Tim Cuthbert

IN 1985 BIRMINGHAM CITY COUNCIL'S OWN WORKING PARTY FOUND LITTLE GIRLS IN ITS CARE TO BE INVOLVED IN WHAT IT DESCRIBED AS SEX FOR MONEY. Six years later the council’s next researcher found girls in its care reporting rape, beatings and burns. Nothing in the council’s published record shows it ever went after whoever was paying them, beating them, burning them, and raping them. In 1985 Birmingham Social Services produced a paper called Girls' Prostitution in Care. It recorded girls in the council's care believed to be involved in what it called sexual activity for financial benefit. Someone was paying these children for sex. The national inquiry must find out whether the working party recorded who. THE COUNCIL HAD THE WARNING IN WRITING SIX YEARS BEFORE JILL JESSON. After that warning, the council commissioned Dr Jill Jesson in 1990 to quantify the problem so social services could manage it. Her report in 1991 found twenty girls in the council's care whose files recorded rape allegations, violence and pregnancies. She says she was ordered to strip out the ethnicity of the men and the private-hire trade. Richard Evans, the Director of Social Services, told councillors in December 1995 that there was no significant quantitative problem. Councillors voted down an inquiry. The council cleared itself in 2015. What happened to the first warning? Who received Girls' Prostitution in Care? Which senior officers and councillors read it? Birmingham is Jess Phillips's city. She was elected a Labour councillor for Longbridge in 2012 and made the council's first Victims' Champion that June. She held that role in November 2014, when Jesson went public. The 1985 warning is recorded in Jesson's report. On 28 April 2026, as Safeguarding Minister, she told the Home Affairs Committee that when something obvious is missing that should be there, it "tells a story". Birmingham has republished the Jesson Report, but the original 1985 investigation cited within it has not been published. What did Birmingham's first Victims' Champion do to find it? AND BIRMINGHAM TODAY. In 1985 the council's working party picked out twenty-two girls because of their unexplained absences. On 30 September 2026 councillors were told of 143 children identified as experiencing, or at risk of, sexual exploitation, and that fifty-two per cent of them had repeatedly gone missing. Police were running 98 live child sexual exploitation investigations and six known grooming gangs. The warning sign the council wrote down in 1985 is in its own figures in 2026. The national inquiry must recover Girls' Prostitution in Care, call its four authors to give evidence and establish who received it. Read my full article into the Jesson Report here: redwallandtherabble.co.uk/fo… On my next live transmission I will go through what the Jesson Report reveals about the 1985 warning, and why the national inquiry must recover the original. Raja Miah MBE Until we came along, Birmingham Council had buried the Jesson Report. We helped force them to republish it. We did the same to get Birmingham named by the national inquiry. More than 1,000 of you have joined since June. I need another 1,000 to hold the National Inquiry to account. By now you know no one else will do what I do.. I share all my content for free. There are no paywalls to access any of my work. All I ask, for those that can afford to do so, is support me £3 a month or £30 a year so that I can continue the work. 🔴 Sign Up Here 👉 redwallandtherabble.co.uk Raja Miah MBE