By Naomi Miles, Founder and Chair of CEASE
The gangs that groomed and sexually abused over 4,000 vulnerable girls are a national scandal and a deep source of public shame.
It is almost unbearable to hear not only what these girls endured at the hands of their abusers, but also how the authorities failed to act. How could this happen in modern Britain, right under the noses of police and social workers?
These girls weren’t believed, and they weren’t protected. These were not cases where help wasn’t available, but where help was withheld.
Why?
The reasons are many, but central among them is fear of how action might be perceived. Public institutions were partially paralysed by concerns around ‘political correctness’.
Firstly, there seems to have been a fear that acknowledging the ethnicity of many of the perpetrators – mainly British Pakistani men – would be seen as racist. But this itself is a harmful assumption. It implies that offending is somehow cultural, which i deeply insulting. True anti-racism means holding everyone to the same ethical standard, not applying a double standard based on background.
The second reason is even more disturbing: the belief that the girls were complicit. Many were seen as ‘promiscuous’ or ‘asking for it’. The police and social workers described relationships between adult men and girls as young as 11 as “consensual.” Some even used terms like “child prostitute” or “child sex worker”.
This reveals another pernicious double standard: that some girls – those written off sluts’ – don’t deserve protection. As with most who are groomed and exploited, m any of the girls believed that they were in relationships. They would often call their abusers ‘boyfriends’ and felt, at least at first, that they had chosen what was happening.
These shocking misjudgements still persist today, as seen in the tendency to ask, “But did she consent?”
However, we do now at least have a better understanding of grooming, of how vulnerable children are manipulated into believing they’re complicit in their own abuse. As Professor Jenny Pearce of the University of Bedfordshire has pointed out, consent must always be understood in context. Emotional, social, and economic vulnerability distorts a person’s ability to make free choices.
That’s why we now rightly agree that children cannot consent to sex with adults and why the term “child prostitute” is rightly condemned as a contradiction in terms.
This is progress.
But it raises a harder question: if consent is so complex for children, why assume it becomes simple the day someone turns 16 or 18?
The short answer: it doesn’t.
Childhood doesn’t end neatly on a birthday. Most women in the commercial sex trade have experienced abuse. In fact, the single strongest predictor of entry into prostitution is childhood sexual abuse. It teaches children to see themselves as sexual objects and dulls the reflexes that should help them reject mistreatment.
Psychotherapist S.E. McCollum notes: “One way in which children who are abused survive is by learning how to tolerate, rather than escape from, dangerous situations.”
Adult survivor Kate told the BBC her abusers treated her “like she was nothing.” Over time, that treatment erodes self-worth. Victims start to believe being used by men is all they’re good for.
In the commercial sex trade, the exploitation doesn’t stop. It just becomes less visible.
That is why CEASE is campaigning for urgent reform to protect the most vulnerable members of society and hold accountable those who exploit them and profit from their abuse. The government and criminal justice system must:
- Hold exploiters accountable by making it a criminal offence to enable or profit from the prostitution of another person, offline and online.
- Deter demand by making it a criminal offence to pay for sex.
- Stop punishing victims by repealing the offence of soliciting in a public place.
- Support victims to exit and recover by providing specialist services.
In a liberal society that values equality and dignity, there can be no place for looking away from the realities of sexual exploitation.