FORTY-NINE children have been identified as being at risk of sexual exploitation in North Yorkshire, figures have shown.

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

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

North Yorkshire and Northumbria refused to give details to The Press’s sister paper, the Northern Echo, on the grounds it would take them too long to compile the information.

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.

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.