Greater Manchester Police accused of failing 14-year-old child sexual abuse victim
For three years, Marlon’s night-time routine was different to most dads. Instead of kissing his teenage daughter goodnight, he was driving around Manchester at dawn desperately looking for her.
Content warning: This article contains details of child sexual abuse
“I’d drive around most nights until three or four o’clock in the morning,” he says.
“One time, I found her at a property. It was midnight, the middle of winter. I contacted the police and they said someone would be there in 10 minutes. I was still there at 4am waiting for them to turn up.”
Marlon first contacted Sky News a year ago. His daughter Scarlett was repeatedly going missing, often just for an evening, but sometimes for up to two weeks.
She had shown him threatening text messages she had received – including a video of bullets being loaded into a handgun and fired out of a car window.
Among the intimidating messages was one that read: “Because you’re ignoring me, I’m coming to shoot your dad.”
Then a man wearing a black balaclava delivered a menacing letter to Marlon’s house – his presence was captured on the CCTV installed above the front door.
Marlon, from Hyde in Greater Manchester, was convinced his daughter was being sexually exploited but claims no one would listen.
“Numerous times, police officers have told me they’ve got more important cases to deal with,” he says.
Scarlett and her father Marlon
Police shouted at father
At a meeting with the Greater Manchester Police missing persons team, Marlon says he was shouted at and told to stop reporting his daughter missing.
“At the time when that happened, she was 14 years old.”
Scarlett, now 18, has waived her anonymity to talk about what was really happening. Her father’s worst fears were right, she was being sexually exploited by older men.
She says she first reported being physically and sexually assaulted by a gang aged 14.
She felt the police didn’t investigate properly. Her behaviour became more unstable and erratic, and she was an easy target for a groomer, in this instance a woman, who befriended her and led her into sexual exploitation by older men.
She would find herself waking up in hotel rooms, often with injuries, after getting drunk and being given drugs.
“I’d wake up and there would be loads of bruises on my legs and I didn’t know where they’d come from, but they were big bruises,” she says.
Images show her with bruises on her legs and face.
“I’d see things in the morning like condoms on the side, sex toys, big bottles of vodka, cocaine packets,” she says.
She doesn’t always recall exactly what happened but remembers her ‘friend’ going into the shower with one of the men, while another man stayed in the bedroom with her.
Scarlett knows that she was sexually exploited and has nightmares about it.
Sometimes she wakes screaming for her father. The recurring dream is of a shadowy man in her bedroom.
“The first few times dad reported me missing I feel like they (the police) took it seriously because I’d never been reported missing before,” she says. “It was so out of character for me.
“And then, it was as though, after more phone calls the police officers would say ‘oh I know you. I hear your name on the radio all the time’.
“Even if I’ve not met them, they’ll say, ‘oh we’ve heard of you’. I think they were just sick of my name coming up to be honest. So, the police just feel like I’m a problem to them.”
Video filmed by her abusers
Officers refused to arrest suspects
Even when she was picked up in cars with older men and her father reported her missing, Scarlett says officers lacked curiosity and if they’d bothered to search the car, they would have found drugs and a machete.
“The police wouldn’t even arrest them. We’d be in a car park at 3am. It’d just be: ‘What are you doing here?’
“They just took me home to my dad and said: ‘She’s been found in a car in a car park with older guys’. There were never any questions of ‘why are you acting like this?’
“The police would say to me, ‘give it five minutes ’til we’ve left, cos we know you’re going to go again, so just wait ’til we’ve gone’.”
Mobile phone footage of one of the hotel rooms she was taken to
Scarlett admits she would go back to her groomer.
She didn’t trust the police. She felt the authorities were sick of her, and she didn’t seem to understand she was being exploited because she thought it was “normal”.
“In the back of my head I knew it wasn’t right, but I just kind of ignored it because everyone else did,” she says.
Once, after her father reported her missing, officers arrived at his home in the dead of night.
CCTV captured one of the men telling the other to give ‘just a little tap’ on the door.
Marlon thinks it’s because they didn’t want to get involved. He didn’t hear them, and only knew they had visited from the images on his CCTV camera.
As a senior health worker who understands child safeguarding, Marlon knew the protocols to rescue his daughter from her groomer, which included trying to get a recovery order and what is called a Child Abduction Warning Notice (CAWN), which puts an alert out on a particular individual who might be a threat to a child.
But in a text exchange a social worker told Marlon that social services could not apply for a recovery order because his daughter had been put into care, neither could they apply for the warning notice because, they claimed, that was the responsibility of the police.
But the police texted back that it was in fact social services who would need to apply for a recovery order.
Marlon felt desperate and as if nobody was willing to help.
“While my daughter was missing from home for two weeks and being more traumatised by the experience of being groomed and sexually exploited, they just saw me as a problem, as a parent who gave them earache.”
Abduction notice took three years
It would be another three years before the police imposed a CAWN on the person who was allegedly grooming Scarlett.
Meanwhile, she was struggling to cope and the person she took her anger and upset out on was the person most trying to help her.
“I used to get so angry with my dad,” she says.
“I’d flip out at school because my emotions were all over the place. My way of dealing with it was to explode – it was like a volcano erupting.”
As a result of these outbursts, Scarlett ended up in the care system from which she also went missing.
If there is one thing she would like to tell her younger self it is that everything her father did was to keep her safe.
“I realise why he did it now,” she says, revealing a mind map she had drawn to convince care staff to let her move back in with her father.
“I used to get so angry with him sending all these emails and [arranging] all these meetings and I used to think ‘You’re an idiot. You’re embarrassing yourself. What are you doing? Because the police aren’t listening to you’.”
Mind map Scarlett drew to convince care staff to allow her to live with her father again
Sharing story to help other victims
Scarlett is sharing her story now because she wants people in that situation to know they have a choice and they can get out.
“I didn’t think anyone would be interested in what’s happened to me,” she says.
“Speaking out like this now, someone else might think ‘I’ve been in the same situation as her’ and there are things you can do, not just stay silent and suffer.”
Greater Manchester Police’s head of public protection, Detective Chief Superintendent Michaela Kerr, said safeguarding vulnerable young people is of “the highest importance” to the force.
“In recent years and in recognition of previous failures, the force has worked hard to ensure the consistent delivery of outstanding service, which fights crime; keeps people safe; and cares for victims. This work is ongoing,” she said.
“In relation to this case, GMP’s Professional Standards Branch and senior officers from the Tameside district have reviewed complaints.
“These have been resolved directly with the complainant and none of the outcomes have, so far, been appealed.
“The force and relevant partner agencies continue to work closely on this case and in relation to safeguarding generally.”
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A Tameside Council spokesperson said they were legally unable to comment on Scarlett’s case.
But they said: “Where any concerns or issues are raised we work closely with individuals, families and our partners to provide support and resolve, as appropriate.
“Where individuals aren’t satisfied with the services received, we do have a statutory complaints procedure and individuals can ultimately take their complaint to the Local Government & Social Care Ombudsman.”
Scarlett lost her childhood and much of her education.
Four years on from when it began, she is back with her father, who has paid for her to have therapy. They now have each other, but little faith in anyone else.
Victims of maternity failings say they’re “disappointed” with the findings of an interim report which they fear will have “no teeth” to make changes.
An investigation into NHS maternity services is under way after a series of shocking scandals.
The National Maternity and Neonatal Investigation (NMNI) is being led by Baroness Amos, who said “nothing prepared her” for the amount of “unacceptable care” families currently receive.
A report has been released documenting her initial reflections and impressions after meeting families and visiting hospitals.
She will investigate 12 NHS trusts in total, including Oxford University Hospitals (OUH), which runs the world-renowned John Radcliffe Hospital.
‘I was left in my own blood’
Rebecca Matthews formed a campaign for families failed by OUH after her own traumatic births.
Asked to discuss the care she received, she said she “could only describe it as callous”.
“There wasn’t any kindness there. I was left in my own blood,” she added.
Ms Matthews recently took part in evidence-gathering sessions held by Baroness Amos.
But when she read her interim report, she said it was “disappointing”, as it appeared to be “a bullet point list of failings that actually we’ve seen time and time again in independent reviews”.
“The reflections don’t mention accountability at all,” she said.
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Birth trauma: Your stories
‘Why are we struggling to provide?’
Based on her initial inquiries, Baroness Amos found common themes, including women not being listened to and being “disregarded” when they raised concerns.
Many weren’t given the right information to make informed choices about their care.
She was told of discrimination against women of colour, working-class mothers, or parents who were younger.
A “staggering” 748 recommendations have been made about NHS maternity services in recent years, Baroness Amos revealed – and she does “not understand why change has been so slow”.
She asked: “Why are we in England still struggling to provide safe, reliable maternity and neonatal care everywhere in the country?”
Baroness Valerie Amos. Pic: Reuters
The most recent health watchdog findings paint a depressing picture of maternity services.
Almost two-thirds of acute hospital maternity services were judged either inadequate or required improvement for safety.
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This investigation is long overdue and isn’t due to report back fully until the spring.
But some campaigners are already worried it won’t bring meaningful change to maternity services.
Ms Matthews said it “seems as though it’s heading the same way that other reviews have gone in the past, leading to some recommendations but no teeth”.
“We need some mechanisms that are going to hold people and systems to account,” she said.
‘More to do’
OUH chief nurse Yvonne Christley said in a statement that “feedback received from patients using our maternity service over the last year is positive overall”.
“However, we know we have more to do to improve our maternity services,” she added.
“Our present focus is on listening to the experiences of women and families, which is helping us to identify opportunities for improvement.”
Anyone feeling emotionally distressed or suicidal can call Samaritans for help on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org in the UK. In the US, call the Samaritans branch in your area or 1 (800) 273-TALK.
The head of the Royal Navy has warned the government to “step up” and fund defence or risk losing the UK’s superiority in the Atlantic to Russia.
Should that happen, General Sir Gwyn Jenkins said it would be the first time since the end of the Second World War that Britain’s warships and submarines were not the dominant force in their most vital sea lanes alongside their allies.
“We are holding on, but not by much,” he told a conference in London on Monday.
“There is no room for complacency. Our would-be opponents are investing billions. We have to step up, or we will lose that advantage.”
As a senior, serving military officer speaking publicly, he did not make any direct criticism of the speed of plans by Sir Keir Starmer’s government to increase defence spending.
But Sky News has reported that he and his fellow chiefs held a “very difficult meeting” last month over how to fund plans to rebuild the armed forces amid fears of further cuts.
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Budget: what about defence spending?
Defence sources said there was growing concern at the very top of the armed forces about a gap between the promises being made by the prime minister to fix the UK’s hollowed-out defences and the reality of the size of the defence budget, which is currently not seen as growing fast enough.
That means either billions of additional pounds must be found more quickly, or ambitions to modernise and transform the armed forces might need to be curbed, despite warnings of mounting threats from Russia and China, and pressure from Donald Trump on allies to spend more on their own defences.
A Sky News and Tortoise podcast series called The Wargame tracks the hollowing out of the UK’s military since the end of the Cold War and the risk that has created.
👉Search for The Wargame on your podcast app👈
General Jenkins, the first Royal Marine to serve as First Sea Lord, used a speech at the Sea Power Conference to say that Russia is still investing billions in its naval capabilities – in particular the Northern Fleet that operates in the Atlantic – even as it wages war against Ukraine.
There has been a 30% increase in Russian incursions in the North Atlantic in the past two years, he said.
That included the Yantar spy ship, which last month was spotted off the coast of Scotland and even shone a laser at the pilots of a Royal Air Force reconnaissance plane that was tracking the vessel.
The Russian spy ship Yantar. Pic: MOD/PA
Yet General Jenkins said what Russia is doing beneath the surface of the waves, where the UK and its allies store vital communications cables as well as critical oil and gas pipelines, was even more concerning.
“I can also tell you today that the advantage that we have enjoyed in the Atlantic since the end of the Second World War is at risk,” he said.
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HMS Iron Duke shadowing the Russian Frigate Neustrashimy through UK waters in September. Pic: PA
Navy facing huge challenges
It is a particularly tough time for the navy, which has more ships and submarines alongside and unable to operate than at sea or at least ready to sail.
The service is also suffering from a shortage of sailors and in particular submariners, which again is impacting the availability of the fleet.
The crisis follows decades of funding cuts since the end of the Cold War, compounded by a litany of botched procurement programmes that has all too often seen vessels coming into service years late, at an inflated price and in too few numbers.
Vision of ‘hybrid navy’
Despite the sombre tone, the First Sea Lord set out how he wants to transform his service and make it ready to fight a war – though not until 2029, a timeline that could be too slow if some predictions about the threat posed by Russia to NATO are correct.
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New UK military technology unveiled
His vision – working with industry and other allies – is about developing a blend of manned ships and submarines as well as unmanned ones – a “hybrid navy”.
He is also stripping back what he called the navy’s own bureaucracies to enable the service to move much faster – crucially at the pace of the threat and the pace of rapid and growing technological change.
“We will face headwinds, we will face rough seas, but together, we can solve these problems if we have the appetite, if we have the determination, and if we have the mindset.”
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