Cutting Edge

Breaking a Female Paedophile Ring (2011x4)

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Colin Blanchard, Vanessa George, Angela Allen, Tracy Lyons and Tracey Dawber provoked widespread revulsion and made international headlines after their sexual offences against children came to light in 2009. With unique access to the police investigation, Cutting Edge is the first film to take an in-depth forensic look at this criminal web, detailing how it operated, and what motivated the five people within it. This carefully crafted, sensitive and revealing documentary uses police interviews with the offenders, and first-hand testimonies from family members of the offenders and the parents of a possible victim. Chilling unseen police evidence from a multi-force inquiry is pieced together in an attempt to understand how Colin Blanchard persuaded four women - all mothers - to abuse children. The film also reveals the painstaking police investigations in Manchester, Liverpool, Nottingham, Plymouth and Portsmouth that led to five arrests and subsequent successful convictions. To understand the emotional and psychological fallout for those most intimately affected by the ring, the film-makers hear from the parents of a child who attended the Little Ted's Nursery in Plymouth, where Vanessa George worked. Unaware of the secret lives of their loved ones, the perpetrators' relatives also talk candidly about how the legacy of abuse continues to affect them. The husband of one of the offenders gives detailed insight into the trauma of betrayal. And in another powerful interview, a close relative of one of the female abusers - a young woman who has been forced into hiding - describes how she was driven from her home after the news was made public.