Child sexual exploitation: ‘Everything we said was viewed with suspicion’

Parents of children sexually exploited by criminal gangs can be blamed for not preventing abuse, report finds

When Jess Brookes’ teenage daughter started running away in the night, it was terrifying. But in 2016, when she arrived home with knife cuts to her face, “we got the shock of our life”, says Brookes. It took a week of careful probing to find out what was going on: 13-year-old Charlotte was being raped and threatened by a criminal gang in the south-coast town where they live. The grooming had begun when she was 12.

Petrified for her daughter’s safety, Brookes phoned her council’s child protection team for help. “They didn’t get back to me for absolutely ages. Literally weeks,” Brookes recalls with incredulity. When her increasingly distraught phone calls finally did bring a response, it was, she says, “absolutely appalling”. “My approach was to be constructive, work in cooperation, and to give as much information as I possibly could,” says Brookes. But when, after more weeks of chasing, the social worker’s report landed, she and her husband were poleaxed to find they were being blamed for not preventing the abuse from happening.

Parents are part of the solution, they're not the problem

Related: 'It's a very harsh environment': judge's play shines light on family courts

Continue reading...

from Children | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2RVw9K4