31 charged with child sex abuse offences including rape & trafficking in West Yorkshire
Police have charged 30 men and a woman with child sex abuse offences, including rape, trafficking and sexual assault against minors in Huddersfield.
The suspects have been charged with a string of sexual exploitation offences against five women from Huddersfield, who were aged between 12 and 18 at the time of the events. They were allegedly abused between 2005 and 2012.
The defendants – most of whom are from Huddersfield – will appear at Kirklees Magistrates’ Court on September 5 and 6.
Labour MP for Huddersfield Barry Sheerman said he first looked into allegations of sexual abuse in 2009 and initiated a debate in Westminster.
“There have been many cases of this across Britain for a very long time and previously there hasn’t been enough of a joined-up approach by police,” he said.
“I am confident now, that police take these cases very seriously and that justice is done,” said the MP, who has represented Huddersfield since 1979, the Telegraph reports.
Raising concern about the “package of support offered to victims,” he added: “I hope there is a discussion about whether we are doing enough and if we are grasping that issue.”
It comes after the Sunday Mirror said in March that it had uncovered what could be Britain’s “worst ever” child grooming scandal, reporting that as many as a thousand children may have been sexually abused by grooming gangs since the 1980s.
Minors as young as 11 were allegedly groomed by gangs as part of an epidemic that is ongoing, according to victims quoted by the paper. Police have dismissed the figure as “sensationalized.”
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