Five women shared their stories on Channel 4 today, revealing how they were groomed, raped, imprisoned, and tortured by gangs as children, while also facing a long struggle to be heard by the police.
Groomed: A National Scandal aired on Channel 4 this evening (April 30), leaving viewers in tears as they learned about the heartbreaking death of a teenage girl who was injected with a fatal dose of heroin by her abuser. The program also featured five women, now adults, who bravely spoke about how they were “silenced” as children when they tried to report their abusers—men who gang raped, tortured, drugged, and imprisoned them before selling them for sex.
Advertisement Viewers were stunned to learn that the ethnicity of the grooming gang members had been hidden, as some authorities feared that revealing the perpetrators were mostly British Pakistani men could “increase community tensions.” One user on X expressed outrage: “Watch and weep as it sinks in the Gov STILL refuse a national inquiry solely on what we know to be true. The authorities called them ‘child prostitutes’. I call it what it was-the rape of children -who were failed because of appeasement #channel4 #GroomedANationalScandal.”
Some children who reported being raped to the police were labeled as “prostitutes,” even though a child sex abuse lawyer strongly stated that “you cannot put the words ‘child’ and ‘prostitute’ in the same sentence.”
One survivor also shared how she had brought a friend to one of the grooming parties and was later convicted as a “sex offender”—banned from contacting anyone under 18—despite being under 18 herself at the time.
One tweeter exclaimed: “I want to know who the adults were describing abused children as promiscuous!! Name them, hold them accountable. These accounts are harrowing #groomedanationalscandal #c4 @Channel4.”
One woman shared her pain, saying: “I got silenced as a child. The police and social services made me feel like it was my fault and inside I was screaming because there was nobody listening.”
Another woman shared a similar heartbreaking experience, saying she had been “crying out for help and no-one was seeing.”
Viewers were outraged by the failures of police, social services, and children’s homes meant to protect vulnerable victims—especially after learning that Operation Augusta, a major police investigation, was shut down in 2005 due to a “lack of resources.”
That decision left “97 perpetrators” free to walk the streets of Manchester and continue abusing children.
Now, people across the UK are calling for a “national movement” to confront these horrors and reopen investigations into grooming gangs.
“These girls have been let down big time by the justice system and our government, there should be a national enquiry,” one person wrote.
Another echoed: “National enquiry now”, then directed frustration at Labour leader Keir Starmer: “You better be as outraged as you were by the fictional drama #Adolescence!”
Source: Express.co.uk