‘Evil’ internet trolls taunt Charlene’s devastated mother

Web abuse means 11-year anguish goes on.

A distraught mum has blasted “evil” internet trolls who targeted her on a website set up in memory of her murdered daughter.

Charlene Downes was just 14 when she vanished after being groomed by a child sex gang in Blackpool in 2003. Though her body has never been found, she is believed to have been murdered.

Now her mum, Karen, 48, has revealed how a page on an internet site dedicated to Charlene has been bombarded by sickening messages.

They include claims that Karen and husband Rob, 52, were partly responsible for their daughter’s death.

Karen said: “There are a lot of evil people, saddos and weirdos on Facebook making up all kinds of filth. It is all hearsay and lies.

“I’ve had people threatening to come round to my house and beat me up. I informed the police.

“It is bad enough Charlene is not around without people making up this disgusting stuff.

“They won’t come and say it to your face, so they say it over the internet and I just want it to stop. Charlene will never be forgotten, but we need closure.”

Karen said messages were left on the social networking site accusing her and her husband of allowing Charlene to be abused, claims they have always denied.

It is the first time she has spoken out since cold-case detectives from Lancashire police re-opened the case in November, ten years after Charlene disappeared.

Detectives said Charlene may have been abused by up to 100 men.

At the time she vanished, the teenager was believed to have been one of a group of girls being groomed for sex with cash, gifts and booze.

In 2007, two Blackpool takeaway shop owners were charged with Charlene’s murder. Prosecutors claimed, based on secret recordings, that her body was chopped into bits and used for kebabs.

However, the first jury failed to reach a verdict.

A retrial was scrapped and the men cleared because witnesses and the police’s recorded evidence were unreliable.

The defendants, business partners Iyad Albattikhi and Mohammed Reveshi, later received six-figure compensation payouts for false imprisonment.

Karen had hoped to launch a civil prosecution against them.

But she said: “The cost of a solicitor will be about £6,000 to start with. I haven’t got that kind of money. I’m upset and devastated, but what can I say. I’ve just got to live with it.”

She also hit out at the police, saying the family has had little support, a claim they have denied.

Karen said: “Since the case collapsed in 2008, all the police have done is fobbed me off and gone through the same things over and over again.

“They said the case had been re-opened in November but then they said it has never been closed. It can’t be both.

“I’m so mad. I do not have any faith in the police at all. I just hope and pray the police help us but they just don’t seem to want to know.”

A spokesman for Lancashire Police said cold-case detectives met the Downes family on February 18 and said a family liaison officer had been in contact as recently as last week.

She said: “We are not discussing any new lines of inquiry at this stage.”