SCARLETT West should have had a bright future ahead of her. With a private school education and her own horse, the 13-year-old had all the trappings of a middle class upbringing.
Tipped to pass her GCSEs with flying colours, she harboured dreams of joining the mounted police and would spend every night after school riding her pony Jasper and mucking out at the local stables.
But her ambitions and life were left in tatters when she fell victim to grooming gangs who plied her with booze and drugs before trafficking her around the country where she was beaten, raped and sexually assaulted.
Scarlett’s story demonstrates how working class white girls were not the only young women to fall victim to Pakistani-Muslim gangs.
Today, her dad Marlon tells how Scarlett was trafficked to Rochdale just over two years ago – proof that the gangs continue to hold an iron grip over the northern town at the heart of the scandal.
She was trafficked 13 miles to Rochdale in October 2022 – three years after first being groomed aged 14 – where cops found her in an Airbnb with two Asian men as part of a drugs bust.
Incredibly, Scarlett was charged with intent to supply drugs despite being on a national referral mechanism scheme – a programme designed to identify trafficking victims.
It was more than two weeks before the case against her was dropped.
The Sun reveals Scarlett’s torment as the row over a national inquiry into Britain’s grooming gangs rumbles on.
It’s been 18 years since the first stories appeared about groups of men using and abusing mostly vulnerable teenage girls from working class backgrounds.
Dad Marlon West, 51, said: “Nothing has changed in the way these girls are treated for decades.
“It’s worse than ever because the gangs know there’s no comeback on it. Not one of Scarlett’s groomers has ever been prosecuted.
Picked off the streets
“ It’s more than street grooming – it’s organised crime, getting the girls to run county lines as well.
“These kids aren’t going to Brownies and being groomed there. They’re being picked off the street and from outside their schools, and it’s still going on today, but the girls and their families are terrified to speak out.”
There’s little wonder since Marlon and Scarlett, who has waived her right to anonymity, have been persistently threatened.
A year before she was trafficked to Rochdale from her home near Hyde, Manchester, an associate of the gangs threatened to kill her dad – and sent Scarlett a chilling video featuring a gun and ammunition.
Weeks earlier, a balaclava-clad man was captured on CCTV delivering a menacing letter to Marlon’s house calling Scarlett a s**g.
Marlon, a psychiatric nurse, claims police and social work did little to protect his daughter – branding him a menace because he repeatedly reported her missing.
Scarlett, 20, who is too traumatised to talk to us herself but is happy for her dad to tell the story, today lives in fear of her attackers and is trying desperately to claw back the childhood stolen from her by sitting GSCEs she never got to take.
Destroyed childhood
Marlon said: “It wrecked her childhood, and it’s destroyed me, thinking about what she went through.
“It’s only now, with maturity, she looks back and realises what was actually going on. She’s been raped that many times that it became normal for her.
“She has her own place but will often call me at three or four am after having nightmares about what happened to her.”
At his home in Hyde, Manchester, Marlon looks through family pictures of the little girl he brought up alone from the age of seven after his marriage broke down.
It’s worse than ever because the gangs know there’s no comeback on it. Not one of Scarlett’s groomers has ever been prosecuted.
Marlon West
Images show an angelic looking toddler with blue eyes and gentle waves in her hair, before Scarlett blossoms into a pretty, fresh-faced teen.
Her ordeal began shortly before her 14th birthday when she was beaten up by a gang in October 2018.
Frightened, Marlon says she was an easy target for a groomer, an older woman who had a drug addiction.
Behaviour change
Marlon says Scarlett, who went to a private prep school and rode her horse Jasper straight after lessons each day, started staying out late at night.
Marlon said: “Scarlett’s behaviour changed pretty rapidly.
“I started getting calls from the stables saying Jasper hadn’t been fed or cleaned out, yet she was regularly breaking her 8pm curfew.
“Then her attitude at school changed too. She was answering back teachers and, as I later found out, playing truant.”
It wrecked her childhood, and it’s destroyed me, thinking about what she went through.
Marlon West
After repeatedly challenging Scarlett about her behaviour, she began going missing, at first overnight, then weekends, then for two weeks at a time, often staying with the woman she had befriended.
Marlon says he suspected his daughter was being groomed but claims the notion was dismissed out of hand at a meeting with Tameside social services.
He said: “The first couple of times Scarlett disappeared the police took it seriously but when it became more frequent they didn’t seem to care.”
Constantly missing
In December 2019, Scarlett was taken into care for 18 months – a move that left Marlon both desperately sad, but relieved her case was being treated seriously.
Family court papers, seen by The Sun, show that Scarlett went missing a staggering 45 times in early 2020 while in residential care.
The grooming eventually came to an end as Scarlett stayed at different homes across the country, including Lincoln and Wales.
She returned to Hyde in March 2020 but within a week she was disappearing again after associates of the original gang began offering her drugs and booze to meet up with her.
Marlon said: “That’s when the trafficking started in earnest – she was taken to places across Yorkshire and the West Midlands to sleep with different men.”
Horror beating
In October 2022, Marlon got a call he’d always dreaded would come.
“The police called and said she’d been involved in a car accident. She was in the back of an Audi being driven by one of her groomers who had drugs and had been taken to hospital.
“I thought ‘this is it, they (the gangs) have finally killed her. When I got to hospital she was battered and bruised while the guy was lying on a spinal board with serious injuries.
“A couple of hours later he absconded from hospital.”
Scarlett vanished from home the same afternoon and, days later, was found in the Airbnb in Rochdale.
There seems to be no protection for any of the girls involved, not just Scarlett.
Marlon West
The town found itself at the centre of Britain’s grooming scandal and in 2012 a nine-strong gang of Asian men were convicted of sex offences after plying up to 47 girls with drink and drugs before gang-raping them.
Ring-leader Qari Abdul Rauf, now 55, remains in the town 10 years after being released from jail and told he would be deported.
Despite her name being on the National Referral Mechanism list, which identifies potential trafficking victims, Scarlett was charged with drug offences, which were later dropped when she was found to be under a NRM order.
Marlon said: “There seems to be no protection for any of the girls involved, not just Scarlett.
“They are criminalised, stigmatised and ignored.
Call for an inquiry
“My daughter’s childhood was taken away from her. She wanted to take her GCSEs despite being in care but was moved around so much she couldn’t, so it affected her future too.”
Last month, a political row broke out after the government rejected calls for a new national public inquiry into grooming gangs, saying they were focusing on implementing the recommendations of the child sexual abuse report, published by Alexis Jay in 2022.
But Marlon believes that decision was the wrong one.
“We need a national inquiry into grooming across the country.
“Independent inquiries are not enough because people aren’t legally required to attend but I think we could get to the bottom of exactly what went on and who knew what, at what level, if witnesses had to turn up.”
A family court psychological evaluation of Scarlett in 2020 – seen by our reporter – revealed she was suffering from “complex trauma” and identifies her as being “at high risk of child sexual exploitation, given evidence of ‘grooming’ by older males.”
A spokeswoman for Tameside Council said it could not comment on individual cases but was “fully cooperating” with Greater Manchester’s independent review into sexual exploitation.
She pointed out the council’s work around child exploitation had been graded “good” by Ofsted and praised by the Children’s Commissioner.”
She added: “We are fully supportive of any victims from any time and we will work with them to access specialist services.”
Investigation promise
Greater Manchester Police said they had met with Marlon and Scarlett and were conducting an “extensive investigation”.
A spokesman: “Child protection is the priority of Greater Manchester Police of today.
“Our approach to protecting victims and pursuing perpetrators is significantly improved, with His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary recently finding us to be good or adequate in all areas of protecting children across GM.
“We have a number of ongoing victim-focused investigations by our specialist unit investigating non-recent CSE, which has 100 dedicated detectives working at a pace survivors are comfortable with when the time is right for them.
“This has seen more than 100 arrests, with suspects continuing to be taken to court including eight men who will stand trial later this month.
“We have met with Scarlett and her father and we’re conducting an extensive investigation into their allegations. While we understand the impact of their experience cannot be undone, we are confident that her experience of the GMP of today would be much improved from that of previous years.”
