The UK failed grooming gang victims by not seeing ‘children as children’

By Michelle McManus, Professor of Safeguarding and Violence Prevention, Co-Director of the Institute for Children's Futures, Manchester Metropolitan University

The announcement of a national inquiry into group-based child sexual exploitation raises urgent questions: How did we end up here again? Haven’t there been enough reports? Why weren’t children protected the first time? And will these reforms actually change anything?

As someone who has worked for years in safeguarding policy and research into grooming, county lines drug trafficking and child criminal exploitation, I believe this moment could be different. For…

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