Sold in Secret

By: Karen Downes

Narrated by: Lucy Brownhill

1st November 2003 started so unremarkably that I would later look back and wish I could have appreciated the normality of it. Because I would never, ever know peace again.

No body. No convictions. No answers.

Charlene Downes was 14 years old when she went missing in the seedy underbelly of Blackpool. Once a happy-go-lucky schoolgirl, she had turned into a truant. Though Charlene was hanging out with a new crowd by takeaway shops and the pier, her mum, Karen, always knew her typical teenage daughter would come home.

But one day she didn't.

Sold in Secret is a heartbreaking story of a broken family and a 15-year campaign for justice. Arrests were made, a murder trial was had, but to this day Karen still has no answers to what happened to her daughter. The truth of exactly what happened to Charlene and why she disappeared remains undiscovered, with no police convictions - this is a raw, compelling account of every parent's worst nightmare.

©2018 Karen Downes (P)2018 Blink Publishing

Biased or Bullsh*t?

So I guess it’s pretty clear that this is going to be a biased account of what happened to Charlene Downes considering that it’s written by her mother, but come on. There is a difference between swinging the story your way and just straight up telling porkies.
If you’re curious about this family, there are reports from social services about Karen and her husband and children. Befriending sex offenders, domestic abuse, sexual abuse of minors, and prostitution somehow did not make it into this worthy tome. How odd.
And for clarity’s sake, Charlene Downes was not murdered and fed to the citizens of Blackpool in kebabs. That’s called a smokescreen, and it’s what guilty people use to divert suspicion away from themselves.

Why are you feeling guilty, Karen?