‘Telford model’ is more effective for child abuse inquiries, says former chair
Public inquiries are seen as the “Rolls-Royce solution” to tackling the grooming gangs scandal but local reviews are more effective, the former chair of the Telford child sexual exploitation (CSE) inquiry has said,Tom Crowther KC said the “Telford model” led to real progress in the Shropshire town and could be used in towns across the country looking into similar CSE scandals,He said: “Everyone wants a public inquiry,It’s seen as the Rolls-Royce solution,But we couldn’t have had the result that we’ve had in Telford through a public inquiry.
“We saw far more people in Telford than ever would have come forward if that had been a formal inquiry.”The Greater Manchester mayor, Andy Burnham, has joined calls for a national inquiry into grooming gangs, an issue subject to fierce debate after it was revealed the safeguarding minister, Jess Phillips, turned down a request for a public inquiry into exploitation in Oldham in favour of a council-commissioned review.Burnham said he thought there was scope for a “limited national inquiry” that “compels people to give evidence who then may have charges to answer and be held to account”.The government said its main priority was implementing the recommendations of the national independent report into child sexual abuse published in 2022, and MPs rejected calls for a new national inquiry in a Commons vote on Wednesday.Crowther led a three-year independent inquiry into the scale of CSE in Telford, which concluded in 2022 that hundreds of children were sexually exploited over decades with authorities failing to investigate and victims, rather than perpetrators, often blamed.
The judge-led inquiry was commissioned by Telford and Wrekin council after an investigation by the Sunday Mirror in 2018 revealed there may have been up to 1,000 victims of CSE in the Shropshire town.Crowther found that perpetrators were “emboldened” by the lack of any concerted response from authorities to stop the abuse, issues were not investigated because of nervousness about race, and teachers and youth workers were discouraged from reporting concerns.He made a total of 47 recommendations, and a follow-up review published last year found that 38 had been fully implemented and four more were in progress.“Telford should hang its head in shame for what’s gone on in the past.But right now, Telford can hold its head high with pride at what it’s done collaboratively to make sure that kids there now and tomorrow are safer,” he said.
Crowther said the inquiry was effective as it “had the involvement of the survivors from the start” and they had the “freedom to see witnesses in an informal way”.Sign up to Headlines UKGet the day’s headlines and highlights emailed direct to you every morningafter newsletter promotion“I sat and had tea and biscuits with survivors and witnesses, sat there while people cried,” he said.“A statutory public inquiry has to be set up formally, and if you’re sitting giving evidence to an inquiry, it feels like you’re being cross-examined.You can try to make it easier, but it’s still traumatic.”Crowther particularly praised how authorities in Telford had brought in “independent lived experience consultees”, people who were victims of exploitation in the town, to help implement his recommendations.
“To their credit, they put aside their years of absolute distress and the fact they’d been so badly betrayed, to work with Telford [council] and work with the police,” he said.“For instance, there’s always a drop-off in support where someone turns 18, and I had said there should be a transition.The survivors actually moulded that transitional process, because they’d all been through that.”He said some of the changes introduced in Telford included the creation of a joint CSE review group for the council and police to work more collaboratively and share their findings with the public, and the adoption of a CSE lead staff member in every school in the town.GPs in Telford also now have the ability to put a CSE flag on someone’s records if they have concerns.
“If I lived in Oldham, I’d want a Telford-style inquiry,” Crowther said.“Because I’d want to know what went wrong, have things been fixed, and if they haven’t been fixed, how can they be? If you want to know what has gone wrong in detail, you need to do it locally.”
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