Katie 
But if those hints of the dark reality are only splashed across the pages of the check-stand tabloids, then you can easily discredit them as nothing more than some bored author’s fanciful writing while they try to break into the industry and get a book published, right? It must be nothing more than conspiracy theory at best.
Not nearly as often as it should happen, but once in a while, a story dances along the edges of the media, exposing realities that civilized society would really rather not discuss; child sex trafficking.
It’s rampant.
It’s real.
Jennifer’s story is one such attempt to expose the dark underbelly. Limited primarily to UK’s Sunday Mirror and a few small Yahoo UK articles, there isn’t likely to be much of an outcry when the inquiry, which is said will potentially take 18 months, is finally closed without any solid leads or prosecutions.
In March of last year, another girl, going by Holly, reported that she too had been trafficked as a minor in Telford. She stated that her abuse spanned 14- 18 years of age whereas Jennifer said she was trafficked from 11 on until she finally escaped seven years later to a relative that lived hundreds of miles away.
Both girls explicitly stated that they were failed by authorities on numerous occasions. Rather than asking questions as to why a young, un-related girl would be with an older man in the cases of traffic stops, or questioning why a minor would be seeking the morning after pill on a regular basis, Jennifer and Holly felt trapped.
Holly, when she appeared on Victoria Derbyshire’s BBC show, addressed the fact that she had been suicidal as a result of the unending abuse When faced with people asking if it was a cry for help, she responded, ‘I say no, I genuinely wanted to die because it was the only way out… If somebody had shown an interest or asked some questions it may have made me speak out.’
“When I told the police, they told me I’d chosen my lifestyle. I asked to make a statement because I’d been raped and beaten by so many men and I wanted it to stop,” Jennifer said. “An officer said, ‘You’re a common prostitute. Don’t you think that comes with the job?’ He said a jury would never believe I was a victim of abuse.”
The BBC has actually faced accusations that they have been ignoring reports of sex trafficking and grooming of minors in the Telford area. Of course, this would come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the Jimmy Savile case and his longstanding affiliation with the BBC. They have denied the allegations.
Due to pressure from the Mirror, another inquiry into the Telford sex gangs has been opened. West Mercia Police, where Jennifer filed her first complaint about being trafficked has claimed that they have no record of the report but said that they take the issue “extremely seriously.”
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