Town's shame over child sexploitation

Middlesbrough will come under an unwanted spotlight next week when experts meet to discuss why so many children are running away from family homes in the town.

Research found 99 teenage runaways in the six months from last Christmas up until May.

Children's charity Barnardo's uncovered stories of heartbreak behind some of the shock statistics, including one youngster forced into a human trafficking - and six girls and boys coerced into prostitution.

More girls (58 per cent) than boys (42 per cent) ran away from home in that period.

Though the average age of the runaways was 14, some of the missing children were as young as ten.

The statistics were collected by Barnardo's researchers.

A spokeswoman for the charity said: "Carried out by children's charity Barnardo's and Cleveland Police, the study - a six- month pilot research project - provides an in-depth look at young people going missing in the borough, where they went, why and how old they were."

The research was set up to:

* Understand why young people were going missing in Middlesbrough;

* To offer support to those young people;

* To try to reduce the numbers of children and teenagers going missing from home;

* To encourage young people and their families to become involved with services who could help them resolve any problems.

One of the speakers at a presentation of the report to child welfare experts in Middlesbrough, on Tuesday next week, will be Wendy Shepherd, who runs the Barnados Secos project (Sexually Exploited Children on the Streets), in Middlesbrough.

The project was responsible for a significant reduction in the number of child prostitutes in the town - a drop from 70 to about 30 in the past six years from the start of the millennium, though youngsters as young as 12, were still at risk.

It was Mrs Shepherd's groundbreaking idea, in 2003, for outreach workers to go into Middlesbrough's secondary schools, to warn children against the perils of prostitution.