Tommy Robinson and his followers targeted the victims of Telford

THE child abuse scandal in Telford, Shropshire, rocked the country to its core when the scale of the horror was revealed.

- CLAIRE DONNELLY

Over a 30-year period, more than 1,000 young people were groomed and raped with a recent report finding victims were systematically failed by police and other authorities.

But, as a new book reveals, the survivors' suffering didn't end there, with members of far-right groups trying to hijack their experiences for their own ends.

Among them is Stephen Lennon otherwise known as Tommy Robinson whose film series The Rape of Britain sought to exploit the case to promote his own anti-Muslim rhetoric.

While it would be easy to say Lennon should be ignored, his dangerous activities need to be explored in the cold light of day, which is why we are serialising the new book Tommy: Politics. Drugs. Sex. Money., by Nick Lowles.

Investigative journalist Lowles has spent years looking into Lennon's vile activities.

Here, in the first part of our extract from his book, he says Lennon "zeroed in" on the Telford case and details how two of the right-wing leader's followers even began relationships with some of those affected.

Both of the men who slept with women involved in the scandal that struck the town of Telford have serious criminal records...

While Stephen Lennon had spoken out regularly about grooming gangs for several years, he had never systematically worked with sex abuse survivors on an ongoing basis.

This changed in early autumn 2018.

Cocaine binge in Geneva

STEPHEN Lennon travelled to Geneva with former aide Lucy Brown, activist Kev Carroll and another associate.

While the purpose was to raise concern about human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia, and by implication (for Lennon at least) to raise serious questions about Islam, the former EDL leader saw the trip as a jolly.