Grooming Gang Victim: “I Was Raped by More Than 100 Men But Police Arrested Me Not Them”

Cassie said: “I turned up to school with a split lip and a chipped tooth, wearing my clothes from the night before.

“I’d been left alone in Manchester and I’d had to get a taxi driver to take me home.

“I turned up at school and told the teacher what happened and that I hadn’t slept, but she told me to try the exam anyway.

“I tried to start writing, but I have no idea what happened next. I passed out and woke up in hospital.”

She was eventually taken into foster care and moved hundreds of miles away from her abusers.

It was only when she read in a newspaper two years later about the Rochdale grooming case that she realised she was not to blame for the horror she had suffered.

She said: “I read the story of one girl involved in the Rochdale case and it was like reading about my own life.

“She’d been abused for years by loads of men and, in frustration, had smashed up the counter in one of their takeaways. She was arrested but nothing had happened to any of the men for ages.

“The report said she’d been a victim of child sexual exploitation.

“I didn’t know what that was, I had to look it up on my phone… but it was exactly what had happened to me.

“It was the first time I realised none of this had been my fault.”

Cassie slowly became aware that girls all over the country were being ruthlessly exploited like she was.

She now fears their abuse could be linked.

She was trafficked to Bradford, where authorities have flagged thousands of abuse cases, and also to Rochdale, where a probe has identified 47 girls who had been raped and trafficked.

Nine men were convicted in 2012 in a high profile trial at Liverpool Crown Court, which centred on the Greater Manchester town.

Two years later, an independent inquiry revealed at least 1,400 girls had fallen prey to groups of abusers in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, which also prompted a string of prosecutions.

And the Sunday Mirror spent 18 months investigating the issue in Telford, Shropshire, where an abuse ring was linked to five deaths.

Our probe last year, also revealed how as many as 1,000 girls could have suffered over four decades.

Just months later, 20 men were convicted of child sexual exploitation in Huddersfield, West Yorks, in what is thought to be the UK’s biggest single grooming prosecution.

One of those found guilty in that case, 27-year-old Mansoor Akhtar, was already serving a six-year sentence for abusing Cassie and giving her cannabis.

She said: “I think the groups could all be linked because I was taken to other towns where this is known to have happened. It could be one big operation, across the whole country. It’s happening everywhere.”

Cassie, who has been diagnosed with PTSD following her ordeal, says she is sharing her story because she wants people to know how to spot the signs of child sexual exploitation.

Now a mum of two, she is determined to give her five-year-old daughter and two-year-old son the childhood she never had.

She said: “I don’t let them out of my sight.

“I’m really strict, but they know how much they are loved.

“I couldn’t bear for them to suffer the same things I did.”

Story cited here.

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