Keighley News
New group to support parents of grooming victims
1:46pm Friday 3rd February 2012
A Keighley woman is starting a group to support parents whose children are being groomed for sex.
Former social worker Caroline Henry believes parents can play a key role in protecting teenage girls.
She particularly wants to recruit parents whose daughters have already been targeted by abuse gangs.
She hopes the parents can give each other practical and emotional support as they try to cope with the trauma.
Mrs Henry also hopes her group - entitled Coping With Rose - will be the first port of call for parents who begin to suspect their children are being exploited.
She also hopes professionals who work with young people will help run the group, whose name stands for Risk Of Sexual Exploitation.
She wants to stop sexual exploitation being a taboo subject, raising its public profile to the same level as social issues like domestic violence and drug addiction.
Mrs Henry said she was for several years an educational social worker with Bradford Council, working with many girls who were being sexually exploited.
In recent years in Keighley the issue has focused on Asian men grooming white girls for sex, but Mrs Henry insisted exploitation can affect any culture, class or community.
She said men, teenage boys and even older girls would target girls - and occasionally boys - as young as 11 or 12 after they started secondary school.
She said these sophisticated groomers excelled at driving a wedge between youngsters and their families, drawing them into prostitution, crime and drugs.
But she said: "If there's more support in the family home then the girl may be moved away from exploitation. If we can keep them in education we can help them move on.
"There are a lot of young girls involved and there isn't any support for parents. Parents can feel isolated, embarrassed and ashamed, and they're not aware of where to go.
"Why can't we be more open about it? If we deal with it as a community then we can help. Services and government are saying it's a growing issue."
Mrs Henry hopes to find funding so that Coping With Rose can have an office and telephone line, and produce a warning leaflet for parents.
She said warning signs for parents included their daughters self-harming, going missing, playing truant, changing behaviour, receiving gifts, abusing drugs and alcohol, or getting pregnant.
Anyone who wants to get involved with Coping with Rose, including young adults who were exploited as children, should contact carolineehenryy@msn.com.