British agents free 41 trafficked children, nab 700 suspects, guns, drugs in national sweep
Gangs take over hundreds of homes and children in small towns
Gangs take over hundreds of homes and children in small towns
By Nicholas Sakelaris
(UPI) -- A nationwide drug sweep in Great Britain has led to the arrests of more than 700 people and the seizure of dozens of weapons and a half-million dollars worth of illicit substances, authorities said.
The National Crime Agency said the raids targeted "county lines" drug networks for a full week. In addition to the arrests, the agency said authorities safeguarded almost another 700 people, rescued 41 victims of human trafficking and dismantled the drug networks "piece by piece" and "hitting them where it hurts."
The British Home Office funded the operation through a national coordination clearinghouse that's tasked with fighting gangs that use children to sell drugs through county lines -- which authorities said is a top law enforcement priority. The National County Lines Coordination Centre launched last year, and in four weeks of efforts has prevented thousands of potential victims from falling prey to drug gangs, the NCA said.
Cocaine, crack and heroin were among the illicit narcotics seized -- and the confiscated weapons include swords, machetes and a crossbow.
Big gangs / small towns
"County lines" are mobile phone numbers used strictly for drug orders and are typically run by large gangs that have infiltrated small towns, officials said. In some cases, they noted, traffickers forcibly commandeer residents' homes and force them to run drugs. Younger victims are often put through physical, mental and sexual abuse and are sometimes dispatched to work in another part of the country, investigators said.
"We will not treat the criminals who run these lines just as drug dealers," National Police Chiefs Deputy Assistant Commissioner Duncan Ball said. "We will seek to prosecute them for child trafficking under modern slavery laws to reflect the devastating nature of their exploitation of young and vulnerable people."
Officials said the raids targeted hundreds of British homes that were taken over and forced into drug dealing.
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Alleged child sex victim at grooming trial claims men 'lured' her
By Will Walker Oxford MailAN alleged victim of child sexual exploitation said she was 'lured' into performing repeated sex acts and her abusers made her feel 'disgusting'.
Naim Khan, 41, of no fixed abode, Mohammed Nazir, 44, of Wood Farm Road, Oxford, Raheem Ahmed, 42, of no fixed abode, and Afzal Mohammed, 42, of Randall Street, Oxford all deny a string of charges including rape, conspiracy to rape and indecent assault.
Prosecutors say that among their crimes they abused one child who was plied with cannabis before being raped or sexually assaulted at parks, in cars and at homes across the city.
It is claimed that she was 'pimped out' to men and the abuse is alleged to have involved three girls, aged from 13 to 15, between 1999 and 2001 in Oxford.
As the trial at Oxford Crown Court continued today jurors saw a series of recorded interviews with one of the alleged victims - none of whom can be named for legal reasons.
She told officers: "It just kept happening and it was making me think it was normal that that happened. "But it also made me feel sick, I didn't want it to happen but somehow I got lured into it.
"Now I think about it, I just felt disgusting and it has taken me all these years to pluck up the courage to [talk] about it."
Detailing how she came to meet the men she said they were often 'lurking' around and they would give her cigarettes in return for her pocket money, as well as offering her and a friend lifts.
In Islam, getting a girl in your car is like have her in your right hand. In the Quran it states that Mohammed, when asked, advised you can do what you want with a non-Muslim girl, of any age, who is in your right hand.
Another group of Pakistani Muslim men were convicted of similar charges (8th story on link) in Oxford, last year.
She said after that the men would offer her drink and drugs before the sexual abuse started.
Going on to describe various instances where she claimed she was abused she said while at a house in East Oxford she was told she would 'have to pay for the drink' and then asked to perform sex acts on a number of men.
She said: "I felt disgusting and said I didn't want to do it."
The woman also recalled an alleged incident at another Oxford address where she said a group of six men arrived and she was told that sex was expected of her.
She said: "We had to sleep with them, have sex with them, it was disgusting, just one after the other. They stank of B.O., just sweaty old men."
The alleged victim also recalled an incident involving Naim Khan at a canal near Park End Street where she said he demanded sex with her in return for art supplies.
She went on to say that she was threatened 'to get a slap' if she told her friend about what was going on. She added: "I was so scared and thought I can't tell the police, I can't tell mum because she would be so disgusted with me and [that] it would be my fault."
She said that the abuse had led to problems after her alleged ordeal had ended and said: "It messed up my life, [I thought] being treated nastily was normal."
The men deny the charges and the trial continues.
Police in Rotherham have 1,800 active investigations into abuse of children, all but 4 have an identified suspect
By Paul Whitehouse, The Star
Details of the investigations, which include both child sexual exploitation and child criminal exploitation, were provided for councillors on the local authority’s ruling Cabinet.
They have endorsed a new multi-agency strategy, involving the council, police and other bodies, which sets out the agenda for how cases are identified and investigated in the future.
The Cabinet heard from South Yorkshire Police Supt Steve Chapman, who said there were 1,800 active investigations involving the alleged abuse of childen.
The authorities now deal with child sexual and criminal exploitation cases as similar entities and it is accepted there can be cross-over between the categories.
The current figures in Rotherham include the cases being dealt with under Operation Stovewood, a large investigation into historic sexual abuse cases, which is likely to continue for an extended period.
Supt Chapman told councillors that 90 per cent of child sexual exploitation were while females, but other types of crime had a more diverse range of victims.
And, I suspect he could have said that 90% of the suspected perpetrators were Pakistani, Muslim men. But he didn't because that would have been politically incorrect. It was PCMadness that caused the problem to grow to such astonishing proportions in the first place, and yet, the police are still practicing political correctness. Unbelievable!
Part of the new multi-agency strategy is not only to detail how the authorities deal with cases, but to ensure there is widespread knowledge of the problem and surrounding issues across the community, including schools and GPs’ surgeries.
Rotherham Council leader Chris Read said current practices for the way the agencies operated around child abuse cases were “a world away” from the situation the current local authority regime had inherited, following the child sexual abuse scandal which broke in the early years of the decade.
His Cabinet colleague Coun Emma Hoddinott questioned the use of the expression ‘county lines’, which is used to describe the technique of distributing drugs from major urban centres to smaller communities, using vulnerable children as couriers and small-time dealers.
See top story above.
She said: “As chair of the Safer Rotherham Partnership, we have looked at this in terms of child exploitation. We are asking partnerships to refer to it for what it is.” Supt Chapman responded: “I am confident when we talk about it we talk about child criminal exploitation. That is really a number of offences, it may be rape, sexual offences, honour based violence, drug dealing.“I do feel we talk more about child criminal exploitation than we talk about county lines,” he said.
Irish woman raped and abused by stepfather says it was 'aspect of everyday life during her childhood'
A MAYO MAN who said he suffered abuse as a resident of Ireland’s industrial schools has been jailed for 12 years for the rape and abuse of his stepdaughter.
The child was aged around six when Thomas Mullarney (61) of Cahir, Louisberg, Co Mayo first began abusing her. He continued to attack her regularly for the next decade.
The prosecution indicated to the Central Criminal Court today that the victim wished to waive her anonymity in order to have her stepfather named.
He pleaded guilty to sexual assaults at a house in Dublin on dates between October 2003 and January 2005. He also admitted rape of the child at a house in Co Mayo on two occasions in November 2011 and in September 2014.
The court heard that Mullarney would molest her while forcing her to watch adult pornography.
She was aged 13 when he raped her, after giving her wine to drink. The next day he told her he was nervous about her getting pregnant and told her to take her mother’s contraceptive pills.
The court heard that in August 2014 the woman went to her stepfather after a row with her boyfriend. He gave her tea and half a sleeping tablet and she awoke later to find him raping her. The woman began crying and he apologised for frightening her.
But not for raping her! Paedophiles have absolutely no conscience!
After she went to gardaí in 2017 the man admitted the offending. He said he was abusing cocaine and alcohol at the time and didn’t remember all the alleged incidents but told gardaí that the victim’s account was reliable.
Mary Rose Gearty SC, defending, said her client was institutionalised by his treatment at the industrial schools in Artane and Clonmel. She said he later received compensation for the abuse and spent the money on alcohol and cocaine.
Well, that worked really well, didn't it?
She said that a psychological assessment that placed him at a high risk of recidivism was based on his social isolation and previous abuse of drink and drugs.
The psychologist noted that while those who suffered abuse did not usually go on to abuse others, “it is a noted consequence in a minority of cases”. Justice White said he found it difficult to understand how anyone who had undergone that horrific ordeal could visit it again on another child.
He paid tribute to the courage of the injured party and said that the only person responsible for the abuse was the perpetrator.
Victim impact statement
Reading from her victim impact statement the victim told the court that the abuse was an aspect of everyday life during her childhood. She said she was over sexualised from a very early age, including simulating sex with teddy bears and dolls.
Justice White noted the devastating effects of the abuse on the victim, who considered Mullarney to be her dad and described a special bond with him. He said the court also had wider concerns in relation to the hallmark of making the victim feel special which he said reflected a very serious type of “grooming” on Mullarney’s part.
Justice White imposed consecutive sentences totalling 14 years and suspended the final two years on strict conditions.
Evidence
The court heard that in the first attack the man woke the child up at night and brought her downstairs and stood her in front of the television. She later told gardaí that she saw “girls kissing and touching on the television” while the man molested her.
He told her “it was nice to feel this way” and afterwards he tucked her into bed. She said she didn’t think anything was wrong because she felt safe with the man, who she viewed as her father.
In later attacks the man again made the child watch adult pornography. In one attack he gave her a dildo and left her with it and she said she tried to figure out how to use it because “she wanted to keep her dad happy”.
Mullarney has a previous conviction for a 2007 firearms offence. He received a suspended sentence of six years imprisonment.
UK man later told child sex abuse victim
her daughter was next
her daughter was next
A man is on trial for the sexual abuse of three young girls
 |
| Penzance, Cornwall |
A former lorry driver who raped a ten-year-old girl in his vehicle said “she’s next” when he bumped into the victim and her young daughter in the street years later, a court has heard.
A jury at Truro Crown Court heard how the man, now in his late 70s, abused and raped the girl in the mid-1970s before going on to abuse two relatives who were also underage in the 1980s and 1990s.
The man appeared in court on Monday (October 21) faced with two charges of rape and nine charges of indecent assault. All the incidents are alleged to have happened in the Camborne and Penzance areas. The man, who will not be named in this report to protect the identities of the alleged victims, has denied all the charges.
Opening the trial, Piers Norsworthy, prosecuting, said the man’s abuse of children began in the mid-1970s when he was working as a lorry driver.
Addressing the jury, Mr Norsworthy explained how a then ten-year-old girl was sitting on a wall when the man pulled up and introduced himself. For a number of weeks the girl would ride along in his lorry and the pair would talk.
But one day the man offered to give the girl money for sweets and he invited her to go with him into the back of the lorry.
“He picked her up, put her in the back, there was a torch and blankets in there, and he gave her sweets," Mr Norsworthy said. “He asked her to play a game, he pulled her skirt up, lifted up her top, and started looking. She cried, and he stopped looking.
“On further occasions he would sexually touch her. Not only that, he would make threats to her about telling people and what might happen if she told her parents. He threatened to hurt her parents.
“They continued to go for rides and one day he stopped in another layby. He removed her clothes, put cream between her legs and forced himself inside her.
“She remembers trying to push him off her, he asked her how old she was, and she said 11. When he stopped he gave her a towel, and then he gave her a pound note. She was raped on more than one occasion.
“She told police she was trying to hit him on the chest to try and push him off but he was just too strong.”
Mr Norsworthy said that many years later, when the woman was an adult, she was walking in the street with her young daughter when she saw the man. The man told her “she’s next”, referring to the little girl.
The alleged victim didn’t see him again and in 2016 she confided in her adult daughter about the abuse. The woman was able to identify the man in a police identity parade.
Mr Norsworthy went on to describe how the man struck again in the late 1980s, when he began indecently assaulting a seven-year-old relative.
The girl would often visit the man with her younger sister and stay over on occasions. According to the older of the two sisters, she was the man’s favourite. Over a period of eight years the man would sexually assault the girl.
“He would give her sweets and money and tell her she was his favourite, and not to tell her parents,” Mr Norsworthy said. "He wouldn’t say anything while touching her and give her money. [The girl] recalled that when she would stay [the man] would come in [to her bedroom] and kneel next to her so close she could feel his breath on her face.
“She would keep her eyes closed and pretend to be asleep. She was feeling scared when he was doing it (the abuse).” The man would abuse her while she pretended to sleep and she also alleges that she would sometimes wake up feeling sore.
The man would also come into the girls’ bedroom and watch them while they were in bed before putting his hands under the covers of the older sister, Mr Norsworthy said.
“He would leave money and this would progress to leaving cigarettes underneath her pillow. She was getting to an age where she realised what he was doing was not normal and she hated being around him. When he came to babysit she began going out.”
Eventually the girl told her mother that the man was watching her sleep so a lock was fitted on the girls’ bedroom door and the sexual abuse stopped.
The younger sister also alleges that the man abused her on a single occasion when she was 12 years old. Mr Norsworthy added: “She was allowed to go into town with a friend and wanted to get money without her mum knowing.
“She walked to [the man’s] house and went upstairs, where he was bare chested and sitting on the bed, and she asked him if she could have some money. “He said, ‘sit here’, patted the bed and she sat down, not too close, so he shuffled closer to her.”
The man put his hands on the girl’s leg, Mr Norsworthy said, before he sexually assaulted her. Afterwards the man gave her a £1 note.
Allegations were made by the sisters many years later and the man was arrested by police in 2016. He denied all the allegations made against him.
The trial continues.
Wickford, UK, Headteacher admits making
dozens of child abuse images
By Ellis Whitehouse, Echo
A PAEDOPHILE headteacher has admitted making dozens of images of child sexual abuse – and possessing two of extreme animal abuse.
Daniel Chapman, 31, the suspended principal of Hilltop Infant School in Wickford, has admitted 12 counts including making indecent images of children, possessing images of extreme pornography and publishing indecent articles on messenger sites.
None involved any children at the school.
Chapman had previously denied nine offences in June this year and was due to stand trial at Chelmsford Crown Court yesterday.
However he changed his plea at court and admitted a dozen offences. He remained emotionless in the dock, dressed in a navy suit and speaking only to confirm his name and enter his pleas.
The 12 charges include six for making indecent images of children on August 8 last year and May 20 this year, two of which were category A, the most serious.
There were three charges for publishing obscene articles on the messenger apps Kik and WhatsApp, dating between September last year and May this year.
Chapman also admitted one count of possessing an indecent image of two children aged eight and ten-years-old, discovered on May 20 this year.
Chapman, of Meadgate, Chelmsford, was remanded in custody to be sentenced on November 20.
After his arrest the school sent a letter to parents.
It stated: “The safety and wellbeing of pupils is of paramount importance and we take our safeguarding responsibilities extremely seriously. There is no suggestion that at any time our pupils were unsafe.”
First pics of paedo whose girlfriend killed herself
over his child abuse images
By Joseph Wilkes, The Mirror
These are the first pictures of paedophile Adam Wells whose girlfriend took her own life after discovering sickening images on his phone. They emerged as the mother of tragic Lydia Roberts revealed her anger at her daughter's former boyfriend being "allowed to carry on with his life".
Wells found Lydia hanged at the home they shared.
The 21-year-old H&M worker felt "violated and hurt" after finding the photos on a second phone belonging to her businessman boyfriend.
Wells, a 27-year-old who ran a beauty products company, was handed a 12-month community order and ordered to sign the Sex Offender Register for five years for possessing indecent photographs of children when he appeared in court.
Lydia's mother, Michelle Roberts, spoke to MailOnline after the inquest into her daughter's death.
She said: "Adam has been allowed to carry on with his life while we are still here, suffering. He has changed his name and got a new job. As a family, we feel very angry about what has happened."
And in a statement read out at the inquest she said they family would never forgive Wells, who she feels "made her make the decision to do what she did."
"Lydia felt violated, hurt and disgusted at what she found - even more so at the thought of Adam being with her young niece and nephew. I feel that he made her make the decision to do what she did.
Adam Wells was at court July 2018 and has been charged with possessing indecent images of children and has been put on the sex offenders register.
"As a family we are devastated at the loss of our beautiful daughter and for this we will never forgive him. In our opinion we are left now with more unanswered questions and hope one day to find out the truth."
The inquest into Lydia's death heard she argued with Wells after confronting him over the images. He found her hanged at their home in Radcliffe, Greater Manchester, when he returned from a night out with friends at 3.30am.
Lydia had a previous history of suicide attempts and had been prescribed medication for depression, the inquest heard.
Recording a conclusion of suicide, Coroner Zak Golombeck told the Manchester hearing: "Adam and Lydia had been had been corresponding by text message during the course of June 9 when Lydia was at home and Adam was at work for a larger period of the day and later out with friends and colleagues.
"The nature of the messages had been that Lydia and Adam had argued about content found on one of Adam Wells mobile phones.
"Adam Wells had returned home at around lunch time and shortly after him departing, Lydia had continued to message Adam Wells.
"It continued up until 7pm or shortly thereafter, whereupon no further text messaging or contact was made between Adam and Lydia.
And, yet, he didn't go home until 3:30 AM? Good grief!
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