13/02/2017 Inside Out West

Tonight, exploitation in Weston - teenagers speak out.

We had to make sure that we looked OK and we basically dressed

like prostitutes and stood on street corners -

We investigate the special offers which don't

And you won't believe what's under the hatch.

In the middle of somewhere very ordinary is something extraordinary

and I've been given the chance to explore it.

Most seaside towns have a seedier side, but here in Weston-Super-Mare

we've discovered something much more sinister - vulnerable teenagers

prone to sexual predators, and it's been happening right under

the noses of those who are supposed to be protecting them.

Weston-Super-Mare is known for its nightlife.

Some of it above board - and some of it not.

It's a magnet for vulnerable young people, and I've got evidence

This is Butterflys, a brothel right in the centre of town.

The council and police know about the brothel and were told

Why and how is a 15-year-old girl walking around town dressed

like a prostitute selling a load of leaflets for a lot of money?

They also knew about the violent sexual comments being posted

on the Facebook account of a council officer and about the predatory

behaviour of one man on the town's estates.

He went to put his hands down my trousers which is when I said,

So is enough being done to protect young people in Weston?

This area I'd say is quite known for drugs, a lot of, I'd say,

the Class A drugs are from around the Bourneville area.

When she was younger, she struggled with drugs.

With her boyfriend Callum, she showed me around

the Bourneville, an estate in Weston where she once lived.

They say it's not good to bring a kid up around here.

Her own upbringing wasn't easy - and at her most vulnerable she says

she and a friend handed out leaflets for Butterflys.

It's described as a massage parlour - but it's a brothel.

We'd had to make sure that we'd look OK and that we'd basically dress

like a load of prostitutes stood on a street corner -

Did Social Services know about you being there?

People were telling them that I was walking around dressed

like that handing out a load of leaflets in town

but they didn't have, they didn't do anything about it.

These aren't the leaflets but she says she even

used her own image on them and that she helped out inside.

I've cleaned quite a few rooms in there before and, like,

It's like, the way that it's all done it's like a show,

they're ready to show off their bodies.

A man would sit in a chair and all the women would walk

in in their underwear and he'd literally get to pick

You were seeing things that a 15-year-old shouldn't see.

I've seen a lot in my time, yeah, that I should have not seen.

I've been working for more than a year on this investigation,

which has taken us deep into Weston's underworld.

And I've discovered that for the last ten years,

the woman with the lease on the brothel is Natalie Davis.

Well, this is Butterflys' website - it's clearly more

There's Natalie's mobile number and it says, we aim to keep

Confidential minutes show Avon and Somerset Police

and North Somerset Council discussed Butterflys in 2015, and that

Working in a brothel is not illegal - but running one is.

The routine's the same as Amber described.

We were shown four women and asked about their ages.

At this point, we made our excuses and left.

But I wanted to talk to the woman we believe runs Butterflys.

You knew about a 15-year-old girl delivering leaflets there

who'd worked in the brothel cleaning as well.

At that time, when she came to us, we gave her both advice and very

strong support around how dangerous that was.

But your staff should have been aware?

My staff passed that information on to the police

in regards to an establishment that was a massage parlour

using a 15-year-old to distribute leaflets and the police took that

information and then did some checks and we have had no more referrals

through to us around young people frequenting that establishment.

But Butterflys seems to be part of a bigger picture about what

goes on under the radar in Weston - even within the council itself.

He worked as a clerk for the council.

We've seen sexually violent comments on his Facebook account

Well, this is one of the comments posted on Facebook.

That's about one of the only few I can read out.

At the time, Jellings had written a report

into child sexual exploitation following the Rotherham review.

We know they discussed the damage to their reputation,

They insist their main concern was safeguarding.

There was quite lengthy discussions with colleagues from the police

who asked us not to suspend him immediately cos that would allow him

But I mean, you could have suspended him anyway

and told the police, well, you print out

what is on Facebook now and secure your evidence.

But you let him carry on for months and then

We let him carry on in a role in which he had no access

to children and no access to confidential information

about children or indeed any broader confidential information.

There needed to be redundancies within democratic services

so it was an entirely legitimate, transparent process that was gone

through to arrive at him being made redundant.

Jellings denies all the allegations against him.

The police found no offences had been committed

There's a mix here of vulnerable people and predatory men.

None more well-known than Kevin Stokes.

Stokes' name was familiar to everyone I spoke to.

Police information - known to the council -

was that he was reported to be involved in 35 sexual offences.

I found one of his victims - a vulnerable teenager back then.

She met Stokes when she was 14 and moved in with him three years later.

He had this other 16-year-old girl in his bed so we both had to share

I just kind of froze with his hands under my top.

He went to put his hands down my trousers which is when I said,

He said, I'm having fun with your young body.

You reported this to social services, what did they do?

I said yes please, I got into the shower.

So when I did see the police and give DNA I had nothing to give

The case was dropped because of a lack of evidence.

I don't believe that people would think on the basis

of what that young woman told us initially that there was going to be

She was clearly OK to talk to police about what had happened.

Surely it would have been wiser to have just taken her

It was offered by the housing worker.

The young woman herself took that offer up.

At no point did the police come back to us and say,

how absurd, you have destroyed forensic evidence.

His name had come up repeatedly in council meetings

They'd investigated him twice before but didn't get the evidence.

Neither have they found evidence of underage girls

But remember Natalie, the woman we believe runs it?

Why you employing 15-year-old girls to work in your brothel?

Natalie has just closed both the curtains.

Clearly she doesn't want to talk to us about these very

The council say they're proactive on safeguarding and the welfare

of vulnerable children is a priority.

Police told us they take safeguarding seriously.

All allegations are assessed and they will always take

action when they have evidence of criminality.

Despite all the problems in Weston, Amber has turned her life around.

I think that we've all got to through hell and back to be

who we are today and I wouldn't be the person I am today with the stuff

But what about all the other troubled teenagers in Weston?

I've just not got to feel terrified of the closed space.

Jonathan Gibson's been investigating Tesco,

Britain's biggest supermarket, where some special offers aren't

Most of us are, and Tesco knows it, too.

That's why the shelves at Britain's biggest supermarket

And we all take it for granted that the price we see on the shelf

is the price we will pay at the till, right?

But what if things don't quite add up when you get home

I've just bought a few bits at Tesco and I'm sure these products

According to my receipt, I've paid full price.

I've paid 60% more than the deal on the shelf.

At another Tesco store, I spot two for ?2 on ice cream.

But, at the till, it's the full price, as well.

Martin works for Trading Standards and says the law

They must put a price on goods so you know what you're going to pay

and that price must be accurate, so you don't get charged

more than you thought you were going to pay.

Sounds simple enough, and, with more than 3500 stores nationwide,

That's what I want to find out, so I'm using my phone and some

secret cameras to see how many offers on the shelves don't

It's now the middle of January but when the assistant

And at the other end of the aisle, another mistake.

Multi-buy deals are being left on the shelves after the tills have

been told they ended, and these ended weeks ago.

But three weeks after they should have been removed,

they are still on display, and at this store in Gloucester

I find another one that's even older.

That's a month out of date and it's not just

At this Tesco Express back in Bristol, the shelf says this

cheese is on offer but it's not according to the till.

It's another pricing error workers haven't spotted

I checked the lot in just a few minutes, so why hasn't Tesco?

I've started making a list of how many offers are wrong in how many

places, but is what's happening in Bristol and Gloucester also

Because if it is, it's not just a problem for Tesco

At this Tesco store in Liverpool, sauce marked ?1 on the shelf

And as I head across the country, the same thing keeps happening

It doesn't seem a terribly difficult or perhaps that long a job to

walk around the store, assuming everyone knows what day it is,

to go around and tear off anything that has had its day.

And it's not just shoppers left confused as old and new promotions

The longer the offer has been wrong, the bigger the failure of diligence

Then he's not going to like what's coming up next.

At this store the cashier checks the out of date label

but doesn't remove it, and when I return the next day,

neither does someone else, so a week later I go back and it

is still on display, and when I returned a month later,

The fourth worker finally removes it.

It's pretty basic that if one customer has shown something wrong

then it's put right to stop other customers being misled.

But at 33 of the 50 stores I went to, the till price was more

If Customer A has come back and complained and been refunded,

that doesn't mean there weren't 20 other customers who didn't spot it.

There were obviously major problems with their control of special offers

and it's the special offers that bring people in and make people

perhaps spend more than they meant to when they came in,

The company wouldn't provide anyone for interview

but after reviewing our evidence told this programme...

Following our investigation, Britain's biggest supermarket has

said it will be double checking the accuracy of

That's more than 3500 stores across Britain.

I mean, you'd never find me in a red suit, rubber gloves

A group of intrepid explorers is about to descend deep underground

Ahead lie tight squeezes, bruising crawls and total darkness.

But we're not in some far-flung location -

No, this adventure begins on the side of a road in Southmead.

That's my last chance for a wee gone.

My guides are Linda and Chris and they're taking us to what looks

like an unremarkable manhole in the woods.

In fact, it's the entrance to a natural wonder -

Pen Park Hole, a cave so extraordinary

it's just been declared a Site of Special Scientific Interest

And there's a bit of a knack for getting in it.

Laura, down like I am, then on your tummy.

OK, Laura, if you could come down, your left leg sideways.

Now is not a time to forget which leg is what.

Cameras and lights prefer to be clean and dry -

It would be nice to get the shot from the other side.

We've only come about 20 metres into the cave

Laura, you're coming into the first chamber of the cave now.

People coming into the cave had to mine through that bit.

You can see evidence on the wall where people drilled and blasted

In the middle of the 1800s people were coming here looking for lead

and they found this enormous layer of crystal, about a foot thick.

If you look on top the crystals look brown,

and called dogtooth crystals, and when they were broken off

by the miners, that is when you see this white crystalline effect.

The miners weren't the first people down here -

the world's first published cave survey was done here in the 1600s.

That survey didn't include the resident wildlife.

In this tiny pool lives a recently discovered creature -

They are called Niphargus kochianus and they are really important,

they are not normally found in large underground lakes

They are very small, about two or three millimetres long

and they arrived here, we believe, through

They feed on whatever they can find, they're omnivorous.

You notice on the surface there are a few flies

It was a tight squeeze to get this far, but that was nothing compared

Your feet are about six inches off the floor.

I've just got to not feel terrified of the enclosed space.

This is where we've got the later stalactites,

so this is a lot younger than the rest of the crystals.

The squeezing and crawling are worth it.

I feel like we're getting to a bigger bit.

It feels like you're coming into a bigger space.

My goodness, after coming through this tiny rocky bit,

now to be like this feels so much better.

Even though we're further underground so I should be more

scared, it actually feels better simply because the

rocks aren't quite so close to my face.

Yes, this is what we have done it all for.

This is the immense cave, this is what we have come to see.

Down there from top to bottom you have a chamber

Up there is where the first entrance to the cave was,

so people would have come down that slope on a rope with candles.

It's hard to believe where we're standing is only about 25 metres

At the bottom of this huge chamber is a lake whose level rises

and falls by as much as 25 metres - and no one really knows why.

The only way I'll see it is to lean out over the edge.

I can tell because there are ripples on the edge of the lake

at the bottom and that water is a long way down.

More shrimps live down there - but they're not the only reason

In terms of what makes it an SSSI, what really excites you?

It's the best-known hydrothermal cave in the UK,

so hydrothermal caves, quite different from most other caves,

it's formed by hot water rising up from beneath rather than cold water

descending and that is what created the amazing cavern we are in now.

You've told me it's quite safe but have there ever been any

Around 1775 a chap called Reverend Newman came out

here with his girlfriend and a friend one afternoon for a picnic.

flung his arms around a branch over the hole to swing out

and see what was down the hole, the branch broke.

And so Reverend Newman plummeted to his doom,

The day before his accident, he preached a sermon

in which he said that sinners will be cast down into

This is as far as we go - time now to retrace our steps,

our scrambles and our crawls back to the entrance 100 metres away.

When the cave was formed some 200 million years ago,

I'd have been emerging into a world ruled by dinosaurs.

Instead it's into a welcome breath of fresh air.

I have totally lost any sense of time.

I can hardly believe it still daylight.

It feels like we have been down there for ever.

The mud and the bruises are worth it for the privilege of being one

of the few people ever to have explored Pen Park Hole

and thanks to being made a SSSI, the cave is protected -

and the Pen Park prawns can have their dinner in peace.

Don't forget there is much more on Facebook and Twitter.

We're taking a break next week but we are back with you on the 27th of

February at the same time. Hello, I'm Alex Bushill

with your 90 second update. Drug abuse, violence

and faulty alarms. Just some of the major

security failings a BBC investigation has uncovered

at a Northumberland prison. Stay tuned for Panorama

after Eastenders. Well, new research shows pensioner

households are, on average, ?20 a week better off

than those of working age.