Scarlett Jones

Following the report, Jones worked with Holly Archer, Joanne Phillips, the Holly Project and Telford & Wrekin Council as a lived experience consultee to co-design and challenge implementation of the recommendations. The Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner indicated that this work had contributed to a substantial increase in identification of children subjected to exploitation and trafficking.

State of the evidence

Documented

Legal status — source text

No legal proceedings

Attribution

Directly implicated

In post-inquiry work, Jones and the other lived experience consultees argued that some national definitions and guidance inadequately distinguished sexual abuse, sexual exploitation, trafficking and modern slavery, potentially leading to victims being misidentified. Telford's final implementation report credited the consultees with challenging national guidance; in 2025, Jones again emphasised the need for consistent definitions of child sexual exploitation.

State of the evidence

Documented

Legal status — source text

No legal proceedings

Attribution

Shared responsibility

Jones joined other Telford survivors in signing a letter defending minister Jess Phillips following Elon Musk's public attacks and condemning political exploitation of the suffering of grooming gang victims.

State of the evidence

Documented

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No legal proceedings

Attribution

Directly implicated

As the new national inquiry approached, Jones criticised actors using victims as political arguments, speaking of people who 'exploit the exploited'. Alongside Holly Archer, she called for survivors to have a genuine role in designing the inquiry and for party politics to be set aside.

State of the evidence

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Legal status — source text

No legal proceedings

Attribution

Personally implicated

Jones defended elements of the Telford model that give survivors a direct role, ensure follow-up of recommendations and produce local change. National debate contrasted this flexible approach with a statutory inquiry possessing stronger powers to compel evidence and obtain documents.

State of the evidence

Documented

Legal status — source text

No legal proceedings

Attribution

Personally implicated

After four survivors resigned from the national inquiry's victims liaison panel, Scarlett Jones joined four other survivors in signing a letter asking Jess Phillips to remain in office. Their group argued that the inquiry should remain focused on grooming gangs without adopting a definition so narrow that victims falling outside the dominant stereotype would be excluded.

State of the evidence

Documented

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No legal proceedings

Attribution

Directly implicated

Jones was among five women demanding an apology from Nigel Farage after he claimed that they were not grooming gang victims but victims of other forms of child sexual abuse. They described his remarks as degrading and inaccurate and reaffirmed that they had been victims of grooming networks.

State of the evidence

Documented

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No legal proceedings

Attribution

Protagonist is the complainant

Scarlett Jones participated alongside other survivors in the Independent Inquiry into Telford Child Sexual Exploitation. She gave public testimony when the report was published in July 2022. The report found decades of institutional failures and made 47 recommendations.

State of the evidence

Documented

In 2020, Jones published Just a Girl, an autobiographical account of her intrafamilial abuse, grooming and sexual exploitation. She presented publication as a way to educate the public, encourage other victims to speak and press Telford institutions to change.

State of the evidence

Documented

Legal status — source text

No legal proceedings

Attribution

Directly implicated

Using the pseudonym Scarlett Jones, she described intrafamilial sexual abuse from childhood, followed by grooming, rape and sex trafficking as a teenager in Telford. She explained that she had become pregnant at 15 and had encountered institutions that failed to identify her exploitation properly. The independent Telford inquiry subsequently confirmed longstanding systemic failures in child protection.

Attribution

Protagonist is the victim