Why Leeds should be included in the national grooming gangs inquiry - Yorkshire Post Letters
From: M Clayton, Potternewton, Leeds.
Regarding the front page article, September 29, headed MP hopeful of city grooming probe, which states Keighley and Ilkley MP Robbie Moore has said he hopes that cross party pressure will finally lead to the national inquiry investigating the grooming gangs scandal in Bradford.
Leeds should also definitely be included in the national inquiry. I have campaigned about this issue since 1996 when pimps started trafficking women and young girls to the red light district in our neighbourhood of Chapeltown/Potternewton to solicit on our streets for the purposes of prostitution.
By 1997 the street prostitution had spread out over a wide area from Spencer Place, the original red light district. Residents and the police knew that most of the women and young girls were being controlled by pimps and had to hand over their earrings to the pimps.
They were being trafficked to the Leeds red light district from other parts of the country. At that time residents could not have known that the men were operating in gangs but all the street prostitution activity seemed to be well organised on a 24/7 basis.
When the Chapeltown/Potternewton red light district was closed down in 2008/9 all the street prostitution was then centred on Holbeck. Women and young girls were trafficked to that area to solicit for the purposes of prostitution. I was told that groups of Kurdish men were trafficking young women and girls there.
In the recent past I have written to the Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, the former Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper and the Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, to ask for Leeds to be included in any national inquiry.
Your leader article, September 20, is headed Bradford needs to be part of a national inquiry on gangs. I would be glad if The Yorkshire Post could campaign for Leeds to be included.
Over the years The Yorkshire Post newspaper and its sister newspaper, the Yorkshire Evening Post, have followed all the issues of the illegal red light districts of Chapeltown/Potternewton and Holbeck.
The journalists and the residents of the red light districts could inform the national inquiry. We should not have to beg for Leeds to be included in the national inquiry.