The Lancashire Evening Telegraph's exclusive investigation into children being groomed into sexual exploitation has sent shock waves through the community.

We met with four members of Blackburn with Darwen's Youth Forum to discuss the issue and our campaign to help vulnerable young girls.

YOUNG people are willing to talk about young girls being groomed for sexual exploitation because they have first hand experience of the problem.

One 16-year-old member of the Youth Forum, a group set up to give young people a voice, said he knew girls who had been groomed into sexual exploitation and another member aged, 17, had herself been targeted by gangs of older predatory Asian men.

Because of this their parents and youth workers have asked for their identities to be protected.

And a Muslim member of the forum said he did not feel Islamic leaders were doing enough to combat the problem and that relying on mosques to get the message across would not work.

A white 16-year-old Blackburn boy said: "Girls that I know have been approached by gangs of men in places like Corporation Park so when I read about this in the paper I wasn't surprised.

"What I read was shocking in the things that have happened to these girls but I wasn't surprised that it was going on."

The 17-year-old girl said she had been approached several times and knew that girls who were more vulnerable and less confident than her had fallen into these circles.

She said: "I have got self-respect for myself and knew just to say no, but some girls are really young and vulnerable.

"You can see it yourself when they walk down the street that they would be easy targets.

"Some people, because of their background or because of the way that they look, don't have any self-esteem and you can see that in the way that they carry themselves."

The members of the Youth Forum, whose members range between the ages of 13-19, said they were angry that grooming was going on in East Lancashire.

They all said they now expected people in power to put measures in place to stop more of their peer group being victimised.

All agreed that awareness and education of the danger of grooming must be improved but were unsure how to reach all sections of society.

An 18-year-old Muslim said: "Community leaders have said they will take this message into the mosques, but some mosques only have Friday prayers in Arabic or Urdu not English.

"A lot of young Muslims like me do not always understand what is being said unless it is English, so that is not good enough.

"I don't expect that the men who do this would go to the mosque anyway as they would feel too guilty to enter.

"We need to look at how to raise awareness through the community as a whole so the message reaches everyone."

He added that as a young Muslim man he was fearful that because of the actions of these men all Muslims would be targeted by white bigots. He added: "This again is a small minority putting the majority to shame.

"First it was terrorism and now it is grooming and as a young Asian man just starting out in life I find that quite scary.

"I do not want to feel segregated from society because of these men's actions. Most Asian men are trying to integrate into Western society and are trying to find their own identity."

The Youth Forum has met to discuss the issue of grooming in response to the Lancashire Evening Telegraph's investigation.

They were told that the average age of the offenders who abuse girls between the ages of 12 and 16 for sex is 24.

And although they said it was impossible to explain why a grown man would groom a vulnerable girl into sexual exploitation they could see why it was predominantly white girls who were being targeted by Asian men.

Another 16-year-old white girl said: "Because of the difference in cultures you will never see groups of young Asian girls hanging out at the weekend.

"On a Friday night you will see groups of white girls though.

"Something needs to be done to open their eyes to these dangers."

The white 16-year-old boy said the Youth Forum thought that society should deal with the problem head-on and, as well as getting more police resources to target offenders, an education programme should be run in schools.

He said: "We all agree that once caught these men should be named and shamed.

"The Telegraph should put a big picture of them on the front page to show them up for what they are.

"We think there should be more police patrolling these known meeting places.

"We would feel safer if we could see more police on the streets.

"It scares me that there are only two dedicated officers dealing with this problem at the moment."

The second 16-year-old white girl said: "I think the Telegraph campaign is good. There should also be a poster campaign run in schools and teachers should be specially trained to identify girls who might be going down this path."