Tell Us Why. Junior Graphic Educatio Page

Children groomed online are taken to ‘parties’, where they are drugged or plied with alcohol “so that they did not know what was happening to them,” the study found.

‘This made it impossible for them to identify the perpetrators.’

The interim report found that 2,409 children and young people were confirmed victims between August 2010 and October 2011. A further 16,500 children were at 'high risk' of sexual exploitation between April 2010 and March 2011.

In one abuse network, 2,900 vulnerable children were connected to the main perpetrator who used social networking sites to maintain contact with potential victims.