Back in 2014, a Yorkshire town made international headlines for all the wrong reasons. Rotherham in South Yorkshire is a name that is now synonymous with a crime that has sullied Britain’s name all over the world - organised gang rape. Throughout the UK, groups of men prey upon girls, usually from dysfunctional or chaotic backgrounds, rape them, and then force them into prostitution. For years, police did nothing to tackle these crimes, partly because, in the vast majority of cases, the victims were young white girls, and the rapists were Muslim immigrants or their descendants. The police did wish not to inflame “community tensions,” so the crimes went unpunished for decades.
Nevertheless, the Jay Report of 2014 revealed that more than 1,400 girls had fallen victim to rape gangs in Rotherham over the previous decade. A year later, I undertook a mammoth task: to find out how many white English girls had been similarly abused through the preceding five years. I wrote a lengthy report, which I will post here.
In 2025, I will publish an update to mark ten years since my initial investigation and to illuminate the extent of the crime over the past decade. Has anything changed? I intend to find out. In the meantime, I will publish my initial report in parts.
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PART FOUR - THE JAY REPORT
The Jay Report, released in August 2014, was the most shocking child sex abuse scandal in Britain for a generation. The report claimed that around 1,400 children had been sexually abused in that town over a period of 16 years – and that this abuse had been effectively ignored by the authorities there. There were several reasons for the failure of Rotherham authorities in these cases. They undoubtedly include an ill-advised “political correctness” that created fear that authorities might be accused of racism if they took action to prevent the rape – this was because the majority of the perpetrators were of “Asian” descent. A culture of excessive bureaucracy and ‘blamelessness’ also played a part – the reluctance of authority to place blame for criminal activity on a minority group is common under so-called ‘left-wing’ governance. Something of a misogynistic culture within local police forces also contributed – that is, the blaming of rape victims themselves and the notion that their behaviour was at fault. Class-related prejudice and snobbery played a part, along with apparent corruption and incompetence.
The conditions in Rotherham provided the ‘perfect storm’ for child sex abuse to take place. Few effective processes were in place and simple law enforcement was overlooked as an option for the prevention of this abuse. Instead, numerous ‘committees’ which had little to no effect, were established and seen as an appropriate response. This, combined with dismissal of the complaints of victims, and a culture of appeasement with regard to ethnic minority groups, created a town where a serious crime was committed, over and over again, with effective impunity.
The Scale
The figure of the number of children subjected to Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE) identified in the Jay Report was 1,400 – the period of time being 1997 to 2013. The report noted that this was likely to be an underestimate. As has been noted, the investigation undertaken for this report, it is impossible for an accurate number to be reached. The reasons for this, noted in the Jay Report, are as follows:
• Children are often reluctant to come forward as they “would feel ashamed or afraid”
• Child Sex Exploitation was not recognised as a cause for referral (i.e. to come under the case of social services) until 2001
• Police did not have a separate category for CSE until 2013
• Neither police nor the local authority compiled reliable data on CSE
• Of 988 children known either to police or social services in Rotherham, a random sample of 19 current and 19 past cases was examined; 95% of these showed “clear evidence” that the child has suffered CSE
• A further 28 cases were examined; 22 of which were taken from historic police operations. All 28 were victims of CSE.
• In 2013, South Yorkshire Police received 157 reports concerning CSE in Rotherham
• In the 1990s, the Risky Business project was established in Rotherham (see below), several workers within the project reported knowledge of CSE in Rotherham early-mid 1990s
• At the time of the Jay Inquiry, there was “no standardised reporting of child sexual exploitation”
• In over a third of cases, children affected by CSE had been previously known to services
The Abuse
The details of the abuse suffered by children in Rotherham is difficult to read. The cruelty and brutality of these crimes make the failure of Rotherham authorities all the more outrageous. Details include:
• Victims raped by multiple perpetrators and trafficked to other towns across the north of England
• Victims were “beaten, abducted, intimidated”
• Children were forced to witness “brutally violent rapes”, one child was doused in petrol and threatened with being set alight, some children were threatened with guns
• Children were stalked by abusers
• Children were threatened and assaulted, and in some cases, their families were threated or subject to actual assault
• Families were “terrorised by groups of perpetrators”; sitting outside of family homes in cars, making abusive phone-calls, smashing windows. Some victims returned to perpetrators believing this to be the only way to keep their families safe
• Abusers “targeted children’s residential units”
• Victims were picked up outside school in cars and taxis
• Children were isolated from their families and friends
• Some schools reported “girls being picked up at lunchtime at the school gates and being taken away to provide oral sex to men during in the lunch break”
Attitudes
One remarkable and recurrent theme throughout the Jay Report is the attitude of some police and social services workers. In some instances, an attitude of victim-blaming is clear. Other cases reveal a refusal to acknowledge or tackle the abuse, others reveal a culture of denial.
• In two cases, fathers who had attempted to remove their daughters from abusers were themselves arrested
• Victims themselves were arrested for being “drunk and disorderly” or for breach of the peace
• Several social workers claim that CSE was known about from the early 1990s, but this was often viewed as “child prostitution”
• Two adults received a caution after admitting to sexual intercourse with a 12 year old girl; a CID representative argued that the child had been “100% consensual in every incident”
• “Police and children’s services were ineffective and seemed to blame the child”
• Referrals regarding one 14 year old girl were made by police to social services, but were never followed up; her rapist was later convicted
• A 12 year old girl, found drunk in the car of a CSE suspect – who had indecent photographs of her on his phone – was referred to authorities. Her father provided information regarding the identity of the perpetrators, as well as details on where and when she had been abused. Months later, she was assessed by socials services as not being at risk of child sexual exploitation, and her case closed. She was subsequently found in a derelict house, with another child and a number of adult men, where she was arrested for being drunk and disorderly – the men were not arrested
• Whilst good procedures were in place in terms of policing, these were seen as “widely disregarded”; some police officers displayed a “lack of understanding of CSE and the nature of grooming”
• An interviewee for the inquiry described “how the police refused to intervene when you girls who were thought to victims of CSE were being beaten up and abused”
Bureaucracy and Procedure
A further recurring theme throughout the Jay Report is one of procedural incompetence and excessive bureaucracy. Despite knowledge that rape and sexual exploitation was taking place across Rotherham for over a decade, little was done by police and authorities beyond discussion of the problem. Several committees and sub-committees were established, numerous meetings held, new policies and procedures written – but none had the effect of reducing the sexual abuse, and application of the criminal law (including on rape) seemed not to be considered an option.
Basic failures were common:
• One child was placed in residential care for her own protection and found that the abuse she suffered there was “even worse” than at home
• Key information about some children was not recorded by services
• There was little or no specialist care or mental health intervention offered to victims
• Prior to 2007, children over the age of 11 “were not seen to be the priority for children’s social care, even when they were being sexually abused and exploited”
• Prior to 2012, minutes of Strategy meetings were “held centrally and not recorded on the child’s social care file”
• The Sexual Exploitation Forum, established in 2003, would “discuss” individual children; there was “no record of these discussions or decisions on the child’s file”
• Taxi-drivers in the town were implicated in the abuse. According to the Jay Report; “Strategy meetings about one specific taxi firm had been held on four occasions in a seven week period. The minutes of one meeting record a total of ten girls and young women, three of whom were involved in alleged attempted abduction by taxi drivers. The seven other girls had alleged that they were being sexually exploited in exchange for free taxi rides and goods. Two of the girls involved were looked after children in the care of the local authority. The Licensing Enforcement Officer took the step of formally writing to the police following the incidents of alleged attempted abduction by drivers, complaining about the police failure to act. In one incident, a driver accosted a 13 year old girl. She refused to do what he asked and reported this to her parents who followed the taxi through the town, where they managed to identify the driver and dialled 999 for assistance. According to the Licensing Enforcement Officer, the police did not attend until later and took no action. In his email to the police he stated that ‘a simple check would have revealed that the driver had been arrested a week previously in Bradford for a successful kidnapping of a lone female’”.
Although the Jay Report noted some improvements in procedure, and commitment to child protection by many individual workers, it is clear that a problem that could have been prevented by simple law enforcement (and mental health support for victims) was discussed rather than acted upon; whilst such discussion was taking place, and a number of committees established, the rape and sexual assault continued unabated.
In conclusion, the Jay Report noted that there “were significant weaknesses in risk assessment and risk management” and “there was no appropriate management response to the problem of children exposed to exploitation whilst in the care of the Council”.
NEXT CHAPTER - POLITICAL CORRECTNESS AND COVER-UPS
The scandal continues. Thanks Anne Marie.