A new report concluded on Tuesday that about 1,400 children were sexually exploited in one northern England town — a damning account of the collective failure by authorities to prevent children as young as 11 from being beaten, raped and trafficked.
Report author Alexis Jay, a former chief social work adviser to the Scottish government, cited appalling acts of violence between 1997 and 2013 in Rotherham, a town of about 250,000 people. The independent report came after a series of convictions of sex offenders in the region and ground-breaking reports in The Times of London that prompted the local council to launch an inquiry.
“The collective failures of political and officer leadership were blatant,” Jay said. “From the beginning, there was growing evidence that child sexual exploitation was a serious problem in Rotherham.”
Attention first fell on the town in 2010 when five men received lengthy jail terms after convictions of grooming teens for sex.
Later, investigations began into why authorities failed to act even after frontline social workers suggested things were amiss.
Police “regarded many child victims with contempt,” Jay said, adding that the first report that described the situation in Rotherham was “effectively suppressed” because senior officers did not believe the data.
Even more damning was the fact that victims described the perpetrators as “Asian” and yet the council failed to engage with the town’s Pakistani community.
“Some councilors seemed to think it was a one-off problem, which they hoped would go away,” Jay said.
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