Unthinkable

The UK was shocked to its core in May 2012 when a gang of nine men was convicted of the systematic sexual abuse of disadvantaged teenage girls in the Rochdale area - the crimes including counts of rape, aiding and abetting rape, sexual assault and trafficking girls within the UK for sexual exploitation. Yet many childcare experts reckon these crimes are just the tip of an iceberg of wide scale exploitation occurring across the country. The Deputy Children's Commissioner Sue Berelowitz said in June 2012 that there 'isn't a town, village or hamlet in which children are not being sexually exploited'. The UK's child sex trade is run by organized criminal networks and is worth tens of millions of pounds each year. Its profits are used to fund not only lavish lifestyles but other criminal operations, such as drug trafficking. Award-winning journalist Kris Hollington tells the inside story of some of the most shocking and heartbreaking crimes of recent years, focusing on the Rochdale case but also analysing recent cases in the London area that have echoes of the brutality of organised slavery. His findings expose how the British justice system is failing to protect children in the 21st century. It is a scandal that cannot be ignored.