She was raped by hundreds of men over a five-year period from the age of 14.

But when Jade Nurse’s case finally came to court, it wasn’t members of the Pakistani-heritage gang who groomed her or one of her rapists on trial – it was her. The person in the dock charged with inciting a child into sexual activity was 17-year-old Jade.

Police who charged her knew she’d been attacked repeatedly. Over the years, Jade had given DNA, taken officers to suspects’ homes and screen-shotted persistent Facebook messages trying to lure her out with alcohol and drugs.

But her complaints always ended with the same three words from police: “No further action” [NFA]. So it was a cruel irony that when a girl from Jade’s care home was sexually assaulted at a party she’d brought her to, officers suddenly displayed boundless determination to put the grooming gang victim herself behind bars.

“I woke up to about 11 police officers above me in one of my perpetrators’ houses,” Jade tells me. “They basically said that I took the girl out of the care home so she could get raped. I wasn’t classed as a vulnerable child. They didn’t ever say that I was at risk of sexual exploitation, even though they knew I was.”

Jade Nurse poses for photos in her house in West London, Britain 02 December 2025. Facundo Arrizabal (Image: Facundo Arrizabalaga)

Today Jade, now 32, has hard evidence stating exactly what the authorities knew about her – having gained access to her social services files. It makes disturbing reading. Over hundreds of pages, social workers and police respond to a vulnerable child reporting grooming and rapes by suggesting she is putting herself “at risk”.

“I was 15 when social services sat me at McDonalds and asked me if I was a prostitute,” Jade continues. “I felt sick, but then at the same time I started believing it because I was receiving gifts for sex. It was like, ‘Well, if my social workers are saying that’s what’s happening and that’s what must be happening’.”

As we sit in her London living room under twinkling fairy lights, Jade pauses in the retelling of her story for bouts of breathless tears. The coercive control the gang had over her was so intense that, nearly two decades later, she’s still having breakthroughs about the extent of the crimes they committed against her.

During a recent trip back to High Wycombe, Bucks, where she grew up, to see the places where the exploitation took place, she was hit hard with the realisation a man she was convinced had cared about her was actually a paedophile ringleader.

Now she hopes by telling her story in full for the first time, she might edge closer to getting justice. Not only for “little Jade”, but all the other girls abused by a grooming gang in High Wycombe which she claims operates on a scale to match any of the scandals that have emerged slowly and painfully in Rochdale or Rotherham.

As a teenager, Jade moved in with her father after falling out with her mum and step-dad. He struggled with addiction and it was through his drug abuse that Jade was first exposed to the gang as a young teenager.

“My dad took me on a drug deal with him when I was 14 and that’s where I met my first perpetrator,” she recalls. “It started off [with] him, as my dad’s friend, giving me lifts home and things like that. He’d] be taking me to school [and] picking me up. Then it got like more fun, like inviting me out to parties, buying alcohol [and] cigarettes

“That’s when he start[ed] introducing me to his family. I built up this massive trust with him. I wouldn’t say I classed him as my boyfriend, it was more like a really good friend. But then sexual activity started. I was 14, I don’t know how old he was, but he had a wife and three kids.”

Jade Nurse poses for photos in her house in West London, Britain 02 December 2025. Facundo Arrizabal (Image: Facundo Arrizabalaga)

In a pattern that is grimly familiar to other grooming gang cases, Jade soon learned that none of his acts of kindness had been for free.

“[After he’d] built the trust, he’d be like, ‘Oh, you need to sleep with my brother, nephew,’ whoever he was with,” she continues.

“If I said no, I’d either get beaten up or [blackmailed], he’d say ‘Well, I bought you the alcohol. I pick you up every day and give you lifts, I do this, I do that’. You start feel feeling like you owe them something. It gets more brutal the [longer] you’re in it.”

Jade claims that there were three different strands to the Pakistani paedophile network that exploited her in High Wycombe.

The first, operating from a house behind a shop in the town centre, sold under-age girls to newly arrived men from South Asia.

“[We used to call] the ones that come fresh from Pakistan and don’t really speak English ‘freshies’,” she explains.

“There was one girl who would get sold to the freshies. [I remember] She was in the next room [being abused] and there’’d be a queue of 20 people outside. One would walk out, another would walk in.”

Jade claims that such opportunities to abuse girls in Britain were promoted to men in Pakistan.

“My main perpetrator’s uncle took me to Snappy Snaps in High Wycombe, to have a little photo shoot with me,” Jade continues. “He printed like little passport photos, took them back to Pakistan and showed them all that he had a young white girlfriend in England, which then tempts all of them to come over.”

Racism, Jade claims, was both a motivating factor for her abusers and a tool to shield them from justice. Although she thinks the grooming gang problem is related to culture, not race or religion.

“When I threatened to go to the police my perpetrators would say, ‘I’ll just tell them it’s a race thing, you’re discriminating against me because I’m a Pakistani man. It’s racist and you lied about your age’,” she explains.

“We’d get called ‘white bitches’, it [race] was always dragged up, even in their language they call us ‘gori’.”

Although Jade only ever witnessed the abuse by the freshies, she was frequently a victim of the second strand of the network – a trafficking operation that took victims to other parts of Britain and beyond.

“Another group would drive me far away. I’d either be left in the middle of nowhere, not knowing where I was and have to sleep with the six people in the house just to get home.”

Often, Jade – a mother of three who has been safely away from the group for years now – would be plied with drugs and alcohol and had no idea where she was.

“One time I tried to run away from them and fell down a ditch. It was a long fall and I was covered in thorns for weeks,” She tells me. “When I look back at it now, I could have been dead at the bottom of that ditch.”

Many of these kidnappings and abductions took place when Jade was in care, but they were never classed as that. Her foster parents would collect her drunk from a random address and file a missing report. The fact that she was missing every other day for months at a time prompted no action from social services, educators or police.

Jade Nurse poses for photos in her house in West London, Britain 02 December 2025. Facundo Arrizabal (Image: Facundo Arrizabalaga)

“There was a time when I was reported missing because I was home past my curfew and as I was going back [I saw the gang] parked up outside waiting for me,” she says with a shudder. “They told me to go in and get my passport, my carers actually handed it to me. I ended up getting taken to Calais on a ferry to some nightclub next to a hotel. I obviously had to do whatever to make sure I got home and my passport didn’t get burnt.”

Jade claims the police were also aware of these incidents because she would sneak out and call them to escape when things got “horrible”. But, she claims, they had no curiosity to why a teenage girl was alone in a house with a group of middle-aged men she clearly wasn’t related to.

The lack of action meant many of her abusers didn’t even bother to hide their tracks. She shows me Facebook messages from perpetrators offering her cocaine and alcohol and telling her “age doesn’t matter”.

It’s stunning to see profiles belonging to overweight middle-aged Asian men in Bradford brazenly propositioning an underage girl. But Jade says in her experience, the abuse of children was an open secret.

“When I reported one man in 2011, him and his wife bullied me to drop it,” she adds.

“They knew my dad was homeless and were threatening to do things while he was begging on the street. So eventually I dropped it.

“They drove me to the police station and I had two Asian men walk me in. I got arrested for wasting police time. When I got released, they let me out of the police cell [and] the two Asian men are still sat in the waiting room waiting for me to come out to make sure that I dropped it.”

The irony is that when Jade phoned the rape victim in her case, pleading with her not to “ruin her life”, the police came down on her like a ton of bricks for witness intimidation.

When the 2011 court case arrived Jade was tried alongside adult sex offenders and found guilty. The judge sent her to prison where she was branded a “nonce” by other inmates, missing important birthdays and funerals.

Today she wonders now whether there were other reasons why her stories weren’t believed and she was treated like the person in the wrong for being raped.

“When I was 15 I got taken to the woods with this guy and his friend [and abused]. Then a week later I was walking down Wycombe High Street I saw him dressed in a Police Community Support Officer uniform.

“We both clocked eyes and [after that] I never saw him again. I believe that there’s more people higher up that are involved and there’s a lot more that goes on behind closed doors.”

The third group Jade was exploited by has been the hardest to come to terms with: the friend of her dad’s who first groomed her.

Her journey to realising that he was a perpetrator began after watching the BBC drama series about the Rochdale grooming gangs scandal, a decade after the abuse. Only then did she recognise the patterns of exploitation that had destroyed her adolescence.The terrifying thing is that the grooming hasn’t stopped. Jade recently learned that one of her perpetrators has been preying on teenagers in the town centre.

Maybe it shouldn’t come as a surprise, while her perpetrators have lived a normal life, she’s faced the shame and torment they deserved.

“I got put on a sex offenders register for five years, I had to fight for my children and to get social services off my case. Yet all of these abusers are out there with their kids and their family. Nothing is happening to them.”

A Thames Valley Police spokesperson said:“Thames Valley Police recognise the enduring trauma that victims and survivors of child sexual exploitation still experience today. We continue to investigate both non-recent and current group-based child sexual exploitation and bring offenders to justice for these horrific crimes.

“We are actively working to incorporate Baroness Casey’s findings and recommendations, and welcome the opportunity to work with partners, the Hydrant Programme, the NCA and the forthcoming national inquiry to continue to improve our response, seek justice for victims and protect our communities.

“We know that many victims and survivors will be reminded of the abuse they have endured, whether they have previously reported this to the police or not. You can speak to us in confidence; we will listen and take you seriously. It is never too late to come forward.”

Carl Jackson, Buckinghamshire Council’s Cabinet Member for Education & Children’s Services, said: “The experiences shared by Jade and others serve as a powerful reminder of the importance of continually reviewing and strengthening safeguarding practices. We recognise the courage it takes to speak out about deeply personal matters, and Buckinghamshire Council remains committed to learning, and ensuring that the wellbeing and safety of all children and young people in our community are always a top priority.

“Over the past 10-15 years, there have been significant national and local developments in the recognition and understanding of exploitation and safeguarding, including increased awareness of appropriate language and changes in legislative policies. In Buckinghamshire, as part of broader improvements in our practice, we established a Missing and Exploitation Hub in 2019. The Hub works across agencies to provide expertise, raise awareness of the signs of exploitation, gather intelligence, identify risks, and promote the early identification of vulnerable children so that they can receive appropriate support.

“We want to ensure that anyone affected by exploitation receives the support they need. To report concerns about abuse to Buckinghamshire Council, go to: Reporting abuse | Care Advice Buckinghamshire. If you believe there is an immediate risk of significant harm or if anyone is in immediate danger, always call the police on 999.”