Child grooming: What help for the victims?

Seven men are currently awaiting sentencing after being convicted last month of involvement in a major sex trafficking ring in Oxford.

But, after the legal process ends, what support is there for victims as they fight to get their lives back?

‘Scarlett’ is 19 and lives in Keighley. She was groomed by a large group of men from the age of 14. They entered her house and raped her while her mother was at work.

She reported the rape but no-one was charged. Scarlett says no-one gave her any help to deal with the abuse she’d suffered.

Scarlett feels she was treated like she’d done something wrong. She was excluded from school and sent to a pupil referral unit. They didn’t let her take her GCSEs.

“They thought I wouldn’t be able to cope in mainstream school so they basically just sent me to a school for bad kids. It was awful. I was predicted As and Bs and I wanted to be a vet or an accountant. But it all got taken away from me and I wasn’t even given the option to prove myself anymore.

“I was very depressed for about two years. I was isolated and couldn’t trust anyone. I’ve been let down so much I don’t get my hopes up any more,” she said.

Bradford council says it now has a “hub” where professionals from the police, council and NHS can share information and work together to help victims. But Scarlet says she’s never heard of it, or from it.

Psychiatrists who have studied girls who’ve been sexually abused as children found that more than two-thirds had depression and severe post-traumatic stress disorder – suffering flashbacks, intrusive thoughts and the fear the abuse will happen again.

Some victims are offered counselling by charities. But few will get access to specialist psychotherapy.

File on 4 has been told that victims face a postcode lottery when it comes to receiving help from the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services.

In some areas services last to 18, but in other parts of the country 16- and 17-year-olds are not getting the support they need, with provision cutting off just before 16 in some places.

Thresholds for adult care are higher, and you cannot be referred until you are 18, so many 16- and 17-year-olds are falling through the gap.
‘Never do nothing’

‘Zainab’ was exploited by older men when she was 16, and living alone in a hostel in Leeds. She asked for help from both children’s and adult social services but was rejected both times. Her only lifeline was a sexual exploitation charity called Isis.

“I used to self-harm, take overdoses of things, because I used to get so angry and hate myself so much I didn’t want to be here.

“I thought, ‘I am such a disgusting person, there’s no point. I have put myself in this situation, I have let them sleep with me, so I am the bad person.’ Those were the feelings I had about myself. If I hadn’t had help I would probably have ended up dead,” she said.

Leeds Safeguarding Children Board says it wasn’t right to turn away someone as vulnerable as Zainab and says it now follows the principle of “never do nothing”.

There are now more than 160 statutory and voluntary organisations offering counselling and mentoring – and finding young people housing, and education.

But the deputy children’s commissioner for England says the availability of help is still hit-and-miss depending on where people live. Sue Berelowitz will be publishing a report in the winter containing recommendations on what should be available for exploited children.

She says councils are getting better at identifying grooming, but they need to do more to help young people recover.

“We will have a better idea towards the end of the year what the scale of support is but I would be very surprised if it is sufficient.

“What’s being done to sexually exploited children is of an utterly savage and appalling nature. It’s completely unreasonable to expect young people to survive such experiences psychologically intact.

“There’s no point everybody getting on their high horse and very agitated about the horrors of child sexual exploitation if we don’t put in support to make sure those who are victims are assisted to come through their experiences as best we can,” she said.

The government agrees victims are “likely to need substantial support over a long period of time”, and in a statement the Home Office said it had established a new group to ensure that “everyone with a responsibility for safeguarding children is working together to stamp out abuse”.

And on Tuesday police and prosecutors are to get new guidelines for dealing with cases involving child sexual abuse, including more support for complainants reporting allegations of sexual assault, both before and during the court process.

The Home Office said: “Whether these crimes are in the past or happening now, we will continue to work to ensure victims are not left to suffer in silence and to ensure that those who exploit them are brought to justice.”

Listen to the full report on File on 4 on BBC Radio 4 on Tuesday, 11 June at 20:00 BST and Sunday, 16 June at 17:00 BST. Listen again via the Radio 4 website or the File on 4 download.