Five survivors of sexual abuse who say they were groomed, trafficked and exploited by drug gangs across Britain have accused police of letting them down.
The women were still teenagers when, they say, they were raped by gang leaders, made to have sex with multiple men and subjected to violence while being used to sell drugs in towns and cities across the UK.
One survivor said members of a gang based on a London estate took photographs of her and warned they would share the images unless she had sex with their associates.
They described carrying deep feelings of “shame” after years of abuse, while alleging that some detectives appeared more focused on arresting drug dealers and gathering intelligence on gangs than on recognising them as victims.
A new BBC documentary, Britain’s Forgotten Girls, examines how this form of serious exploitation has persisted despite two decades of growing evidence and repeated warnings.
The programme highlights how drug gangs operating in towns and cities target vulnerable girls for both sexual exploitation and criminal exploitation, with thousands of children still believed to be at risk.
Airing on BBC Two tonight at 9pm, the documentary features five abuse survivors speaking publicly about their experiences for the first time, four of them choosing to reveal their identities. They include Christine, who was exploited from the age of 13 after moving from London to Coventry.
She said: “Looking back, I think the move threw me off a lot. In school everybody already had their friendship groups because of how late I’d moved in. So, within school, I didn’t really feel like I had friends.”
Abuse victim Christine was forced to sleep with drug gang members from the age of 13
Christine said her abuser found her via a group chat, adding: ‘He popped up to me outside of the chat and he was just talking to me. He said that he wanted to meet in person. So, we met.’
‘I remember him walking through the doors…when he walked through the door, I was like, oh my gosh, that’s a grown man. I was 13 and he was 23.
On her 14th birthday, Christine said he asked her to sleep with his friends to help him out, explaining: ‘I felt disgusting.’
Soon this became an expectation, with Christine forced to sleep with many different gang members. She said: ‘After that, I’ve lost count of how many times. Some were his friends, some were his age, some looked older. I don’t know who they were.’
The exploitation soon became physically abusive, with Christine recalling that her ribs were once fractured. She was sexually and physically abused for more than eight years and claimed police and social services regularly failed to help her.
Christine said: ‘I had social work involvement for a long time, and over the years, they came to know that I had an abusive relationship with a boyfriend who was older than me. But nothing was really done.’
She said she did not feel police cared about her being abused or sexually exploited, adding: ‘I sat for hours and hours in interviews… but the moment I told them about the drugs and the houses, everything shifted.’
Christine claimed the police wanted to arrest her boyfriend for drug offences, and they wanted information about his gang. ‘Little old me coming and saying, ‘this is the abuse I’m going through’, wasn’t enough,’ she said.
Another woman, Violet, was involved with a drug gang in south London from the age of 13 – and told how members had raped and sexually abused her.
Police arrested the men on drugs offences – but she claimed that their response to her asking about the rape investigation was that officers had ‘bigger fish to fry’.
Violet later received compensation from the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board, but was told in a letter that her case was closed without getting to court.
She described the experience as ‘pretty shocking, pretty offensive, pretty insensitive’.
A third survivor called Holly also claimed police failed to help her.
Holly was taken into care at the age of 12 and was selling drugs in Manchester city centre. Over the next four years until the age of 16, she was sexually assaulted numerous times by gang members.
‘I was made to sleep with different men,’ Holly explained. ‘After a while it just became normal to me.’
She said she convinced herself that this meant she was wanted, and part of a family that cared for her.
Holly was also used as a courier by the gang, running drugs to the Isle of Man, Newcastle, Wales and London – but she encountered dangerous situations and was also sexually assaulted by drug users.
A fourth abuse survivor is Annie, who grew up in Eltham, south-east London, and suffered exploitation as a teenager.
Violet was raped and sexually abused while being involved with a drug gang from the age of 13
When she was 14, she was introduced to three boys who were part of a gang who controlled a local estate, selling drugs and carrying out other criminal activities. Annie was raped by the three older boys.
The boys took pictures of her and later said they would distribute them if she did not have sex with other associates. Annie’s abuse by the gang continued for years.
Those pictures were later put online, and Annie’s school was informed before telling police. But those who abused her were never brought to justice.
‘I have a letter here that was written by the police’, Annie said. ‘It states here that the particular reasons in this case that have prevented me referring it to the CPS are as follows.
‘On the evidence available, there is not a realistic prospect of a conviction in this case, therefore I have closed the investigation.
‘The fact that they did nothing, really made me feel like it wasn’t abuse. It made me carry a lot of shame. Made me feel like it was my fault.’
Connie Muttock, director of policy and public affairs for the children’s think tank Centre for Young Lives said: ‘The abuse and exploitation of girls in drug gangs is a widespread UK-wide issue.
‘This isn’t about a particular city or area, particular demographic groups. As long as we’ve had drug gangs in this country, we have had girls being abused and coerced within them. What’s even more shocking is that this has been going on for years.’
She also insisted this was a separate issue from grooming gangs.
‘For grooming gangs, the primary purpose is often the sexual exploitation of those girls, but the primary purpose of a drug gang is to make money off selling drugs and other criminal activity,’ Ms Muttock said.
She added that girls are brought in to help make money, but are then also often sexually exploited at the same time.
In 2012, sexual exploitation of children in gangs was the subject of an inquiry by Sue Berelowitz, the then-Deputy Children’s Commissioner for England.
The investigation covered cities, towns as well as local authorities that were largely rural – and found more than 16,500 children had shown signs of being at risk of abuse from grooming groups or criminal gangs.
But Ms Berelowitz recalled in the documentary: ‘Some people, including people in senior positions… found it very difficult to accept the real scale of what was going on.’
Professor Carlene Firmin, who carried out research for the inquiry, added: ‘There was definitely resistance in government.
‘You don’t want to hear that thousands of children are at risk of being sexually exploited across England with various different forms of exploitation that you don’t have a policy to support and is going to require a load of resource.’
Sue Berelowitz, former Deputy Children’s Commissioner for England, said people in senior positions ‘found it very difficult to accept the real scale of what was going on’ after her review
In an audit last year, Baroness Louise Casey looked into grooming gangs and found systemic failures and institutional paralysis had enabled them to operate for many years.
While the subject of girls exploited by drug gangs did not form a significant part of this review, it is now set to be examined by the Government’s grooming gangs inquiry which was established in response to the report.
Responding to the documentary, Acting Chief Constable Rebecca Riggs, the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for child protection, abuse and investigations, apologised to those who reported being let down by authorities.
She said: ‘Hearing the experiences of the women featured in this programme is devastating, and I recognise the lasting impact that both the offending itself and their interactions with authorities can have on victims and survivors.
‘Where people felt, they were not listened to, were not believed, or did not receive the response they needed, that can compound the trauma they have already experienced. I am deeply sorry for that.
‘I am sorry to those who felt unheard, to those who did not receive the service they should have expected, and to those whose trust in policing was damaged as a result.
‘We did not always get it right, and where we failed victims, we continue to acknowledge it and learn from it.
‘Whilst it would not be appropriate to comment on individual cases, some of those referenced may already be included within Operation Beaconport, the national investigation launched following the Casey Review.
‘Others may potentially fall within the scope of the Child Sexual Abuse Review Panel, which provides an independent process to review whether opportunities to investigate may have been missed.
‘Our focus remains on supporting victims and survivors, pursuing offenders wherever possible, and ensuring policing continues to learn from the past so that every victim receives the professional, compassionate and thorough response they deserve.’
Britain’s Forgotten Girls airs on BBC Two tonight at 9pm and is available on iPlayer
