In Plain Sight

A DAUGHTER GROOMED, A FATHER POWERLESS TO STOP IT "I was doing everything I could to try and keep my daughter at home because she had pretty much obliterated her bedroom. She was lashing out against everything and everyone because she had been utterly traumatised." Marlon West works as a professional mental health practitioner who has tirelessly counselled survivors of UK grooming gangs through their trauma. So, when his 13-year-old daughter Scarlett was targeted and groomed, he immediately spotted the red flags. Despite this, the grooming - initiated by an older white woman - became so relentless that he was helpless to try and stop it. Over the two years that followed, the single father reported his daughter Scarlett missing from home an astonishing 56 times. He even took the heartbreaking decision to place her in care to try and keep her safe, but he says police failed to help him or stop the grooming, and in some instances, they actually left her in the care of her groomers rather than return her home. Instead, he claims that he and his daughter were 'criminalised' and, at one meeting, he was told to shut up and stop reporting his (then) 14-year-old missing. Scarlett, who was groomed in Rochdale, only escaped her abusers two years ago, and her father believes that girls are still being targeted to this day. Today, Marlon is one of the main campaigners demanding a government-led national inquiry into UK grooming gangs, which he insists are at epidemic proportions.