Latest news with #EdgeoftheCity
The Sun
01-05-2025
- The Sun
Police being too scared to deal with grooming gangs means more British girls are being raped now than ever
IN 2004 filmmaker Anna Hall produced a shocking documentary entitled Edge of the City, which focused on Pakistani grooming gangs targeting young girls for sexual abuse and exploitation in northern towns. However, transmission was delayed because the then Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police, was concerned that it might cause 'racial unrest'. 6 6 6 Now it's 21 years later – and Hall is back with an even more shocking film about the same phenomenon: Groomed: A National Scandal. The organised sexual abuse and pimping by groups of largely Pakistani Muslim men is seen by many as a thing of the past, but the problem has not gone anywhere. Girls are now being raped and exploited on an industrial scale, and today's police are not much better at investigating these crimes or locking the perpetrators up than they were back in 2004, when I first investigated the story. A police contact of mine tells me grooming gangs remain active today, with most of the perpetrators still at large – and this documentary shows that this is definitely true. Yet this national scandal has been brushed under the carpet for almost three decades. I recently carried out a months-long investigation into the scandal, speaking to victims past and present, and attending trials at which I heard harrowing details of the sadistic abuse carried out by these men. These days, initial contact is often through an online platform, which is less risky to the abuser than targeting his victims outside children's homes or in parks. Some of the girls (now women in their 30s), who were abused back when I was first reporting on this atrocity, still live in the same towns, and have seen their abusers roaming the streets, clearly targeting young girls. I have evidence that active gangs are currently operating in Manchester, Telford, Rochdale, Rotherham, Blackpool, Barrow in Furness, and Leeds. Gang-related child abuse is still very much a reality. I was locked up & raped in dingy flat for days by grooming gangs - only to find out one sicko was a POLICE officer who's never seen justice But even today, in spite of the promises of 'lessons learned' spouted as each damning local enquiry is published, hardly any resources go into prevention, identifying current situations, or disrupting gang activity. Class prejudice The documentary sets out damning examples of repeated and continual failures in protecting victims and identifying perpetrators. Young girls were treated as 'child prostitutes' – and one of the women I interviewed was referred to by a police officer, when she made a statement about being raped by multiple gang members, as 'a troublesome slag'. Many, though not all, of these girls were from troubled, impoverished backgrounds, and when we hear their stories of how they were dismissed and disbelieved, the class prejudice against them is impossible to miss. And it didn't only come from the police. Care home staff watched perpetrators sitting on walls awaiting their victims, then dropping them back in the middle of the night, having taken them to be pimped out in flats around the country. These girls and women are some of the most vulnerable people in society, yet they have been willing to speak out and seek justice There was plenty of evidence that these girls were being subjected to serious sexual assault by adult men (such as pregnancies, STIs, and injuries from anal rape) – yet social workers and sexual health professionals chose to put it all down to promiscuity. Parents tried desperately to get help from the police, spending months collecting car registrations and mobile phone evidence, but were routinely dismissed and disbelieved. Some of the girls were charged with criminal damage after 'kicking off' as a result of the trauma from the abuse, their mental instability exacerbated by the amount of drugs and alcohol they were plied with. One interviewee in the documentary talks about how, because she had taken a slightly younger girl with her to one of the perpetrators' parties, she herself was convicted of a pimping-style offence. As a result, she is still on the sex offenders' register today, unable to even go on a school trip with her children because she is deemed 'dangerous'. State cowardice The documentary presents shocking evidence of organised groups promoting their ideology on social media, claiming that the girls are lying, that the relatively few convictions (mostly of Pakistani or Iraqi Muslim men) can be put down to a racist conspiracy, and that the girls are 'prostitutes'. 6 6 6 Perhaps there are conspiracies involved in the failure to get justice for these victims. One survivor revealed that one of her abusers was confirmed as a Greater Manchester Police (GMP) officer who has since left the force. She hasn't heard from GMP since 2021. The bravery and tenacity of victims who report their abusers, putting themselves at even further risk, puts our government to shame. These girls and women are some of the most vulnerable people in society, all of them traumatised, yet they have been willing to speak out and seek justice. If Sir Keir Starmer chooses to do nothing following the broadcast of this harrowing documentary, we have every right to call him a coward.
The Guardian
30-04-2025
- The Guardian
Groomed: A National Scandal review – it is staggering to hear these children called ‘promiscuous'
'Chantelle … was misusing cannabis and alcohol and … placing herself at risk of sexual exploitation' is a staggering sentence to find in a council's case summary about a child in its foster care system. Here's another one, from an assessment record by children's services on the subject of 14-year-old Erin (not her real name). 'Erin … is being exploited into prostitution. She hangs around with a number of men who take her money. She is a very promiscuous girl.' I could go on. Groomed: A National Scandal is full of them. Film-maker Anna Hall has decades' worth of material to choose from. Her 2004 film Edge of the City was the first television exposé of what we now call grooming gangs, born of research she had begun after a chance meeting five years before with a senior director at Barnardo's children's charity who told her that they had noticed a new pattern of child abuse. Groups of men were targeting vulnerable children – almost always white girls, usually in the care system – befriending them, giving them drink and drugs, becoming their 'boyfriends', then having sex with them and offering them round to other men. Chantelle, now 32, speaks here of being 11 when her twentysomething 'boyfriend', one of the men who used to sit on the wall outside her Manchester children's home, started grooming her. The abuse, including being kept in a hotel room for days and 'passed about', went on for years. She contacted the police many times, she says, but 'they never done anything'. Erin was groomed from the age of 12 and first raped at 13. The police told her mother that it was Erin's lifestyle choice. An even worse attack followed. Her mother took her daughter ('bitemarks head to toe') and her knickers full of semen back to the police. They did nothing. A social services report notes that she is 'a young girl … who frequently puts herself at risk'. Hall's film lays out the systemic failures of the police and all the other authorities supposedly in charge of protecting these girls and thousands like them, not just then, but now and all the terrible years in between. It is a tale of blind eyes turned, abundant evidence ignored, reports buried and task forces disbanded. One such taskforce was Operation Augusta, set up as a result of the 2003 death of 15-year-old Victoria Agoglia after she reported being raped and forcibly injected with heroin by a much older Asian man. It was led by detective constable Maggie Oliver, who says here it took just weeks to find evidence of grooming gangs ('We identified about 97 child rapists') to whom such vulnerable girls were 'just cannon fodder'. The group was broken up while Oliver was away on compassionate leave. Jayne Senior, who would become the whistleblower and source for the Times newspaper articles that first brought the Rotherham grooming scandal to public attention, says the Home Office report she helped prepare was buried for clearer reasons. 'I was told on more than one occasion to stop rocking the multicultural boat,' she says. The ethnicity of many of the men involved, of course, is what seems to have made the subject so unpalatable to the powers that be. The possibility of being seen as racist – or, given the religion of many of the alleged perpetrators, Islamophobic – apparently outweighed the need to stop children being beaten, raped and trafficked. The testimony of more recent survivors suggests that, whatever the claims made by the various police forces and authorities about a revolution in approaches since, little has changed. The anger of Senior, Oliver and Hall herself is palpable, with Hall's fuelling but never overwhelming the film. The survivors are still deeper in survival mode, trying to heal, to overcome the damage and the grief caused by their terrible experiences. How you do that in a world that still privileges image over awful substance, a world in which the deep misogyny that allows female suffering to be dismissed and the victims blamed for it, I do not know. But it is films like Groomed – in their unflinching detail, in the testimonies they present, in the unpublished reports they excerpt – that may function as a stepping stone, somehow, some day, to some redress. Groomed: A National Scandal is on Channel 4 now.
The Guardian
30-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
TV tonight: grooming gang victims tell their stories
9pm, Channel 4Anna Hall has been reporting on gang grooming for more than two decades, after first broadcasting her findings in her 2004 film Edge of the City. In this horrifying documentary, she meets five grownup victims who speak about their experiences, examines the failings of the authorities (victims were referred to as 'child prostitutes' or labelled 'promiscuous') and looks at how grooming became a polarising political issue. What's even more troubling, Hall says, is the fact that the exact same patterns are being repeated today. Hollie Richardson 8pm, BBC ThreeThe search is back on for Britain's next makeup star, so host Leomie Anderson welcomes a new batch of 10 fresh-faced artists to Glow Up studios. They're plunged straight into the spotlight, and tasked with creating runway looks for avant-garde designer Harri. Ellen E Jones 9pm, BBC OneOnce again, RATW feels like reality TV done right; a series that is empowering and comforting at the same time. This week, the teams must reach a checkpoint located in Sanya in the south of China. But do you take the speedy business route or travel scenically? Approaches vary, as, it must be said, do the results. Phil Harrison 9pm, ITV1What happens when you group together a crime writer, a standup comic, two GPs, a scientist and an entrepreneur and get them to outsmart each other for a cash prize? David Tennant's new gameshow finds out, as highly intellectual contestants instantly start squabbling during the first mind-boggling task. HR 9pm, BBC Three'For some people, it seems like everything just falls into place.' For siblings Tiana, Tanika and Tionne? Not so much. In this episode, there's a job interview touching on cultural representation and a night out with Shanice. It also contains the immortal line: 'I killed my brother's chicken. You thought it was my mum, but it ain't.' Ali Catterall 9pm, U&Alibi The enjoyably hammy whodunnit starring John Simm, Gemma Jones and Nikki Amuka-Bird continues after the wealthy patriarch Jack Wright's will reading left the family reeling. But they're also about to learn the truth about how Jack died, along with some other secrets sure to raise eyebrows. HR A Complete Unknown (James Mangold, 2025), Disney+James Mangold directed the excellent Johnny Cash drama Walk the Line, and his latest music biopic – which tracks the groundbreaking early phase of Bob Dylan's career – has the same rewarding fidelity to time and place. It also features a lead performance that is so much more than an impersonation: Timothée Chalamet is perfectly cast as the single-minded young folk singer, who arrives in New York in 1961 to follow in the footsteps of his hero, Woody Guthrie. Dylan wows lovable banjo star Pete Seeger (Edward Norton) with his songs and political stance, but his selfish attitude alienates Monica Barbaro's equally talented Joan Baez … and most of the folk establishment. Simon Wardell Women's Super League football: Aston Villa v Arsenal, 5.30pm, Sky Sports Main Event. From Villa Park. Followed by Man United v Chelsea at 8pm.
Times
26-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
The film-maker who exposed grooming gangs: ‘Things are worse now'
'This is a film I hoped I'd never have to make,' Anna Hall says of her new documentary, Groomed: A National Scandal, which airs on Channel 4 on Wednesday. 'I didn't want to do this again because I knew what I was going to put myself and everyone else through … it takes an emotional toll.' When Hall exposed what is now known as gang grooming in her first film, Edge of the City, in 2004, she never imagined she would be revisiting the subject 21 years later. Groomed is not a look back at a moment of shame in Britain's history, but a victim-first account of how a scandal that affected thousands of young girls throughout the 1990s and 2000s is still
