How do we give voice to sexually exploited young people?

How can we ensure young people influence the development and delivery of sexual exploitation support and prevention services?

For the last 3 years the nia project has been undertaking prevention and participation work around issues of the sexual exploitation of young people. We would now like to share our experiences and other examples of good practice.

This conference aims to:
* Understand how the voices of sexually exploited young people can be heard
* Explore how young people can influence the development and delivery of services that support sexually exploited children and young people.

When: 18th October 2010, 9.30 – 16.30
Where: The Tomlinson Centre, Queensbridge Road, Hackney

This event is for commissioners, strategic and operational managers and practitioners.

‘What are the benefits of attending?’
* To celebrate examples of good practice in participatory work
* To share practical tools for use in delivering participatory work
* To hear from young people about how they understand sexual exploitation, how they want services to run and how they can be involved
* To explore ways that services can reach all young people including BAMER young people and young men and involve them in service delivery
* To hear what young people want from professionals and services in supporting their risk to sexual exploitation

Further details of the event are to follow soon. In the interim if you would like more details please contact: Jennifer Parnham on: 020 7683 1270 ext: 228 or jparnham@niaproject.plus.com

Young women are the group most affected by sexually transmitted infections in the UK, according to new statistics.

Among women, around two-thirds of new STI diagnoses were in those under 25, while among men, more than half of new diagnoses were for those under 25.

Of the women diagnosed with Chlamydia 88 per cent were under 25.

The HPA said the high rates of STIs among young women was “in part due to more sensitive tests and community based testing targeting the under 25s in England”.

Among men, 41 per cent of men diagnosed with gonorrhoea were under-25, as were 47 per cent of men diagnosed with genital warts, and 69 per cent of men diagnosed with Chlamydia.

According to the agency, the “peak age” for an STI in women is between the ages of 19 and 20 and between the ages of 20 and 23 in men. Around ten per cent of all 15- to 24-year-olds diagnosed with an STI last year will become re-infected within a year, the agency said.

Gwenda Hughes, head of the HPA’s STI section, said: “These latest figures show that poor sexual health is a serious problem among the UK’s young adults. Re-infection is also a worrying issue – the numbers we’re seeing in teenagers are of particular concern as this suggests teenagers are repeatedly putting their own, as well as others’, long term health at risk from STIs.”

In response to the figures Simon Blake, national director of charity Brook, called for the government to reconsider making sex and relationships education (SRE) statutory in all schools.

“The figures emphasise the urgent task of ensuring all young people have good quality education and services so they can make active decisions about sex that protect their physical and emotional health.

“Young people tell us their SRE is too little, too late and too biological and it needs to address emotions and relationships more effectively. Done well, SRE provides an important antidote to the confusing sexual messages they receive in the playground and from the media day in day out. “

Police have released CCTV images and are appealing for anyone with information to come forward about an attacker who barged into a woman’s home after he followed her there from a tube station.

The man stalked the 28-year-old woman after she got off a Piccadilly Line train at Arsenal Underground station. He tried to converse with her as he followed her along the road, but when she got home he forced his way in, pushed her to the floor and sexually assaulted her in the hallway.
The suspect, reported to be aged between 25 and 35, around 5ft 11 and of medium build with short brown hair was caught on CCTV on the Underground, at around 12.20am on May 13, and walking back along Gillespie Road, north London, after the attack.
Detective Inspector Beverly Hawes, the investigating officer, said,

“The victim suffered a terrible attack on her own doorstep. I urgently appeal to anyone who may recognise the man captured on CCTV, or has any information that can assist this investigation, to contact police.”

Source: Press Association 19 August 2010

Mohammed Ahmed, 42, of Manningham, Bradford, a mini-cab driver who repeatedly raped a 19-year-old woman on an isolated farm track, has been jailed for ten years.
Ahmed targeted the vulnerable woman after the taxi she had ordered did not turn up. It was her first night out in the city centre since suffering from post-natal depression.
The court heard that Ahmed was licensed only to take pre-booked fares. He was caught on CCTV however, picking up his victim outside Bradford University in October last year after noticing her alone in the street.
The woman gave evidence in court and told the jury that he had said “I’ll show you a good time” before raping her in the Allerton area.
Judge John Potter sentencing Ahmed said, “You subjected her to a sickening, prolonged, and terrible ordeal. You lied and lied to the jury, as you did to the police, to try to cover up this disgraceful and disgusting behaviour”. He also called Ahmed a “predatory sexual offender”.

Judge Potter made a Sexual Offences Prevention Order without limit of time, barring Ahmed from ever working again as a cab driver. He was also placed on the sex offenders’ register indefinitely.

Source:  Telegraph and Argus 13 August 2010

MARCH TO END VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN AND CHILDREN

Meet 2.30 pm Castlefield Arena – Sunday October 10^{th 2010}

Daytime, women only march through Manchester centre

Are you outraged by the violence that women experience every minute of every hour of every day? That breaks the hearts, minds and souls? That traces backwards to our grandmothers and forwards to our daughters? Have you the heart, passion and compassion to extend the hand of solidarity? United and connected we can change the world TOGETHER!

Will you hold the vision of a future for women free of violence?

TOGETHER WE CAN END MALE VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN AND CHILDREN!

The time is now and the power is you!

Dedicated to the dignity of women and girls across the world.

It is time for the Manchester women to rise in solidarity with our sisters from around the country and the world to show that we will not tolerate violence against women.

We are looking for stewards, speakers, performers and people to help out on the day.
If you are able to help or would like us to come and speak to your group please contact 07872015114 or email mwrmanchester@gmail.com

There will also be a free/low cost coach going to the London march on 5^th March 2011 (100 years celebration of international Women’s Day). There were 8000 women this year and we are aiming to eventually get more than A MILLION WOMEN!!

By the time you have finished reading this flyer, another woman will have been murdered at the hands of male violence

Greg Dawson, 34, who posed as a 16-year-old on the website Bebo.com to groom a 14-year-old girl for sex was jailed just for 38 months.

Dawson was already on the sex offenders’ register after been convicted of a sex offence in 2007, for which he was sentenced to ten months.
The court heard that in September 2009, after repeated requests from Dawson, the girl agreed to meet him at her home.
She refused to have intercourse with him initially, but under pressure she finally ‘agreed’ and they had unprotected sex three times.

The government and councils are being called on to do more to protect children at risk of sexual exploitation, following the harrowing case of a 14-year-old Manchester girl who was forced into prostitution.

The girl, who had run away from home, was targeted while wandering the streets, offered alcohol and cigarettes and then sexually abused.

Nine men have been jailed for a sting of offences, including sexual activity with a child, controlling a child prostitute and paying for sexual services, in relation to the case.

Penny Nicholls, director of children and young people at The Children’s Society, says the case highlights the lack of support services being offered by councils to help children who run away from home.

She said: “Sadly this is not an isolated case. Many children and young people run away from home or care each year and all of these children are at risk of sexual exploitation. The lack of support services and the decreasing number of refuge beds only adds to the number of vulnerable children wandering the streets alone.”

The Children’s Society estimates that 100,000 young people under the age of 16 run away overnight each year. One in 12 runaway children is harmed while away from home, the charity adds.

Nicholls also praised the bravery of the victim in this case, as she had to give evidence in court a number of times at separate trials.

Terina Keene, chief executive of the Railway Children, wants to see the government put in place a national “safety net” to protect all vulnerable children, including those at risk of sexual exploitation and runaways.

Keene said: “The network should include everything from universal and targeted work to prevent children running away in the first place, a 24-hour crisis helpline, a UK-wide network of emergency accommodation, to the provision of follow-up support to help reduce the chances of children running away again.”

She added that this latest case also shows the importance of youth workers in targeting and helping hard-to-reach, vulnerable children.

The DfE has said that there are no plans to review support for children at risk of sexual exploitation or develop an action plan at the current time.

23rd Sept in Widnes, Halton 6-9pm

Tickets are £10, for a 3 course meal and performances by the comedian Barbara Nice and young women musicians from Halton

Tickets in advance from

vanessa.shaw [at] actionforchildren.org.uk

Organised by Manchester Film Cooperative in partnership with the Working Class Movement Library, this will be an evening of short films and discussion dealing with the women’s movement of the early 70s and its continued relevance to today.  It takes place at the King’s Arms, Bloom Street, Salford.

The evening will include A Woman’s Place – a film that covers the first Women’s Liberation Conference in February 1970 and the International Women’s Day march in March 1971.

Films start at 7.45pm and will be followed by a discussion chaired by Bernadette Hyland (WCML). Confirmed speaker Louise Livesey (Ruskin College).

Entry to films £3 or £2 for unwaged, low waged or students

As a radio host, the comedian, actor and producer Angie Le Mar talked her way through scores of Saturday-morning phone-in shows. One stuck in the memory. Let’s talk about relationships, she announced. And one girl, obviously self-conscious, began to speak slowly.

She told of the day that she had sex with her boyfriend, only to realise that, without noise or fanfare, four of his friends had entered the room. With the girl cauterised by shock, confusion, perhaps fear, each of them, methodically, politely even, proceeded to have sex with her. Her boyfriend, collegiate to his friends above all things, stood to watch. Her question to the presenter. “Angie, was I raped?”

There is something going on with the interaction between young men and girls in more cases than we care to admit, Angie tells me. It’s not just misogyny, not just generational. Something darker. Like a parallel world. Boys who treat girls as sexual functionaries, group chattel. Girls who, unable to cope with the pressures placed upon them, buy into the wretched deal. You were raped, Angie told her. You need to tell your mother. I can’t, she said. She thinks I’m a tramp. Game set and match.

We are making a lot of fuss about boys, and rightly so, says Angie, but we are not thinking enough about the girls. Where’s the support? Where’s the “toolkit” to help them cope in a climate harsher and more overtly sexualised than any experienced by my generation? How do we help them to reject the values of the Kidulthood generation? How do we help them to value themselves?

Angie’s trade is words and so she wrote a play, Do You Know Where Your Daughter Is?, the tale of an unaware mother and a daughter sucked into this moral jungle. Mothers who have watched tell of a new understanding of the urban world their daughters inhabit. Daughters begin to understand the confusion of their parents. It’s been to theatres and schools, and though her young actors haven’t, as yet, got anywhere to stay, Angie has signed up to take them to the Edinburgh fringe festival. It’s a gamble but worth it, she says, because, more than anything else she has done, this is altering trajectories. Sometimes play-acting changes lives.

Check the play out here   Angie Le Mar