Report claims
police and council agencies failed victims, some of whom were threatened with
guns and gang-raped
theguardian.com,
Press Association, Tuesday 26 August 2014
About 1,400 children were sexually exploited in Rotherham over a 16-year period, according to a report that concluded "it is hard to describe the appalling nature of the abuse that child victims suffered".
 |
| The report said around 1,400 child victims had been systematically failed by police and agencies in Rotherham. Photograph: Alfonso Cacciola/Getty Images |
About 1,400 children were sexually exploited in Rotherham over a 16-year period, according to a report that concluded "it is hard to describe the appalling nature of the abuse that child victims suffered".
The uncompromising report on events in the South Yorkshire town between 1997 and
2013 said in more than a third of these cases the youngsters were already known
to child protection agencies.
Warning
also of "blatant" collective failures by the council's leadership,
the report by Professor Alexis Jay prompted the resignation of the council's
Labour leader.
Roger
Stone, the leader, said: "Having considered the report, I believe it is
only right that I, as leader, take responsibility on behalf of the council for
the historic failings that are described so clearly in the report and it is my
intention to do so.
"For
this reason, I have today agreed with my Labour group colleagues that I will be
stepping down as leader with immediate effect."
Despite
Stone's resignation, chief executive Martin Kimber said no council officers
will face disciplinary action.
Jay said
she found examples of "children who had been doused in petrol and
threatened with being set alight, threatened with guns, made to witness violent
rapes and threatened they would be next if they told anyone".
Jay said:
"They were raped by multiple perpetrators, trafficked to other towns and
cities in the north of England, abducted, beaten and intimidated." She
said she found girls as young as 11 had been raped by large numbers of men.
The report
said failures of the political and officer leadership of Rotherham council over
the first 12 years she looked at were blatant, as the seriousness of the
problem was underplayed by senior managers and was not seen as a priority by
South Yorkshire police. Jay said police "regarded many child victims with
contempt".
These
failures occured despite three reports between 2002 and 2006 "which could
not have been clearer in the description of the situation in Rotherham".
She said
the first of these reports was "effectively suppressed" because
senior officers did not believe the data. The other two were ignored, she
added.
The report
said: "By far the majority of perpetrators were described as Asian by
victims." But, she said, councillors seemed to think is was a one-off
problem they hoped would go away and "several staff described their
nervousness about identifying the ethnic origins of perpetrators for fear of
being thought racist".
She added:
"Others remembered clear direction from their managers not to do so."
The
spotlight first fell on Rotherham in 2010 when five men, described by a judge
as sexual predators, were given lengthy jail terms after they were found guilty
of grooming teenage girls for sex. The prosecution was the first of a series of
high-profile cases in the past four years that have revealed the exploitation
of young girls in towns and cities including Rochdale, Derby and Oxford.
Following
the 2010 case, the Times claimed that details from 200 restricted-access
documents showed how police and child protection agencies in the South
Yorkshire town had extensive knowledge of these activities for a decade, yet a
string of offences went unprosecuted.
The
allegations led to a range of official investigations, including one by the
home affairs select committee.
Last year,
the South Yorkshire police and crime commissioner, Shaun Wright, said there had
been "a failure of management" at South Yorkshire police as he
responded to a report into the force on this issue by Her Majesty's
Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC).
The report
concluded: "No one knows the true scale of the child sexual exploitation
(CSE) in Rotherham over the years. Our conservative estimate is that approximately
1,400 children were sexually exploited over the full inquiry period, from 1997
to 2013."
In
response, Rotherham council, which commissioned the report, said it accepted
the findings, including the statement that failures "almost without
exception" were attributed to senior managers in child protection
services, elected councillors and senior police officers.
It accepted
that failures were not down to "frontline social or youth workers who are
acknowledged in the report as repeatedly raising serious concerns about the
nature and extent of this kind of child abuse".
The
council's chief executive, Kimber, said: "The report does not make
comfortable reading in its account of the horrific experiences of some young
people in the past and I would like to reiterate our sincere apology to those
who were let down when they needed help."
"The
report confirms that our services have improved significantly over the last
five years and are stronger today than ever before.
"This
is important because it allows me to reassure young people and families that,
should anyone raise concerns, we will take them seriously and provide them with
the support they need.
"However,
that must not overshadow – and certainly does not excuse – the finding that for
a significant amount of time the council and its partners could and should have
done more to protect young people from what must be one of the most horrific
forms of abuse imaginable."
Related Article:
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.