousness [de la part des autorités] with regard to race [des criminels]”. An important detail: the members of the gang are mainly of Indo-Pakistani origin.
”It is clear that one of the reasons these horrific crimes were allowed to continue for so long is because too many people in positions of authority felt they should not say anything because they would be labeled racist.”, says Sajid Javid, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government in 2018.
Any final words to this story?
”These gangs are not what we call classic, typical pedophiles, that is not their motivation. Yes, they are sexual predators, but instead they are using these girls as a sexual commodity and looking to make money off their backs. This is their main motivation”, explains Ansar Ali, spokesperson for Together Against Grooming, to the BBC in 2018.
While 200 people participated in the rapes, nine men were identified by the courts as being the masterminds of the group. They were indicted, and after the trial, only seven were imprisoned.
