KIRKLEES COUNCIL KNEW A CHILD WAS BEING SOLD FOR GANG RAPE
INSTEAD OF PROTECTING HER, IT CALLED HER ‘VERY PROMISCUOUS’.
A 16 YEAR OLD GIRL WITH A LEARNING DIFFICULTY WAS BEING SOLD FOR SEX IN KIRKLEES AND THE MEN AROUND HER WERE TAKING THE MONEY. KIRKLEES COUNCIL KNEW, BECAUSE IT WROTE IT IN HER FILE IN NOVEMBER 2007. THE SAME FILE CALLED HER "A VERY PROMISCUOUS GIRL". THE COUNCIL DID NOT PROTECT HER AND THE MEN STAYED FREE.
The council had a child being sold in front of it and it blamed the child. Those words come from the report Kirklees Council commissioned from Dr Mark Peel in 2019, after 20 men were jailed for raping and trafficking girls in Huddersfield.
A second file records a mother warning that her daughter was "getting into cars with Asian men for the purpose of drugs, alcohol and sexual exploitation". The mother named two other girls. I can find no record of what the police or council did with this information.
Kirklees Council knew both girls were being sexually exploited and still left them with the men. When the men were finally jailed and people demanded a public inquiry, the council hired Peel. I believe it did that to avoid one.
Peel read the files the council gave him for four months. During this time, he interviewed no victims and no staff. His report does not name the council staff who wrote down that these girls were being exploited and then did nothing. Nor did he look at a single police file.
He judged the social work “acceptable” and thanked the chief executive by name. His excuse for the council was that social workers in 2007 hardly knew what child sexual exploitation was, so they could not be blamed for missing it. In his words, nobody spotted it “because we simply weren’t looking”.
His own report proves that is untrue. A mother warned that her daughter was being sexually exploited and the council wrote it in her file in 2007. The council saw it and did nothing.
The council published Peel's review with a statement that it "provided a secure service at that time". In April 2024 police named 24 men jailed for the rape, abuse and trafficking of eight girls in Batley and Dewsbury. In May 2026 reporting restrictions were lifted on another 20 people jailed for the rape and abuse of three girls in the same towns between 1995 and 2003. Peel's review touched none of it.
Kirklees Council used Peel's review to cover up what it knew. The council picked the reviewer and kept ownership of his notes. It has hidden behind his 18 pages since 2019.
Reform leads Kirklees Council and Reform is hiding behind them too. Council leader Sarah Wood wrote to the national inquiry in August 2026 and told it the council had "already participated in two independent reviews". She did not tell the inquiry that Peel's review was compromised. She did not tell it that the other review never investigated the rape gangs or the cover-up and was nothing more than an audit.
Peel's review cannot stand as the record. The national inquiry has to take every file Kirklees Council and West Yorkshire Police hold on these girls, under its statutory powers. Sarah Wood and her Reform councillors must vote to demand it. A 16 year old girl with a learning difficulty was repeatedly sold for sex while the council wrote it down. Peel did not name one of the people who let it happen.
Why is Reform refusing to call an Emergency Meeting of Kirklees Council to demand the National Inquiry investigate Kirklees? Is it because, should the inquiry come there, there will be no coming back from what it finds?
Raja Miah MBE
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