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Emerge Worldwide, London (2026)

17/09/2026

Britain’s Forgotten Girls gave survivors the space to speak about experiences that should never have happened to them.
We honour the courage it takes to speak.
But survivors should not have to keep retelling their stories simply for us to be moved by them.

Their testimony must lead to change.

The documentary raises difficult questions about girls experiencing s*xual and criminal exploitation. Children were known to services, yet were not adequately protected. Behaviour seen before vulnerability. Labels applied without understanding what was happening behind the behaviour. Warning signs and opportunities for intervention missed. And where different agencies held different pieces of a child's story, who was responsible for joining the dots and seeing the whole child?

Most importantly, when a child is connected to criminal activity, we must not lose sight of the fact that they are still a child.

We need safeguarding responses that recognise vulnerability, challenge adultification and put the child's safety and humanity at the centre asking not only “What has this child done?” but also:
“What might their behaviour be communicating?”

So now we need to ask:
▪️What changes because we have heard them?
▪️Do we understand the person behind the behaviour?
▪️When a child repeatedly goes missing, do we ask where she has been or also who she is going to and why?
▪️When she is carrying drugs, do we see only an offence or ask whether someone is controlling, coercing or exploiting her?
▪️When she appears angry, difficult or unwilling to engage, do we label the behaviour or become curious about what may sit behind it?
▪️When a professional raises a safeguarding concern, who follows it up and checks what happened next?
▪️And when several agencies know something about the same child, who joins the dots?

Survivor testimony should not end with applause for courage. It should influence practice, training, policy, accountability and prevention.

📺 Britain’s Forgotten Girls is available to watch on BBC iPlayer.

📍Email: [email protected] for training

08/09/2026

📢 SPEAKING OUT — THIS CONVERSATION NEEDS TO BE HEARD.

This Wednesday, Christine joins Naga Munchetty on BBC Radio 5 Live to speak about the realities of grooming, s*xual exploitation and s*x trafficking and why, years later, too many girls and survivors are still being failed by the systems meant to protect them.

📻 TUNE IN | WEDNESDAY 9 SEPTEMBER | 11AM–2PM

As part of the conversation surrounding the powerful documentary Britain’s Forgotten Girls, Christine will share her lived experience of grooming and exploitation, including exploitation connected to drug gangs.

But this isn’t only about what happened then.

It’s about what is still happening now.

Girls are still being groomed and exploited.
Warning signs are still being missed.
Survivors are still fighting to be heard and believed.
And police, safeguarding agencies and other professionals still have vital lessons to learn.

Christine continues to use her voice not only to tell her story, but to advocate for the girls and young women whose voices may still be unheard.

🎙️ BBC Radio 5 Live | Naga Munchetty
📅 Wednesday 9 September
⏰ 11am–2pm
🎧 Listen live or catch up afterwards on BBC Sounds.

Tune in. Listen. Share.

Because listening to survivors is not enough. We must learn from them and turn what we learn into action.

What needs to change to protect children BEFORE harm happens?

08/09/2026

📻 TUNE IN | WEDNESDAY 9 SEPTEMBER

Tomorrow morning, tune in to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme between 6am–9am, where Emma Barnett speaks with our very own Christine ahead of the broadcast of Britain’s Forgotten Girls.

Christine speaks powerfully about her own experiences of grooming, s*xual exploitation and s*x trafficking, including exploitation connected to drug gangs and why these are not simply experiences from the past.

The conversation also looks at the issues that remain very real today: survivors not being believed or properly heard, opportunities for intervention being missed, and the continuing need for police, safeguarding agencies and other professionals to recognise exploitation earlier and respond differently.

Most importantly, Christine speaks about what needs to change.

One member of the BBC production team said:
“Christine, you are incredible and impressively eloquent.”

We agree!

We are incredibly proud of Christine for continuing to use her voice not only to tell her story, but to advocate for other girls and young women whose voices may still be unheard.

🎙️ BBC Radio 4 | Today
📅 Wednesday 9 September
⏰ Between 6am–9am
🎧 Can’t listen live? Catch up afterwards on BBC Sounds.

Listen. Share. Talk about it.

Because these conversations cannot end when the programme does.

The question is: what will we change before another girl is harmed?

07/09/2026

On Wednesday 9 September at 9pm, BBC Two will broadcast Britain’s Forgotten Girls - a powerful documentary investigating the grooming, s*xual exploitation and s*x trafficking of girls by drug gangs, and the failures to protect them.

One of the courageous women sharing her story is Christine, Emerge Worldwide’s Education Lead.

Christine was just 13 years old when she was groomed. What followed was s*xual exploitation and trafficking, experiences no child should ever have to endure.

We are incredibly proud of Christine. Not only for what she survived, but for what she has chosen to do with her voice and all she has achieved.

Today, she advocates for girls and women, challenges systems to do better and helps professionals recognise exploitation earlier. She is also the author of Silenced No More – The Proverbs 31 Mandate.

But Christine’s experience is not only a story from the past.

Girls are being groomed and exploited today.
Some are going missing.
Some are encountering police, schools and hospitals.
Some are being labelled “challenging” when what we're seeing may be trauma.
Some may not recognise that they are being exploited.

We need adults and professionals willing to look again, ask another question, listen without judgement and remain professionally curious.

We honour Christine and every woman who courageously contributed to Britain’s Forgotten Girls.

Their stories should not simply move us.
They should move us to change.

📺 Britain’s Forgotten Girls
📅 Wednesday 9 September | 9pm
📍 BBC Two

📢 Please watch. Please share. Help these stories be heard.

[email protected]

02/09/2026

MISOGYNY IS NOT BANTER BUT A WARNING SIGN. Are you paying attention? What are you doing to stop it?

It can begin with a joke.
A comment.
The degrading of girls.
Controlling behaviour.
Sexualised content shared in a group chat.
A belief that girls’ bodies, choices or boundaries matter less.

When these attitudes are normalised, ignored or excused, we create space for harm to escalate and carried into their teens and adulthood.

We must challenge misogyny EARLY - at home, in schools, online, in peer groups and across our communities.

Talk to boys about respect.
Teach consent and healthy relationships.
Challenge harmful and degading language.
Take online s*xual harassment seriously.
Intervene when the warning signs appear.

We cannot keep teaching girls how to avoid violence without also teaching boys not to perpetrate it.

Challenge the attitude before it becomes the behaviour.
Challenge the behaviour before it becomes the harm.

28/08/2026

Why was the perpetrator able to reach the young person in the first place?

Recent developments around Meta and child safety have brought renewed attention to the responsibility technology companies have to create safer digital environments for children and young people.

If technology can recommend who to follow, personalise what appears on a feed and connect people across the world, it can also be developed and strengthened to reduce opportunities for perpetrators to find, contact and groom children.

That means thinking about prevention from the beginning:
🔹 Stronger age assurance
🔹 Restricting suspicious adult-to-child contact
🔹 Reducing children's visibility to potentially predatory accounts
🔹 Detecting patterns of suspicious behaviour
🔹 Disrupting and removing predatory accounts
🔹 Building safeguarding into platform design

Children still need knowledge, trusted adults and the confidence to speak when something doesn't feel right. But the burden of preventing exploitation cannot sit with the child.

We must also disrupt the person seeking to exploit them and challenge the systems that give them access.

Don't only make children safer users of technology. Make technology safer for children to use. That's Prevention by Design!

Before the message.
Before the grooming.
Before the exploitation.
BEFORE HARM HAPPENS.

UK Government

27/08/2026

Meta has agreed to pay up to $18 billion to settle US lawsuits alleging that Facebook and Instagram were designed in ways that kept children engaged encouraging compulsive and prolonged use by children while failing to adequately protect them from harm.

What happens when the design of an online environment increases a child's vulnerability to exploitation?

META and every social media company:
▪️Is your platform simply responding to harm — or are you designing to prevent it?
▪️Are you designing environments that make it harder — not easier — for perpetrators to find, contact and groom vulnerable children?
▪️Recognise that platform design affects the conditions in which grooming and exploitation occurs.
▪️Switch off recommendation algorithms by default.

The settlement proposes significant protections for under-18s on Facebook and Instagram, including:
▪️A default two-hour daily usage limit
▪️Restrictions between midnight and 6am
▪️Notifications muted during school hours
▪️Stronger age-assurance measures
▪️Greater restrictions on adults finding and interacting with teenagers
▪️Additional default safety settings

These measures matter. But child safety cannot begin after harm has already happened.

Tech companies have a responsibility to consider how the design, algorithms, recommendations, messaging systems and engagement features of their platforms can create environments in which vulnerable children may become more accessible to those seeking to groom or exploit them.

Prevention means recognising the conditions that allow exploitation to develop before the headline, before the investigation and before the trauma.

BEFORE HARM HAPPENS
Safety for children, young people and women MUST be built into all digital spaces.

22/08/2026

Adultification can change the way we SEE a girl. And when we see her differently, we may protect her differently. STOP ADULTIFICATION.

In 2026, the Children's Commissioner again raised concerns about the adultification of Black children, with new data showing Black children were almost 8 times more likely to be strip-searched than White children. Years after the case of Child Q forced the country to confront adultification, the warning has not disappeared.

And for girls vulnerable to s*xual exploitation, the consequences of adultification can be profound.

BEFORE THE HEADLINE:
▪️Before “Girl s*xually exploited...”
▪️Before “Girl trafficked...”
▪️Before “Girl missing...”
There may have been opportunities to see her vulnerability and intervene.

SHE LOOKED OLDER.
She still needed protecting!

▪️A child's appearance does not make her an adult.
▪️Her confidence does not make her invulnerable.
▪️Her behaviour does not remove her right to protection.
▪️And grooming does not become consent because a child appears mature.

BEFORE HARM HAPPENS:
See her age.
See her vulnerability.
See the child/ young person.
Safeguard and protect her.

19/08/2026

We cannot keep waiting for girls to become headlines before we recognise the signs and support.

We know the headline:
Girls s*xually exploited by groups of men.

But rewind. Before the headline...
▪️She was going missing. In analysis of the Rotherham cases reviewed 63% of the young people had been missing more than once.
▪️An older man was giving her attention.
▪️She suddenly had money, gifts or a new phone.
▪️She was drinking or using drugs. The substance use may be part of exploitation, rather than simply another behavioural problem.
▪️Her school attendance changed.
▪️Her behaviour changed. She became angry, withdrawn or secretive.
The behaviour that frustrates us may be the behaviour that should alert us!
▪️She was frightened.
▪️Different professionals each held one piece of the story.

The signs may not always shout:
“SEXUAL EXPLOITATION.”

Sometimes they look like:
“Difficult behaviour.” “Poor choices.” “Truancy.” “Running away.” “An older boyfriend.” “Drinking.” “Won't engage.”

But what happens when we put the pieces together? The pattern is the warning.

The most important question:
WHO SEES THE WHOLE GIRL?

Recognise vulnerability.
Be curious.
Connect the information.
Intervene earlier.

11/08/2026

It may begin with someone who listens. Someone who notices.Someone who makes a young person feel seen, valued, wanted or understood.

The messages become frequent. The compliments feel good. Gifts or money may appear.
Secrets begin to form.
Boundaries are gradually tested.
Trust becomes dependency.
And what felt like attention can slowly become control.

This is why we cannot wait for exploitation to look like exploitation before we act!

A young person may not recognise grooming because, at first, it may be meeting a very real need - for connection, belonging, affirmation, money, protection or somewhere to escape from what is happening at home or in their life.

At Emerge Worldwide, our Before Harm Happens campaign is about recognising vulnerability and disrupting grooming before exploitation takes hold.

We need to look beyond behaviour and ask:
What is this young person looking for and who is offering to provide it?

Prevention means noticing the need before an exploiter does.
▪️Pay attention.
▪️Stay curious.
▪️Create safe spaces for young people to talk without judgement.

The attention may feel genuine. The intention may not be.

📍DM or email: [email protected]

Emerge Worldwide

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