Four UK Women Detail Drug-Gang Abuse From Age 13 as Police Missed Years of Rape Claims
Updated
Updated · bbc.co.uk · Sep 9
Four UK Women Detail Drug-Gang Abuse From Age 13 as Police Missed Years of Rape Claims
3 articles · Updated · bbc.co.uk · Sep 9
Summary
Four women told a BBC documentary they were groomed from as young as 13 by men linked to UK drug gangs, then forced into sex and drug-running over periods that in one case lasted more than eight years.
Their accounts describe a common pattern: older gang-linked men used attention, alcohol, threats and violence to turn children into both sexual victims and criminal couriers, with girls seen as less likely to be stopped by police.
Police responses repeatedly failed them, the women said: officers focused on drug intelligence, dismissed reports, dropped rape cases for lack of conviction prospects, and none of the alleged abusers was prosecuted for the abuse described.
A 2012 inquiry had already warned that children were at risk from gangs as well as grooming groups, but campaigners say the issue was overshadowed for years by public focus on grooming-gang scandals.
The BBC understands the government's independent grooming-gangs inquiry, set up after Baroness Casey's 2025 audit, will now examine sexual and criminal exploitation by drug gangs in England and Wales.