Name of Telford child sex abuse inquiry team revealed
Telford’s child sexual exploitation inquiry will be run by Eversheds Sutherland - the legal organisation that was involved in investigations into the Mid Staffordshire hospital scandal, Bloody Sunday and serial killer Harold Shipman.
The name was revealed at last night’s meeting of Telford & Wrekin Council’s child sexual exploitation panel.
It paves the way for the inquiry to get under way and for the organisation to appoint an independent chair.
Eversheds Sutherland was more recently involved in the Grenfell Tower Inquiry and more locally the North Wales Child Abuse Inquiry.
The council agreed to set up the inquiry after reports in the national media suggested that there could have been as many as 1,000 victims of CSE in the borough in the past 20 years.
The most high profile case saw seven members of a Telford grooming gang jailed as a result of a police investigation dubbed Operation Chalice, in 2013.
During the trial four judges heard distressing evidence from four young women, who were aged 13 to 16 when they were abused during a two-year period between 2007 and 2009.
The leading abusers were brothers, Ahdel and Mubarek Ali, then of Regent Street, Wellington, who received long jail sentences after an eight-week trial.
