The grooming-gang scandal shows us that there is nothing noble about silencing uncomfortable truths.
One-thousand girls. That’s the stark figure at the centre of the inquiry into grooming gangs in Telford, which released its landmark report this week. It is believed that more than 1,000 girls have been abused and raped by grooming gangs in the West Midlands town since 1980. The inquiry was sparked by a Sunday Mirror investigation in 2018. Back then, the authorities dismissed the 1,000 figure as ‘sensationalised’ and suggested the newspaper had ‘made it up on the back of a fag packet’. This week, inquiry chair Tom Crowther QC described the Sunday Mirror’s estimate as a ‘measured, reasonable and non-sensational assessment’.
