West Yorkshire’s Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC), Mark Burns-Williamson, has highlighted the work he has done in tackling Child Sexual Exploitation on National CSE Awareness day.
It said: “The risk of stereotyping people affected by child sexual exploitation (CSE) is that it can prevent the identification of victims”.
CSE is a form of sexual abuse that involves the manipulation and/or coercion of young people under the age of 18 into sexual activity, usually in return for affection, gifts, money, drugs or alcohol.
Working with the police and other key organisations, the county council’s children’s services play an important role in preventing this kind of abuse and supporting the victims of it.
“Child sexual exploitation puts the young victim at huge risk of damage to their physical, emotional and psychological health”.
Superintendent Vince Firth, partnerships lead for Bradford District Police, urged members of the public to let police know if they saw anything suspicious, like a like a young person with a group of older people, adding: “If somebody sees something that doesn’t look right, then the chances are it isn’t right”.
“They may not see themselves as a victim of exploitation and therefore may not always come forward to tell someone”.
It said: “No questions were asked as to why the girl was at the house”.
Ms Campbell also announced an updated action plan to tackle child sexual exploitation including extra support for child abuse investigations through Police Scotland’s specialist national unit.
We must do all we can to make sure that a child’s vulnerability is never overlooked or ignored because they don’t meet a certain stereotype. The message on my hand is that boys can be victims of CSE too. They “may become vulnerable to being exploited because they feel isolated and believe that others will lack acceptance of their sexuality and gender identity”.
“Although there is no evidence of systematic child sexual exploitation in the county, we must not be complacent”.
NWG (formerly The National Working Group for Sexually Exploited Children and Young People), a charitable organisation formed as a United Kingdom network of over 10,000 practitioners, is behind the Awareness Day.
Campaign website www.csethesigns.scot has been visited by 15,755 unique users since its launch in January.
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