On the evening of 18th March 2015 the NWG held their second annual Unsung Heroes Awards where the Lifetime Achievement Award was awarded to Professor Jenny Pearce OBE.

I met Jenny in 2004 at an NWG event, having been put in touch with her by Sue Jago, who then worked at the Home Office looking at the issue of child sexual exploitation. I know Jenny began working on this subject back in the 1990’s with publications highlighting the issues in 1999 with the “Selling Sex., Doing Drugs and Keeping Safe’ Report. The list of her engagement with this subject matter is endless and when I was researching Jenny’s work for tonight I knew she had done a lot but had not realised quite how much until I needed to put this speech together.

Jenny became Co-Founder and part of the management group for the National Working Group for Sexually Exploited Children and Young People (now known as the NWG) from 1998 -2011 and was the chair of the group from 2000 to 2009. Jenny was also the Chair of the Child Trafficking Information Sharing Forum -UK Home Office 2008 – 2011. Today she is the Director of The International Centre Bedfordshire- researching child sexual , violence and trafficking. Jenny also works with Eurochild and The Council of Europe ‘One in Five ‘ Campaign.

Jenny received an OBE for her work on safeguarding vulnerable children in 2013 and the Queens Anniversary prize for pioneering applied research in child sexual exploitation influencing new safeguarding  policy and practice;awarded to the University of Bedfordshire (The International Centre: researching child sexual , violence and trafficking). Her research work has stayed very close to practice and young people’s voices and needs. She pioneered creative methods in enabling victims to tell their stories. And tonight it gives me great pleasure to ask Jenny to accept this award as a token of our gratitude in helping us all to understand child sexual exploitation and trafficking and to improve our responses to young people.

(taken from the award speech  by Sheila Taylor MBE CEO NWG Network )