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.
UK
Salisbury novichok poisonings: Putin ‘morally responsible’ for woman’s death after authorising botched spy assassination bid
The assassination attempt on a former Russian spy was authorised by Vladimir Putin, who is “morally responsible” for the death of a woman poisoned by the nerve agent used in the attack, a public inquiry has found.
The chairman, Lord Hughes, found there were “failings” in the management of Sergei Skripal, 74, who was a member of Russian military intelligence, the GRU, before coming to the UK in 2010 on a prisoner exchange after being convicted of spying for Britain.
But he found the assessment that he wasn’t at “significant risk” of assassination was not “unreasonable” at the time of the attack in Salisbury on 4 March 2018, which could only have been avoided by hiding him with a completely new identity.
Mr Skripal and his daughter Yulia, 41, who was also poisoned, were left seriously ill, along with then police officer Nick Bailey, who was sent to search their home, but they all survived.
Sergei Skripal and Yulia Skripal.
Pic: Shutterstock
Dawn Sturgess, 44, died on 8 July, just over a week after unwittingly spraying herself with novichok given to her by her partner, Charlie Rowley, 52, in a perfume bottle in nearby Amesbury on 30 June 2018. Mr Rowley was left seriously ill but survived.
In his 174-page report, following last year’s seven-week inquiry, costing more than £8m, former Supreme Court judge Lord Hughes said she received “entirely appropriate” medical care but her condition was “unsurvivable” from a very early stage.
The inquiry found GRU officers using the aliases Alexander Petrov, 46, and Ruslan Boshirov, 47, had brought the Nina Ricci bottle containing the novichok to Salisbury after arriving in London from Moscow with a third agent known as Sergey Fedotov to kill Mr Skripal on 2 March.
L-R Suspects who used the names of Sergey Fedotov, Ruslan Boshirov and Alexander Petrov. Pics: UK Counter Terrorism Policing
The report said it was likely the same bottle Petrov and Boshirov used to apply the military-grade nerve agent to the handle of Mr Skripal’s front door before it was “recklessly discarded”.
“They can have had no regard to the hazard thus created, of the death of, or serious injury to, an uncountable number of innocent people,” it said.
It is “impossible to say” where Mr Rowley found the bottle, but was likely within a few days of it being abandoned on 4 March, meaning there is “clear causative link” with the death of mother-of-three Ms Sturgess.
Novichok was in perfume bottle. Pic: Reuters
Lord Hughes said he was sure the three GRU agents “were acting on instructions”, adding: “I have concluded that the operation to assassinate Sergei Skripal must have been authorised at the highest level, by President Putin.
“I therefore conclude that those involved in the assassination attempt (not only Petrov, Boshirov and Fedotov, but also those who sent them, and anyone else giving authorisation or knowing assistance in Russia or elsewhere) were morally responsible for Dawn Sturgess’s death,” he said.
Russian ambassador summonsed
After the publication of the report, the government announced the GRU has been sanctioned in its entirety, and the Russian Ambassador has been summonsed to the Foreign Office to answer for Russia’s ongoing campaign of alleged hostile activity against the UK.
Sir Keir Starmer said the findings “are a grave reminder of the Kremlin’s disregard for innocent lives” and that Ms Sturgess’s “needless” death was a tragedy that “will forever be a reminder of Russia’s reckless aggression”.
“The UK will always stand up to Putin’s brutal regime and call out his murderous machine for what it is,” the prime minister said.
He said deploying the “highly toxic nerve agent in a busy city centre was an astonishingly reckless act” with an “entirely foreseeable” risk that others beyond the intended target would be killed or injured.
The inquiry heard a total of 87 people presented at A&E.
Pic AP
Lord Hughes said there was a decision taken not to issue advice to the public not to pick anything up which they hadn’t dropped, which was a “reasonable conclusion” at the time, so as not to cause “widespread panic”.
He also said there had been no need for training beyond specialist medics before the “completely unexpected use of a nerve agent in an English city”.
After the initial attack, wider training was “appropriate” and was given but should have been more widely circulated.
In a statement following the publication of his report, Lord Hughes said Ms Sturgess’s death was “needless and arbitrary”, while the circumstances are “clear but quite extraordinary”.
“She was the entirely innocent victim of the cruel and cynical acts of others,” he said.
‘We can finally put her to peace’ . Pic: Met Police/PA
‘We can have Dawn back now’
Speaking after the report was published, Ms Sturgess’s father, Stanley Sturgess, said: “We can have Dawn back now. She’s been public for seven years. We can finally put her to peace.”
In a statement, her family said they felt “vindicated” by the report, which recognised how Wiltshire police wrongly characterised Ms Sturgess as a drug user.
But they said: “Today’s report has left us with some answers, but also a number of unanswered questions.
“We have always wanted to ensure that what happened to Dawn will not happen to others; that lessons should be learned and that meaningful changes should be made.
“The report contains no recommendations. That is a matter of real concern. There should, there must, be reflection and real change.”
Wiltshire Police Chief Constable Catherine Roper admitted the pain of Ms Sturgess’s family was “compounded by mistakes made” by the force, adding: “For this, I am truly sorry.”
Russia has denied involvement
The Russian Embassy has firmly denied any connection between Russia and the attack on the Skripals.
But the chairman dismissed Russia’s explanation that the Salisbury and Amesbury poisonings were the result of a scheme devised by the UK authorities to blame Russia, and the claims of Petrov and Borisov in a television interview that they were sightseeing.
The inquiry chairman said the evidence of a Russian state attack was “overwhelming” and was designed not only as a revenge attack against Mr Skripal, but amounted to a “public statement” that Russia “will act decisively in its own interests”.
Lord Hughes found “some features of the management” of Mr Skripal “could and should have been improved”, including insufficient regular written risk assessments.
But although there was “inevitably” some risk of harm at Russia’s hands, the analysis that it was not likely was “reasonable”, he said.
“There is no sufficient basis for concluding that there ought to have been assessed to be an enhanced risk to him of lethal attack on British soil, such as to call for security measures,” such as living under a new identity or at a secret address, the chairman said.
He added that CCTV cameras, alarms or hidden bugs inside Mr Skripal’s house might have been possible but wouldn’t have prevented the “professionally mounted attack with a nerve agent”.
Sky News has approached the Russian Embassy for comment on the report.
Eight people have been arrested on Merseyside by police investigating the discovery of alleged drugs laboratories “on an industrial scale”.
Officers from the North West Regional Organised Crime Unit (NWROCU) executed 10 arrest warrants in dawn raids on Wednesday at residential properties across the region.
Suspects were held on suspicion of the production of, and conspiracy to supply, class A and B drugs, as part of what is believed to be one of the biggest operations of its kind ever seen in the UK.
Pic: NWROCU/PA
A suspect is led away after being detained in Prescot. Pic: NWROCU/PA
At one address in Prescot, police used a saw to cut through the front door before arresting a 68-year-old man, who was escorted to a police van wearing shorts and with a jacket over his head, covering his face.
The NWROCU began investigating two and a half years ago when police in South Wales detained a Liverpool-based suspect with an estimated £1m worth of amphetamines.
Warrants were carried out in April 2024 at industrial sites in Bootle and Huyton, with officers finding a tonne of suspected heroin adulterant at one and 550kg of what was believed to be cocaine adulterant at the other, Inspector Danny Murphy of Merseyside Police said.
Detectives also found 80kg of amphetamine in a simultaneous raid on a suspected laboratory at a residential premises in St Helens.
Inspector Murphy said: “We think the laboratory set-ups and the industrial scale of it at the time, in 2023, was the biggest we’ve seen in the UK, so it’s a big investigation, a very detailed one.”
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Mr Murphy said the organised crime group was suspected of transporting the drugs across the country in a multimillion-pound conspiracy.
Those arrested are alleged to have been “significant players” and to have carried out a number of roles within the suspected criminal enterprise, including “cooking” the drugs and couriering across the country, as well as organising.
Mr Murphy said they believed drugs were imported to the country before being bulked out with adulterants in the labs, potentially making millions of pounds of profit for the gang.
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