Child Protection
Children are the only people who arrive without choice and without defence. They depend on us, entirely. Childhood is the only foundation we get — and we owe every child a country that fights for theirs.
The foundation issue — in Sherrie's own words
A child's mind is built in the years we give it. What we put into a childhood, we put into the seventy years that follow. A child harmed does not heal the way an adult heals. Children break and grow around the break, and the break stays. We never stop being the children we were.
Child protection is not one issue among many. It is the foundation issue. Every NHS bill, every prison sentence, every mental health waiting list traces back to the children we did not protect.
Then come the specifics. A girl in Rotherham was fourteen when the first man told her she was special. She was nineteen before anyone in authority believed her. Across England, networks of men have chosen their victims with precision. Children from care. Truants. Runaways. Girls whose homes had stopped being safe. Children whose vulnerability the state had already mapped.
I understand how those cracks form. I grew up working class in England, in a household where the adults were too consumed by their own crises to see clearly. I do not write this to centre myself in their story. I write it to say I know how close any one of us came to being them.
"What happened to those girls is not a tragedy. A tragedy is something nobody could foresee. This was foreseen. By teachers, by social workers, by police, by politicians who chose silence because the truth was politically inconvenient."
Rotherham. Rochdale. Telford. Oldham. Bradford. The pattern repeats because the political class has chosen to let it.
I am running for Parliament because the country owes them a debt and politicians will not name it. Because every child in England deserves to know that her safety matters as much as the country's comfort.
What Sherrie is calling for
- A full statutory public inquiry into the grooming gang scandals in Rotherham, Rochdale, Telford, Oldham, Bradford and beyond — with the power to compel evidence and name those who looked away
- Criminal prosecution of officials, councillors, and officers who knew and stayed silent — misconduct in public office charges, not retirement packages
- Mandatory reporting laws making it a criminal offence for any teacher, social worker, or officer to fail to report suspected child sexual abuse
- A dedicated National Child Protection Agency with the powers, funding, and independence to investigate networks across council boundaries
- Lifetime sentences with no parole for organised child sexual exploitation, and automatic deportation of foreign nationals convicted of crimes against children
- Statutory protection and trauma-informed support for children in care — who are targeted precisely because the state has already failed them
Other campaign priorities
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