THE region's police were at the centre of a child abuse reporting row last night after a Northern Echo investigation revealed almost 400 youngsters are feared to be at risk of being groomed for sex.

Freedom of Information (FOI) requests sent by The Northern Echo to every local authority in the North-East showed that there are 384 known vulnerable youngsters under 16.

Last night one mother, whose child was targeted by a sexual predator, said she feared this was just the "tip of the iceberg".

The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, also slammed the region’s four police forces for refusing to disclose their child exploitation figures, despite them all introducing computer markers from 2013 onwards to highlight grooming.

She said: “I think 384 children is a lot, but that’s just the ones they are aware of, so it’s scary to think about what the actual number is, I bet this is just the tip of the iceberg."

Now 16, her daughter was abused by Middlesbrough taxi driver Shakil Munir, one of three men convicted at Teesside Crown Court of grooming girls as young as 13 and exploiting them for sex.

Munir, a married father, was sentenced to eight years in prison last February for sexual activity with two schoolgirls and child abduction.

Although local authorities provided figures for at risk children, the region's police forces turned down a similar request.

The Northern Echo asked police in County Durham, Northumbria and North Yorkshire how many children had been flagged up as 'at risk' of sexual exploitation during criminal investigations.

Northumbria and North Yorkshire refused to give details on the grounds it would take them too long to compile the information.

As a ‘gesture of goodwill’ Durham Constabulary revealed that 36 incidents of child sexual exploitation (CSE) had been logged since January 1 and February 19 this year.

When Cleveland Police was asked about how many people had been charged and convicted of CSE over the past three years the FOI was refused on the grounds that the force did not individually flag CSE crimes.

The refusal to disclose the data has led to concerns that the region's police are not taking the issue seriously, despite the Rotherham and Rochdale child abuse scandals which both revealed a number of policing failures.

“I don’t understand how police forces can say they are taking the issues seriously when they don’t have the figures,” the concerned mother asked.

“How can they know if they are tackling the problem or if it’s getting much worse? I think that’s shocking, it’s disgusting, especially after the scandals in Rotherham and Manchester.”

Last year, children’s charity Barnardo’s worked with 178 sexually exploited boys and girls children in the North-East, more than triple the number it helped in 2010, with some victims as young as 11 years old.

Steve Oversby, Director for Barnardo’s in the North-East, said: “Barnardo’s has been working to tackle the devastating impact of child sexual exploitation for two decades.

"The scale of this abuse is shocking – with more and more incidences of child sexual exploitation coming to light.

“Every day, more sexually exploited children are referred to us. Girls and boys from all walks of life can become victims of child sexual exploitation and the numbers are growing.”

Detective Superintendent Alistair Simpson said that from last April Cleveland Police had been flagging CSE on incidents reported to the police.

“Crimes are still recorded through the recognised Home Office Crime Recording categories, and CSE could include a variety of different crime categories,” he said.