An inquiry has found evidence of organised child sexual abuse and exploitation by criminal gangs and networks in Swansea, but accused police and other authorities of downplaying the scale of it over concerns about negative publicity.
Swansea was one of six case study areas looked at by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) which found "extensive failures" in the way child sexual exploitation by criminal gangs was tackled.
It spoke to child victims in the case study areas, some of whom reported being raped, abused, and in one case, not in Swansea, forced to perform sex acts on a group of 23 men while held at gunpoint, and concluded that they were often blamed by authorities for the ordeals they suffered while some were even slapped with criminal records for offences closely linked to their sexual exploitation.
