Failed, Silenced, Erased - How Telford’s Institutions Betrayed My Children

February 4, 2025

How Telford’s Institutions Betray the Children They Fail

Imagine fighting for justice for over three years, pleading for help, begging for protection, only to be met not with support, but hostility. Imagine watching your children lose their education, not because they did something wrong, but because they were blamed, targeted, and erased for daring to exist as victims of institutional failures.

Imagine knocking on every door, social services, safeguarding professionals, education officials, only to be met with cold indifference, bureaucratic delays, and outright refusal. Imagine being told, not just that they won’t help, but that you are the problem for trying.

The very people responsible for safeguarding my children didn’t just turn their backs—they inflicted harm. They made my children feel like burdens. They made them question their worth. They don’t just ignore cries for help - they silence them.

Instead of protecting my children, they flipped our reality. Instead of addressing the harm done to them, they blamed us for creating fear.

A senior member of a leading Telford educational trust took my daughter’s safeguarding complaint, a plea for justice, safety, and basic dignity from sexual abuse, and referenced it to defend those in authority. A confidential complaint they had no jurisdiction over..

They breached my daughter’s confidentiality to protect themselves, justifying the victimisation of my son by claiming that staff acted out of fear caused by my formal complaints.

And the result?

Two children, missing from education, denied their rights as residents of Telford, abandoned by institutions that proudly celebrate their work in the community

This isn’t imagination. This is our reality. This is what it means to be failed, erased, and silenced. This is happening right now, in 2025, in Telford, a town already exposed for some of the worst safeguarding failures in history of child protection.

And yet, nothing has changed. If anything, they’ve only become better at hiding it.

The First Failure: A Safeguarding Breach with No Accountability

My daughter was just 14 years old.

She was subjected to serious, repeated abuse—a peer CSE case that the school and authorities had a duty to prevent.
Instead, they failed her at every turn.

Sexual harassment; rape; hate crimes, death threats and stalking.

She did everything victims are told to do—she spoke up, she sought help. And in return, the very institutions meant to protect her denied her truth, twisted her suffering, and blamed her instead.

Professional reports tell a clear story:

She was a victim of coercive control and sexual abuse.
Her behaviour changed dramatically due to trauma responses.
Yet, the school refused to acknowledge this.

Instead of safeguarding her, they punished her for showing symptoms of abuse.

They justified their failures with victim-blaming statements that stripped her of her dignity and erased her trauma.

“I haven’t seen coercive behaviour”

“This is also a young lady who is very, very active on social media; this isn’t a young lady who is always showing us those levels of anxiety that mum talks about.”

“I think she attracts unwanted attention and doesn’t quite know how to deal with that then, and that mum then views that as she’s being sexually harassed.”

"Despite trauma considerations, students must comply with school rules. Repeated defiance disrupted support efforts."

“She was becoming a problem for her abuser.”

She was excluded from school—not for misbehaviour, but for being unable to function in an environment that had already failed her.

Despite multiple professionals—from domestic violence specialists to mental health teams—confirming she was a victim, the school refused to accept reality.

They rejected police and safeguarding assessments.
They ignored the recommendations of experts.
Instead, they rewrote history to fit their own narrative—one that absolved them of responsibility.

They locked her in a room with her abuser for an entire day.

She suffered an extreme psychological breakdown.
She ended up in the hospital.
They knew what they were doing.
They knew the harm this would cause.
And they did it anyway.

This was not just failure.
This was systemic neglect with lasting consequences.

Social Services: A Pattern of Failure, a System Designed to Ignore

February 2022 – Social services were informed of sexual harassment case, where police identified:
• Intent to cause harm and distress.
• Coercive control.
• Physical harm.
• A 14-year-old girl with two serious mental health conditions caused directly by the abuse.

Social services refused to open a case.
They refused my request for support.
They did nothing.

May 2022 – The abuse escalated to rape.
The school’s response?
They sent my daughter back to class.
They did not tell me what had happened.

Later that same day, 2 male police officers interviewed her alone in a school office—visible to anyone passing by.
She was terrified.
She was left to face this moment with only a friend by her side.

This was at 3:30 PM.
That same day, a MASH meeting was held, they decided:
It did not meet the threshold for a Section 47 child protection investigation.
She had withdrawn the charges.

But the truth?
She was alone. She was scared. She was retraumatised in that interview.
She didn’t withdraw the charges.
The police collected forensic evidence the next day.

Social services made a decision on her case before even reviewing that evidence.
The evidence collection is missing for the crime report, yet we still hold the consent form.

Instead, they opened a Child in Need assessment.
It confirmed the serious harm she was enduring.
Yet, instead of protective intervention, it was downgraded.
The focus shifted to “strengthening families” to support me in enforcing rules—
as if parenting, not safeguarding, was the issue.

The abuse did not stop.
Threats to life.
Stalking.
Daily harassment and psychological torment.

She remained under Strengthening Families support, yet nothing changed.

April 2023 – The case was closed entirely when I contacted the NSPCC and a LADO referral was made.

Social services claimed:
There had been no further abuse.
That was a lie.

The LADO refused to escalate her case, claiming it did not meet the threshold.

Since that closure, multiple referrals have been made.
Telford Family Connect refuses to help.

June 2023 – It became too much.
My daughter disclosed her intent to end her life.
Their solution? She was told to move schools.

She never returned.

Not One Institution Failed.
They ALL did.
They ALL worked together to erase her suffering.
They ALL protected their reputations instead of protecting her.

And now, they are doing the same to my son.

My Son: Another Victim of the System’s Failure

He was targeted not for anything he did, but because I spoke up.

Eighteen incidents of victimisation.
He was placed in a headlock.
He was denied access to a school trip.
He was offered a managed move—despite no behavioural concerns.
They stripped him of his basic rights—including access to a toilet.

Then came the ultimate insult.
They blamed us.

A senior trust figure, in written correspondence, referenced a complaint that was outside the trust’s jurisdiction as justification for staff concerns. This suggests that the complaint itself, not the institutional failures it exposed, was being used to defend ongoing victimisation.

He justified my son’s victimisation by framing staff as the ones in need of protection.
He claimed my son’s perception of reality was distorted—dismissing the harm he had endured.
He twisted my daughter’s trauma into an excuse for staff, rather than acknowledging the systemic failures that harmed both of them.
Instead of safeguarding, they gaslit and deflected.

They breached my daughter’s confidential complaint and framed it as something to fear—an excuse to justify staff’s actions instead of addressing institutional failures.

In his official response, he made a shocking typo:
📌 While attempting to write “the bigger picture,” the result included the racial slur “ni**er". My children are mixed race.

But it wasn’t immediately addressed.
The email was sent at 5:55 PM.
It was recalled over two and a half hours later—at 8:30 PM.

Then, at just before 9 PM, he called me.
He told me he had recalled an email due to a typo—but still avoided mentioning what the typo was.
By then, it was too late. I had already seen it.

Could this have been a genuine typo? Possibly.
But the way it was handled only reinforced the deeper issue—deflection, avoidance, and a refusal to take accountability.

He knew the impact of what was written.
He knew why it needed to be recalled.
Yet, he chose not to say it outright.

Within the same concerns about racial bias and exclusion were dismissed.

Intentional or not, this incident fit into a much larger pattern: A refusal to take racism, exclusion, and victimisation seriously.

Now, my son is out of school.
We are trapped in a complaint process that has no end.

Procedures are ignored.
Investigations and outcomes are skipped.
And institutions close ranks—to protect themselves, not the children they harm.

The Third Failure: A Business Partnership Over a Child’s Education

In 2024, my daughter entered college—a chance to rebuild, to heal, to move forward. For months, she was thriving. Her December 2024 review confirmed she was making good progress.

But beneath the surface, the warning signs were already there.

In November 2024, the Trust formed a partnership with the college—the same trust that had breached her confidentiality, distorting her past into something for staff to fear, a matter raised in an ongoing formal complaint.

A clear conflict of interest.

What followed?

A sudden shift from support to hostility.
A rapid escalation of behaviour policies.
A so-called "support" meeting that felt more like an interrogation.

I told them she was struggling.
I told them what had traumatised her in the past.
Instead of helping, they used my concerns as a manual to break her.

She broke down and sought support.
She visited safeguarding. They did nothing.

By the last day before Christmas break, she had been retraumatised.
In January, I warned them about the impact of national CSE news on her mental health.
The next morning, they held a CSE lesson—without warning her.

A coincidence? Or another deliberate act of harm?

Days later, her tutor’s hostility drove her to collapse on a toilet floor.
Scared.
Broken.
Traumatised.

Safeguarding was contacted. They did nothing.
She never went back.

The Final Betrayal: A Meeting Designed for Exclusion

A meeting was called—with senior safeguarding staff, tutors, and a learner manager for health and social care.
People trained to protect.
Yet, they belittled her experince.
They wouldn’t listen.
They were hostile.

When I challenged them, one said she felt “attacked” simply because I spoke the truth.
When questioned about their failure to respond to emails, they became agitated and shut down the meeting.

Then, they gave their final verdict:
“College isn’t working for her.”

Not based on facts.
Not based on progress.
But because it seems, two institutions had already decided the outcome.

The Evidence of Psychological Injury
That meeting was recorded.
The psychological harm they caused is preserved in their own system.
They knew what they were doing, and they documented it.

The impact of that meeting went beyond exclusion—it caused real harm.
After the meeting, my daughter was prescribed anxiety medication to cope with the trauma.
Instead of supporting her, they pushed her into a mental health crisis.

Since that meeting:
Eight messages requesting work—ignored.
Eight deliberate acts of exclusion.
Tutors continue posting work for others—but not for her.
This isn’t miscommunication.
This isn’t a mistake.
This is deliberate academic sabotage.
They decided she didn’t belong.
They made sure that when she left that meeting, there would be no way back.

This is the second time my daughter has been forced out of education for simply being a victim of abuse, not by her abuser but by those who's duty it is to protect.

Damage Control: Their Last-Minute Attempt to Cover Their Tracks

After weeks of silence, after deliberately abandoning her, the college finally responded.

A "pastoral support plan"—AFTER they pushed her out.
A disciplinary process "on hold"—AFTER they traumatised her.
A request for me to clarify details—AFTER weeks of ignoring me.

They claimed they would make the final decision on reasonable adjustments.
Yet, they always had the power to help.
They chose not to.

And the worst part? In the meeting we were told that staff were "too busy" to provide a trauma-informed approach.

The Contradiction
A fit-to-study note was issued on January 17, pausing disciplinary actions.
Yet, on January 28, the meeting was entirely focused on behavioural scrutiny.
If disciplinary action was on hold, why was she questioned instead of supported?
If no disciplinary targets could be set, why was the meeting framed around fault-finding?

They couldn’t set disciplinary targets.
But they could hold a hostile meeting.
They couldn’t determine next steps.
But they could make her position impossible

This wasn’t just neglect.
This wasn’t just failure.
It is Institutional decisions that resulted in the exclusion of a vulnerable child for a second time at just 17.

Because this is what institutions do when someone stands in their way of progress.

The Pattern is Clear: Silence, Retaliation, and Institutional Protection

Telford has been here before.

The Crowther Inquiry exposed the horrific extent of institutional failures in protecting children from abuse. It revealed:

Authorities ignored or dismissed clear signs of abuse.
Victims were disbelieved, gaslit, and blamed for their own suffering.
Families who fought for justice were targeted, isolated, and silenced.
Agencies covered up failures to protect reputations—not children.

That report should have been a turning point.

Instead, it became a manual for how to cover up abuse more effectively.

They haven’t learned lessons—they’ve learned tactics.

• Then: Victims were excluded from school rather than supported.
• Now: My daughter and son have been forced out of education entirely.

• Then: Schools failed to protect children from sexual exploitation.
• Now: My daughter’s abuse has been twisted into an excuse to victimise her and her brother further.

• Then: Parents were painted as troublemakers for demanding accountability.
• Now: I am treated as a threat for asking for nothing more than safety and fairness.

• Then: Victims were told their trauma wasn’t real.
• Now: A leading Telford education trust and the college have ignored the trauma caused, allowing it to become a factor in decisions that further harmed us.

The only thing that has changed is their strategy.

They no longer just fail victims, they erase them.

This is not incompetence.

This is not ignorance.

A systemic approach that ensures those who expose failures are left unheard.

The Crowther Inquiry forced them to acknowledge the truth once.
Now, they are ensuring that no one will ever be able to do it again.

This is Telford.

The town where victims are not just failed but destroyed.

What Happens Next?

Three years.
Three years of fighting to protect my children.
Three years of lies, failures, and harm at the hands of those who were meant to help.

I believed that going to the police would bring safety.
I believed that safeguarding teams would intervene.
I believed that institutions would protect my children, not themselves.

Instead, it destroyed us.
We have lost everything.

A single-parent family with a history of domestic abuse and trauma.
Children already vulnerable, already carrying the weight of past failures.
An exhausted mother who refused to stay silent, and was punished for it.

They knew our history.
They knew we had already survived abuse.
They knew we had no safety net.

And maybe, they hoped this would break us.

So, they dragged this out. For years.
They refused to follow procedures meant to protect children.
They stonewalled me, ignored me, and waited for me to give up.
They pushed my children out of education, knowing we had nowhere else to go.

They didn’t just fail us. Their actions resulted in direct harm to my children.

They took my daughter’s future.
They took my son’s right to an education.
They took my livelihood, my stability, my quality of life.

All because I dared to fight for them.