{"id":484779,"date":"2026-03-19T22:40:14","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T22:40:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/484779\/"},"modified":"2026-03-19T22:40:14","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T22:40:14","slug":"reports-of-children-as-young-as-11-abused-in-west-midlands-mini-marts-bbc-reveals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/484779\/","title":{"rendered":"Reports of children as young as 11 abused in West Midlands mini-marts, BBC reveals"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Throughout 2019 and 2020 the CSE group discussed high street shops in the town, which was described as a &#8220;hot spot&#8221; for abuse where &#8220;a few children were mentioned being exploited&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Between 2019 and 2024, regular intelligence reports were sent by Trading Standards to the safeguarding group. They highlighted CSE concerns related to &#8220;pop-up shops&#8221;, according to the council worker.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">However, in December 2024, police stated that they had &#8220;a lack of intelligence and information around CSE and they may not know what is going on&#8221;, according to the worker.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In the same month, an intelligence report says: &#8220;Trading Standards mentioned that 11-year-olds were taken in one pop-up shop to an unknown location via vehicle to collect cigarettes and vapes.&#8221; The shop was then closed by Trading Standards.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The log also states that in September 2025, Trading Standards asked West Midlands Police to &#8220;carry out foreign conviction checks, to see whether the suspects they were investigating had any&#8230; sexual offences against children&#8221;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Throughout 2019 and 2020 the CSE group discussed high street shops in the town, which was described as&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":484780,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-484779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=484779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484779\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/484780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=484779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=484779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=484779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}