CAAGe Update, January 2026
We’re determined to offer up more information as we start working toward charity status. So, here we go…..
Counselling at CAAGe
Let’s start with the headline: we have a new improved counselling service.
Our counsellors have always been great, but I’ll be honest - I was bottlenecking the service, worried that I wasn’t undertaking the right checks, worried about mispractise and generally outside of my comfort zone. When I spotted a funky little start up, Wobble, which does the legwork of checking qualifications, professional memberships, and all of the legal bits and bobs, I contacted them.
They were beyond brilliant and have curated a group of checked out therapists just for us, all trauma informed.
Overnight, we have increased the number of therapists to almost 50, based all across the UK, all checked to a high professional standard, on a portal called CAAGe x Wobble.
This means CAAGe service users (or anyone who’s been groomed and needs counselling) can find the therapy/therapist that’s right for them.
It’s so important to get the right therapist - the wrong one can be worse than none at all. This is cause for celebration.
And even better, ahead of publishing our report into the harm adult grooming does, two of the ‘new’ counsellors offered some advice articles:
Bridging the Gap: Shame, Trauma, and the Work of Reconnection by Kay Parkinson;
Understanding Self-Harm: How Emotional Distress and Grooming Intersect – and How to Find Support by Edward Holloway
I can’t thank them enough!
Collated Research
We are constantly collating data on adult grooming. You can see some of the latest data at the bottom of the CAAGe research into adult grooming page.
On that page you can also download our report into the consequences of adult grooming.
It makes tough reading, but confirms exactly why we needed to give some priority to expanding our counselling offering. When a huge 72% of grooming targets say that one of the consequences of their groomer’s behaviour was anxiety/panic attacks, but only 21% rate this in the three worst cosequences, we know things are bad!
But there are other surprising results. Groomers are far from the ‘Asian Grooming Gangs’ presented as the grooming demons by many. Sadly the truth is that the colour of skin, even gender, are not giveaways when identifying predators. Whilst it would be lovely to have some warning sign, appearance won’t help. Groomers pretty much follow the breakdown of the population.
Similarly if you’ve been groomed, you’re normal too - again, groomer’s targets can be just about anyone. The signs are way more subtle than appearance.
Media Resource now available
We have also created a resource for journalists, bloggers, vloggers etc, detailing some of the information we’re putting into the public domain.
It’s far from perfect, but we’re all volunteers with full time jobs here! You can take a look here: CAAGe media resources.
Over the coming weeks we’ll establish a way for the media to get information streamed to them directly.
Fundraising Has Started
It’s been a while coming, but we finally managed to get a bank account open. This should have been easy but was anything but, especially as we wanted to link donations via the website.
So hear it is, our donations page: Donations to keep things going!
We’ve only just got things going properly. After a struggle to get the bank account open (we have no official status yet) we faced the challenges of linking it to our website, so donations amounting to 10 whole pounds sat at the back of the website rather than in our account.
Much kudos goes to Peter Harris, a DJ at Kennet Radio, who went out of his way to help us with the bureaucracy of it all.
(This is the hidden work and frustration behind keeping things going! We’d love book-keeping/admin volunteers, just contact us!!)
Then came the bombshell - before we even really got going, our free (Metro) bank account is no longer free! It’s only three pounds a month in fairness but that’s almost fourty pounds annually that our volunteers will have to find out of their own money just to have the luxury of a bank account. To keep things clean/above board, we want everything as transparent as possible, so it’s something we’ve had to do.
Take off the charge that the website charge (75p) and collecting that ten pounds has cost us dear.
Never mind - CAAGe has a long way to go to make the 5,000 needed to get us to charity status, but we’re determined - watch this space. (Fundraising volunteers also welcome!)
We’ll tally all volunteers expenses for next month for the sake of transparency, but that’s the serious stuff - the fun bit is down to you! Could you do something fun to raise the money to keep us going an expand our services? A cake sale? A fun run? A dare to run around town dressed as a chicken? How about a pancake eating competition? C’mon - let’s have some fun with this!
The Epstein Case
We’ve obviously been following and affected by the Epstein trafficking ring news that reaches us daily.
Keep your eyes peeled on our reviews page as we’ve been looking at the victim’s first hand accounts. What emerges is far more than a paedophile ring - this was calculated use of anyone who fell into the paths of Maxwell and Epstein. Some were used as toys, but the rich and powerful have also been used and manipulated to create a glamorous backdrop, often made shamefully complicit in the whole, sordid World that they created.
The obvious account is Nobody’s Girl, Virginia Giuffre’s recall of her trafficking by Epstein and the privileged people who viewed her simply as an object for their amusement. Also very worth reading is Sarah Ransome’s chilling account of Maxwell and Epstein’s cruelty, Silenced No More. Ransome is the ultimate challenge to the ‘paedophile ring’ rhetoric - she was 21 when she was recruited. And another worthwhile listen is the Chasing Ghislaine podcast.
There’s more to come, just not yet written up!
However, we cannot leave some things left unsaid:
why does it need copy emails and additional ‘proof’ to believe what more than 250 women have testified to? We are talking about a man and woman already convicted;
victim blaming around grooming is often bad, but in this case, it’s horrendous;
Maxwell may deserve our pity for her upbringing, but she absolutely deserves her place behind bars. Yes, she may be the only one currently brought to justice, and it hurts that the only one brought to justice - in a case where huge numbers of young women and girls were used by privileged men - seems to be a woman. But she was absolutely guilty. Epstein covered for her in his first trial, striking a ridiculous ‘Sweetheart’ deal with Acosta, but he was found guilty and did ‘do time’, albeit not in any genuinely limiting or punitive way. Others appear to have paid with their lives. This case is littered with dead bodies/suicides. We all need to push for the truth.
Statistically
That’s a grim way to end our January 2026 report. So, in the interests of transparency, here’s some of our other stats:
Our website
We had around a thousand NEW visitors to our website each week in January. This is down 2% on last year, despite lots of new content and hard work. So one of our priorities for 2026 is to be more public so that people can access resources/find help more easily.
BUT! Those who do find us are finding more on the site to keep them there (So presumably of more use to them.)
We dealt with 35 web contacts and around six new case calls each week in January.
Current workload - caller support activity
Our current ongoing support activity included/includes
handholding and reassurance through a legal review;
a marriage fraud;
a shocking case of sexual grooming - in ways we’d not encountered before;
a bar owner using his ownership status to use young women - and probably also involved in local corruption;
We have included this to offer an idea of the range of support we’re offering, despite our very limited resources. If you’ve ever considered volunteering, donating,holding a fundraiser….. now’s your moment to shine!
Thanks for reading this far!
Claire
