Racketeering Mk2 -Unregistered agencies making millions from children’s misery.

On July 24, I published a blog titled “Racketeering = Refuge UK + Brent Council/Women’s Aid + Brent and Kilburn Times.”

I ask readers to remember what I wrote regarding the vast unaccountable, secretive anti dad and child domestic violence industry.

The Times, on Saturday July 11, reported that a significant number of unregistered children’s care homes are charging taxpayers as much as £28,000 per week for a single child.

For some perspective, a quick online search suggests that the average warehouse worker in the UK earns just over £21,000 a year.

Brent Council, BDVAP and accountability

In Brent, neither the Metropolitan Police nor Brent Council have any control over the council's own domestic-violence agency, the Brent Domestic Violence Advocacy Project (BDVAP), which is associated with Women's Aid.

There is a lack of transparency when seeking information relating to BDVAP. Brent Council has refused to release, in response to my Subject Access Request, information regarding their secretive processing of me, who was falsely accused.

UK government guidance, through the Information Commissioner's Office, sets out the obligations surrounding Subject Access Requests. The relevant procedures explain that organisations must comply with the requirements of the Data Protection Act 2018 and the UK General Data Protection Regulation when responding to requests for personal data.

So much for compliance with the law, where Brent Council and Women's Aid are concerned.

The children’s care “shadow market”

And now we have another deeply disturbing issue: the vast profiteering from vulnerable children's circumstances by private providers operating within an increasingly expensive care market.

According to the Times investigation published on July 11:

• Essex County Council paid a children's care provider as much as £28,000 per week for 1 child — equivalent to approximately £1.4 million a year.

• West Sussex Council, according to Freedom of Information disclosures, paid more than £26,000 per week for one child.

• Stoke-on-Trent councils reportedly paid more than £23,000 a week for their most expensive children's placements.

• Some of the properties involved were reportedly unregistered or had been judged by authorities to be failing.

Sir Martin Oliver, the head of Ofsted, referred in his annual report to a “shadow market” involving unregistered children's homes charging exorbitant fees.

The predictable response from politicians is cheap vacuous condemnation

What matters is whether governments actually have the willpower to protect vulnerable children.

Who exactly is making these profits?

Let us look at some of the providers mentioned in The Times investigation.

One example was Atlas Children's Homes in Essex, which had reportedly been rated “Good” by Ofsted. The Times article raised questions about the business interests and wealth including one director who reportedly owns other businesses supplying staff to the NHS costing millions and wears a £100,000 Patek Philippe watch!

The article also reported plans to convert a three-bedroom property for use by vulnerable children, with the property reportedly occupied by the director's mother.

Another provider mentioned was Aqua Children's Home Limited, which reportedly charged Essex County Council £987,220 a year for one child.

The article reported concerns from staff about children returning to homes in Northern England intoxicated and without inadequate boundaries being established or enforced.

I am deliberately not reproducing the names of individuals from the Times article here. The Times has the resources to defend itself against expensive litigation. I don't. I wear a £20 watch.

Have we learned anything from Rotherham?

On May 2, 2025, I wrote about what I regarded as the Labour government's failure to adequately confront the lessons of child sexual exploitation scandals.

The report by Professor Alexis Jay into Rotherham criticised the council for failing to protect victims and the scale of the grooming that had occurred before 2014.

Professor Jay described the abuse as appalling. Children had been raped by multiple perpetrators, trafficked to other towns and cities, abducted and beaten.

Some were doused in petrol and threatened with being set alight. Others were threatened with guns, forced to witness horrific sexual violence and warned that they would be next if they spoke out.

In more than a third of cases, the victims had previously been known to social services because of child-protection or neglect concerns.

These were children whose lives were destroyed, and they were largely ignored.

Where is the accountability?

In July 2026, the Times investigation provides yet another reason to question whether governments have learned the lessons of previous failures.

My concern is that we have created a system in which vulnerable children can be passed from social services to private providers, sometimes involving extremely expensive placements, while responsibility becomes fragmented between councils, regulators, agencies and contractors.

At the same time, we are constantly lectured by politicians and media commentators about the dangers children face from social-media platforms such as Facebook and X.

Politicians — particularly Labour and Liberal Democrat female MPs — regularly express concern about boys allegedly being influenced by figures such as Andrew Tate.

I have increasingly come to the conclusion that many politicians and so-called experts who lecture the public about child safety are refusing to confront some of the most serious forms of exploitation occurring within the very systems established to protect children.

The same applies to the domestic-violence industry. I have repeatedly argued that parts of that sector operate with inadequate or zero transparency and accountability, while public money is distributed to organisations whose practices are rarely subjected to the level of scrutiny one might reasonably expect.

And ultimately, the question should be simple:

Who is the system actually protecting — the child, or the professionals and organisations whose livelihoods depend upon the system?

In 2014, after I gave evidence to the European Parliament's Petitions Committee concerning its consideration of “Systemic Failings in the UK Family Court System,” an Austrian female MEP, Angelika Werthmann, told me:

“It is clear that, in the UK, ‘the welfare of the child’ has become a convenient phrase for protecting the welfare of professionals within the system.”

Those words have stayed with me.

Rest in peace, Angelika Werthmann.