Rotherham
child sexual exploitation scandal
The
Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal consists of the organised child
sexual abuse of girls that occurred in the town of Rotherham, South Yorkshire,
Northern England, from the late 1980s until 2013[9] and the failure of local
authorities to act on reports of the abuse throughout most of that period.
Researcher Angie Heal, who was hired by local officials and warned them about
child exploitation occurring between 2002 and 2007, has since described it as
the "biggest child protection scandal in UK history",with one report
estimating that 1,400 girls, primarily from care home backgrounds, were abused
by "grooming gangs" between 1997 and 2013.[9] Evidence of the abuse
was first noted in the early 1990s, when care home managers investigated
reports that children in their care were being picked up by taxi drivers. From
at least 2001, multiple reports passed names of alleged perpetrators, several
from one family, to the police and Rotherham Council. The first group
conviction took place in 2010, when five British-Pakistani men were convicted
of sexual offences against girls aged 12–16.
From January
2011 onwards, Andrew Norfolk of The Times pressed the issue, reporting in 2012
that the abuse in the town was widespread and that the police and council had
known about it for over ten years.[a] The Times articles, along with the 2012
trial of the Rochdale child sex abuse ring, prompted the House of Commons Home
Affairs Committee to conduct hearings.[ Following this and further articles
from Norfolk, Rotherham Council commissioned an independent inquiry led by
Alexis Jay. In August 2014 the Jay report concluded that an estimated 1,400
children had been
sexually abused in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013, predominantly by
British-Pakistani men.
The victims
were white, but British Asian girls in Rotherham were also suffering from
different types of sexual harassment and molestation. Social isolation and fear
of dishonour may have prevented Asian victims from coming forward.
A care
worker, who worked at children's homes from 2003 to 2007, told the BBC that men
would arrive almost "every night" to collect girls, who escaped using
a range of methods and were then usually driven off in taxis. The abuse
included gang rape, forcing children to watch rape, dousing them with petrol
and threatening to set them on fire, threatening to rape their mothers and
younger sisters, as well as trafficking them to other towns There were
pregnancies (one at age 12), pregnancy terminations, miscarriages, babies
raised by their mothers, in addition to babies removed, causing further trauma.
The failure
to address the abuse was attributed to a combination of factors revolving
around race, class, religion and gender—fear that the perpetrators' ethnicity
would trigger allegations of racism; contemptuous and sexist attitudes toward
the mostly working-class victims; lack of a child-centred focus; a desire to
protect the town's reputation; and lack of training and resources
A survivor
of the Rotherham Grooming Gang Scandal, Ella Hill, described the serious racial
abuse she faced by her attackers: "As a teenager, I was taken to various
houses and flats above takeaways in the north of England, to be beaten,
tortured and raped over 100 times. I was called a 'white slag' and 'white c***'
as they beat me."
Rotherham
Council's chief executive, its director of children's services, as well as the
Police and Crime Commissioner for South Yorkshire Police all resigned The
Independent Police Complaints Commission and the National Crime Agency both
opened inquiries, the latter expected to last eight years The government
appointed Louise Casey to conduct an inspection of Rotherham Council.[32]
Published in January 2015, the Casey report concluded that the council had a
bullying, sexist culture of covering up information and silencing
whistleblowers; it was "not fit for purpose".In February 2015 the
government replaced the council's elected officers with a team of five
commissioners. As a result of new police inquiries, 19 men and two women were
convicted in 2016 and 2017 of sexual offences in the town dating back to the
late 1980s; one of the ringleaders was jailed for 35 years.
Issues of ethnicity and religion
The Jay inquiry estimated that there may be 1,400
victims. Although the inquiry did not specify the ethnicity of the victims or
the perpetrators, the authors noted that in a large number of historic cases in
particular, most of the victims they sampled were white British while the
perpetrators were from ethnic minority communities.[j] However the report also
specified other, less investigated cases in which Asian minority women were the
primary victims,[266] despite the myth that the victims were only white. Social
isolation and fear of dishonour prevented Asian victims from coming forward.
Majority of victims white British girls aged 11 to 18
In 2018 Operation Stovewood reported there were 1,510
potential victims, this higher than the Jay Report in 2014. Detectives said
'260 – 17% – were speaking to officers but that police aimed to talk to every
victim, and the vast majority of victims were white British girls aged 11 to
18'. Further that 80% of CSE suspects in Rotherham were males of Pakistani
heritage.
However, the Jay report published before Operation
Stovewood stated that "there is no simple link between race and child
sexual exploitation", and cited a 2013 report by Muslim Women's Network UK
of British Asian girls being abused across the country in situations that
mirrored the abuse in Rotherham.[k]According to the group, Asian victims may be
particularly vulnerable to threats of bringing shame and dishonour on their
families, and may have believed that reporting the abuse would be an admission
that they had violated their cultural beliefs. The Jay report also noted that
one of the local Pakistani women's groups had described Pakistani girls being
targeted by Pakistani taxi drivers and landlords, but they feared reporting to
the police out of concerns for their marriage prospects.The report stated that
"the under-reporting of exploitation and abuse in minority ethnic
communities" should be addressed.[l]
The Jay report "found no evidence of children's
social care staff being influenced by concerns about the ethnic origins of
suspected perpetrators when dealing with individual child protection cases,
including CSE".
Pakistani leaders cover-up
Parveen Qureshi, director of the United Multicultural
Centre in Rotherham claimed in 2014 'Pakistani community leaders in Rotherham
were complicit in hushing up the shocking 'ethnic' dimensions of the sexual
exploitation rather than speaking out'. She also stated 'the problem of Asian
men abusing white girls was known 'for a long time'.
Ethnicity not being recorded by South Yorkshire Police
The force at the centre of the Rotherham grooming
scandal was not routinely recording the ethnicity of child sexual abuse
suspects, a newspaper has found. Rotherham, where hundreds were abused by gangs
of South Asian men, omitted suspect ethnicity in 67% of cases. A report said
white children as young as 11 were raped, trafficked, abducted, beaten, and
intimidated, predominantly by men of Pakistani heritage.
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