Growing up in Southeast London, Annie was an outgoing, bubbly girl with a loving family, a creative kid who loved to dance. When she was introduced to three older boys at the age of 14, she was excited to have their attention. But meeting them would catalyse a harrowing chain of events that meant she “didn’t really have the option to grow up as a carefree teenager”.The three boys were part of a gang who sold drugs and controlled a local estate. “These groups really are able to tap into vulnerabilities and it began with grooming, offering what looked like friendship, what looked like love or care,” Annie says. She was raped by the boys, who took photos of her and later used them for blackmail, threatening to post them online if she didn’t have sex with more people. The abuse went on for years. Across Britain, drug gangs like these are trafficking and sexually exploiting girls, with frontline workers believing that tens of thousands of young women may be at risk. In many cases, they are coerced into transporting drugs around the country. This has been happening for decades, and the authorities have been warned over and over. Yet the exploitation persists, and often the survivors of abuse are treated like criminals themselves. Now a new BBC documentary, Britain’s Forgotten Girls, is asking why this issue has been repeatedly pushed aside and overlooked, collecting the testimonies of women such as Annie as well as whistleblowers and campaigners. So far, media attention has often tended to focus on grooming gangs in northern towns – horrifying cases in their own right. But this is a distinct and separate issue. “For grooming gangs, the primary purpose is often the sexual exploitation of those girls,” Connie Muttock, director of policy and public affairs for the Centre for Young Lives, explains in the documentary, “but the primary purpose of a drug gang is to make money off selling drugs and other criminal activity”. The girls are used to make money – they are generally less likely to be stopped and searched, for one thing – and are sexually exploited at the same time. Holly, who shares her story in Britain’s Forgotten Girls, was taken into care at the age of 12, and would run away to Piccadilly Gardens in the centre of Manchester, where she was introduced to older men from a drugs gang. Annie went from a bubbly teenager to a withdrawn, introverted young woman (BBC)Over the next four years, she was assaulted by the gang and was also involved in moving and selling drugs. “Obviously it doesn’t just happen to people in the care system, it happens to anyone, but people in the care system are more widely targeted, I believe, just because we’re vulnerable,” she says. As a teenager, she says, “even though I was being hurt, I didn’t see the fact that I was being hurt. I saw the fact that I was in charge – because even when I was being exploited, I was recruiting other young children. I thought I was the one in charge, but in reality, it wasn’t me.” The memories are still “raw” – “my teenage years were hell, honestly,” she says. As Holly points out, the abuse is not necessarily confined to one particular area or demographic. In 2012, an inquiry led by then-Deputy Children’s Commissioner Sue Berelowitz found that it crossed all cultural and ethnic groups, and that more than 16,000 children could be at risk. But, the documentary argues, the findings were seen as inconvenient, in part because the issue was so widespread and would require significant resources to tackle. At the time, one government source told the BBC that the report used “hysterical” language.A few years later, in 2015, a different report from the National Crime Agency brought attention to how county lines gangs were exploiting young people to move drugs around the country. The issue became a new focus for policymakers, but the emphasis was very much on boys and young men. Again, the experiences of girls and young women remained on the sidelines, or were perceived as somehow lesser. Not being taken seriously only compounds the trauma they’ve experienced. Eventually, Annie’s abusers posted the photos online, and groups of boys would start “turning up at my school and no one intervened”. Her school found out about the pictures and informed the police, but she didn’t receive any support; the perpetrators were never brought to justice. “When these things happen and no one tells you that they’re wrong, you blame yourself – you think ‘it’s my fault,’” she says. This once “bubbly” young woman started to withdraw into herself; her sense of “shame and guilt” became “almost physically destabilising”. She stopped trusting friends and family, and doubted her own value. “I thought of myself as ‘less than’, and I think that led to me putting myself in more risky situations as I got older as well, because I thought certain behaviours were normal – no one ever told me that they weren’t.” One police officer told Holly that she was just looking for a ‘free taxi home’ rather than help (BBC)Because Holly was already known to the police, she was viewed as a criminal rather than a victim. Once, when she went to the authorities for help, “there were comments made like, ‘oh, you just want a free taxi home’. I feel like when your face gets seen more and more by police officers and the local authority, they start to push you away”. She was eventually arrested while carrying drugs, and was later institutionalised. Holly believes that “females who are being exploited are not looked at the same as young men or boys” – especially when it comes to sexual exploitation. “It’s always like, ‘well you must have been able to…’ or ‘you must have wanted that’, and that hurts, because it’s out of our control, you know?” Annie agrees that “there’s a lot of myths and stereotypes which still come into play around young women, and misogyny is a big thing”. In 2017, Annie asked the police to reopen her case, but was told that there was not a realistic prospect of a conviction. It was not until she pursued a Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority claim, for those impacted by violent crime, that she started to feel “recognised as a victim of a crime”. From “the get-go”, she says, her lawyer made her feel believed. “I’d never got that – throughout the process, I was like, ‘wow, I feel like I have people fighting for me.’”She now works in social care, and is “really passionate about helping young people and vulnerable groups”. The “driving force” behind her decision to revisit her experiences for the film, she says, “was to make a difference and have some impact” – and she ultimately found it to be a “really healing” process. “It enabled me to feel like I can put it to bed now,” she says. Annie now works in social care and is passionate about supporting young people (BBC)She and the other contributors were offered therapy throughout filming, which she found helpful, too. Holly didn’t opt in to that, but says she’s found solace in knowing that “what I’m talking about is going to impact a lot of other people”. She is now working on a research project on child criminal exploitation and children in the care system at the University of Sheffield. “I hope that local authorities can benefit from what they hear in the documentary, and maybe look at people as victims, instead of criminalising young people,” she adds. In her situation, she says, having “one trusted person” who was a consistent point of contact would have made a huge difference, “because I feel like a long, trusting relationship, when it comes to [talking about] exploitation, is very beneficial”. Annie agrees. “When working with victims of crime, I think there needs to be greater consistency and communication throughout,” she says. “When you open yourself up and make yourself vulnerable to somebody, especially somebody in authority, you need to maintain that trust, even if you don’t have the answers.” There is, she notes, “no ‘one size fits all’ way that people respond to trauma”, and she would like to see “a bit more flexibility in policies and legislation” to recognise this. “To make change,” she says, “you’ve got to have difficult conversations – I just want to help the next generation, really.” Britain’s Forgotten Girls is on BBC Two at 9pm on 9 September and is available to stream on BBC iPlayer. If you have been raped or sexually assaulted, you can contact your nearest Rape Crisis organisation for specialist, independent and confidential support. For more information, visit their website here