Increasing number of children and young people in the UK are groomed for sexual exploitation by pimps and traffickers. Once groomed they are given drugs, raped, prostituted, battered and subjected to horrific violence and abuse.

The process of sexual exploitation involves many different elements of crime which comes to the attention of agencies under different headings, such as children who are missing from home, truanting school, using drugs, prostituted, abducted, raped or murdered.

Lack of recognition of this complex hidden process as one crime, prevents understanding the true scale of the problem across the UK. A way of tackling this problem would be to have specific statutory targets for the police and local safeguarding children boards to ensure the implementation of guidance on safeguarding sexually exploited children.

This online petition http://www.PetitionOnline.com/PTONE/petition.html calls upon the UK Government to take necessary action, both nationally and in each local authority, to ensure: - the practical IMPLEMENTATION of relevant guidance and legislation - its MONITORING
- publicly available REPORTS on progress

This petition was sent to me with some laudable aims and indeed, the Children Act 2004 was created to ensure that local governmental agencies, police, schools, social landlords and primary health care trusts communicate effectively. One hopes that the in the aftermath of the Climbe and Bichard inquirys that proper statistics are kept to ensure that progresssion of the statute is actually seen on the ground.