Manchester Mayor candidate - Marlon West explores the trauma of child exploitation and grooming.

#manchester #grooming #exploitation To understand why Marlon West is standing to become Greater Manchester mayor, you first have to understand what happened to his daughter. “Scarlett was groomed from the age of 14,” he says as we sit down to talk in Stockport.“Prior to that, a good kid, owned her own horse, loved her horse, spent all weekend with it and after school. And then she was groomed.” Scarlett, now 21, spoke to the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) alongside her father in 2024, waiving her right to anonymity to tell her story.Since then, both have spoken publicly about what happened.Her case featured in the Baird Inquiry, which examined the experiences of women and girls arrested and taken into police custody in Greater Manchester. The inquiry found Scarlett “went missing and was raped” in 2019 by a man referred to as Adult 4. It also found another man, known as Adult 5, groomed her, with Scarlett describing being driven to hotels to take drugs and have sex.It found she was made to strip to her underwear at Bury police station after being arrested on suspicion of involvement in a car robbery in August 2019. She did not have an appropriate adult with her.The report also concluded Scarlett “didn’t feel believed” by Greater Manchester Police after the grooming and that the force “did not effectively protect her” from frightening late-night visits by men to her home. The experience has shaped almost everything Marlon West has done since.Last year he was approached by Restore Britain and asked whether he would help with the party’s own rape gang inquiry. He agreed.After Andy Burnham’s victory in the Makerfield by-election, attention quickly turned to the race to replace him as Greater Manchester mayor. The LDRS first revealed West was expected to become Restore Britain’s candidate before the party confirmed his selection days later.The experience of fighting for his daughter, he says, is the reason he entered politics.“The experience I had as a parent was horrific, so you can imagine what Scarlett went through, it was on a completely different level.“She was trafficked, raped, tortured, and when I say trafficked, not just Greater Manchester, across the country. People might be surprised to hear she’s not the only teenage girl from Manchester this has happened to, it is happening to hundreds.“What I quickly realised afterwards, I wasn’t getting anywhere with local authorities or Greater Manchester Police, and then I started my campaign. source https://www.oldham-chronicle.co.uk/ne...