More than sixty schoolgirls in a seaside town were being groomed for sex by a group of men who have been linked with the unsolved disappearance and murder of a 14-year-old, The Times reveals today.
The endemic scale and nature of the sexual exploitation uncovered by police in Blackpool was kept secret. The victims were young white girls; their abusers were non-white workers at takeaway food outlets in the Lancashire town.
The revelations provide further disturbing evidence of offending across the North of England and the Midlands. In January, the Home Office ordered an inquiry after The Times exposed a pattern of street sex crimes involving similar groups of men and vulnerable young girls.
Most British sex offenders are lone white men, but an examination of court cases involving multiple offenders from 13 towns and cities showed that out of 56 men convicted of offences where girls they met on the street were groomed and sexually exploited, 50 were Muslim, mostly of Pakistani heritage.
In 2007, two Middle Eastern business partners from a Blackpool kebab shop stood trial over the disappearance in 2003 of Charlene Downes, 14, whose body has never been found.
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When she went missing in November that year, detectives discovered that Charlene and many more local girls had been groomed to swap sexual favours for food, alcohol, cigarettes and affection.
An unpublished police report records that more than 60 Blackpool girls, aged from 13 to 15, had been groomed or sexually abused by “non-white adult males” connected with “a cluster of town centre takeaway premises (honey-pots)”.
It added: “The exploitation . . . included the commercial exchange of money, food, shelter and gifts for the provision of sexual acts. Young people were being groomed and sexually assaulted both inside and outside of premises by a number of takeaway owners and workers.”
In total, 11 Blackpool takeaway outlets were identified as sexual exploitation “honey-pots”. The owner of one was questioned about an alleged rape after having sex with a girl aged 16 during a job interview. He was not charged with any offence.
It can also be revealed that another missing Blackpool girl, Paige Chivers, 15, who vanished in 2007 and is feared by police to have been killed, was subsequently identified as a victim of sexual exploitation.
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She was known to spend a lot of time at one Blackpool takeaway whose owner had earlier been questioned by police as a witness during the Downes investigation. Iyad Albattikhi, a Jordanian, was eventually accused of murdering Charlene after allegedly having sex with her. Mohammad Raveshi, originally from Iran, was charged with helping him to dispose of her remains.
The prosecution, which had no physical evidence and relied largely on a series of covert recordings, claimed that Charlene’s body was chopped up and put through a mincing machine. Takeaway staff were said in court to have joked that she had “gone into the kebabs”.
The trial jury failed to reach a verdict and a scheduled retrial in 2008 collapsed owing to the exposure of serious failings in the management of the Lancashire Constabulary investigation. Each defendant was paid almost £250,000 in compensation.
Today, Mr Albattikhi, 33, still owns and runs the kebab shop that was at the centre of the murder investigation. Mr Raveshi, 54, continues to hold the licence that allows it to serve hot food until early morning.
Last August, almost seven years after Charlene’s disappearance, a police report warned that young girls were being lured to Mr Albattikhi’s premises to be fed alcohol and drugs before engaging in sexual activity.
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Lancashire police and Blackpool Council jointly run a project, Awaken, which was set up after Charlene’s disappearance and investigates all forms of child sexual exploitation in the town.
Previously compiled prosecution figures showed that in a town whose population is 96 per cent white, 28 per cent of the convicted offenders were non-white.
Last night, the police issued new figures showing that 50 of the 54 suspects identified by Awaken during the past six months were white; during the same period in Blackburn, 32 of the 44 identified suspects were white and 11 were Asian.
Andy Rhodes, assistant chief constable of Lancashire, said that offenders “come from many different social and ethnic backgrounds” but acknowledged that “in some areas the number of Asian offenders is disproportionate to the population”. He added: “Far from ignoring this, we have been tackling the issue head on by working with the local communities . . . and visiting mosques to raise awareness.”
The council said that child protection in Blackpool has improved hugely since Charlene went missing. David Lund, the council’s director of children’s services, said that the discovery of a link between child sexual exploitation and takeaway food premises in the town was used “to educate young Blackpool residents . . . who may be at risk”.
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One of Lancashire’s senior former detectives said the force has known for years that girls in Blackpool, Blackburn and Burnley were being “passed around like toys for sexual gratification”. Mick Gradwell, a former detective superintendent, said that research was “being inhibited by political correctness and concerns about upsetting community sensitivities”.
Karen Downes, Charlene’s mother, said that she had been unaware of “this awful, dark side of Blackpool” before her daughter went missing. “I didn’t know that people existed who were capable of doing what they did to those girls,” she said. “The police seem to have given up on the case but we’ve never given up hope that one day we’ll get justice for Charlene.”