We are closing this blog on the independent report on child sexual abuse in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, between1997 and 2013. Here are the key points.
About 1,400 children were sexually exploited in Rotherham over a 16-year period, although no one knows the true scale of exploitation over the years. In more than a third of these cases the youngsters were already known to child protection agencies.
The report by Professor Alexis Jay prompted the resignation of the council’s Labour leader, Roger Stone, who said he was stepping down with immediate effect. Despite Stone’s resignation, chief executive Martin Kimber said no council officers will face disciplinary action.
Girls were raped by several men, trafficked to other towns and cities in the north of England, abducted, beaten, and intimidated. There were examples of children who had been doused in petrol and threatened with being set alight, threatened with guns, made to witness brutally violent rapes and threatened they would be next if they told anyone. Girls as young as 11 were raped by large numbers of perpetrators.
Within social care, the scale and seriousness of the problem was underplayed by senior managers. At an operational level, the police gave no priority to child sexual exploitation, regarding many child victims with contempt and failing to act on their abuse as a crime.
The possible reasons for neglect are unclear but may include denial that this could occur in Rotherham, concern that the ethnic element could damage community cohesion, worry about the borough’s reputation and fears that publicity might compromise police operations.
Why did Rotherham council ignore the reports of child sexual exploitation? The report suggests denial and concern over the ethnic element.
In the early years there seems to have been a prevalent denial of the existence of child sexual exploitation (CSE) in the borough, let alone its increasing incidence and dangers. By 2005, it is hard to believe that any senior officers or members from the leader and the chief executive downwards, were not aware of the issue. Most members showed little obvious leadership or interest in CSE for much of the period under review apart from their continued support for Risky Business. The possible reasons for this are not clear but may include denial that this could occur in Rotherham, concern that the ethnic element could damage community cohesion, worry about reputational risk to the Borough if the issue was brought fully into the public domain, and the belief that if that occurred, it might compromise police operations.
Few symbols of authority from South Yorkshire police to Rotherham council emerge with much credit. One exception is the outreach group Risky Business, but it was often treated as a nuisance. The report says:
The Risky Business project was the first public service in Rotherham to identify and support young people involved in child sexual exploitation. It operated on an outreach basis, working with large numbers of victims, as well as those at risk. The council is to be commended for its financial commitment to the project and its work for most of its existence. From 2007, the project worked effectively with the police on Operation Central. But it was too often seen as something of a nuisance, particularly by children’s social care and there were many tensions between the two.
One of the common threads running through child sexual exploitation across England was the prominent role of taxi drivers in being directly linked to children who were abused, said the report.
This was the case in Rotherham from a very early stage, when residential care home heads met in the nineties to share intelligence about taxis and other cars which picked up girls from outside their units. In the early 2000s some secondary school heads were reporting girls being picked up at lunchtime at the school gates and being taken away to provide oral sex to men in the lunch break.
The effect on the victims was devastating, says the report.
Time and again we read in the files and other documents of children being violently raped, beaten, forced to perform sex acts in taxis and cars when they were being trafficked between towns, and serially abused by large numbers of men. Many children repeatedly self-harmed and some became suicidal. They suffered family breakdown and some became homeless. Several years after they had been abused, a disproportionate number were victims of domestic violence, had developed long-standing drug and alcohol addiction, and had parenting difficulties with their own children, resulting in child protection/children in need interventions. Some suffered post-traumatic stress and other emotional and psychological problems, often undiagnosed and untreated. Some experienced mental health problems.
The report mentions the case of Child A who was 12 when the risk of sexual exploitation became known.
She was associating with a group of older Asian men and possibly taking drugs. She disclosed having had intercourse with five adults. Two of the adults received police cautions after admitting to the Police that they had intercourse with Child A. Child A continued to go missing and was at high risk of sexual exploitation. A child protection case conference was held. It was agreed by all at the conference that Child A should be registered. However, the CID (criminal investigation department) representative argued against the category of sexual abuse being used because he thought that Child A had been ‘100% consensual in every incident’.
The CID man was overruled and she was supported appropriately once she was placed on the child protection register.
The report says schools raised the alert over the years about children as young as 11, 12 and 13 being picked up outside schools by cars and taxis, given presents and mobile phones and taken to meet large numbers of unknown males in Rotherham, other local towns and cities, and further afield.
In two of the cases we read, fathers tracked down their daughters and tried to remove them from houses where they were being abused, only to be arrested themselves when police were called to the scene. In a small number of cases (which have already received media attention) the victims were arrested for offences such as breach of the peace or being drunk and disorderly, with no action taken against the perpetrators of rape and sexual assault against children.
This is the report’s executive summary, which makes for devastating reading. It is worth reading in full.
No one knows the true scale of child sexual exploitation (CSE) in Rotherham over the years. Our conservative estimate is that approximately 1400 children were sexually exploited over the full Inquiry period, from 1997 to 2013.
In just over a third of cases, children affected by sexual exploitation were previously known to services because of child protection and neglect. It is hard to describe the appalling nature of the abuse that child victims suffered. They were raped by multiple perpetrators, trafficked to other towns and cities in the north of England, abducted, beaten, and intimidated. There were examples of children who had been doused in petrol and threatened with being set alight, threatened with guns, made to witness brutally violent rapes and threatened they would be next if they told anyone. Girls as young as 11 were raped by large numbers of male perpetrators.
This abuse is not confined to the past but continues to this day. In May 2014, the caseload of the specialist child sexual exploitation team was 51. More CSE cases were held by other children’s social care teams. There were 16 looked after children who were identified by children’s social care as being at serious risk of sexual exploitation or having been sexually exploited. In 2013, the Police received 157 reports concerning child sexual exploitation in the Borough.
Over the first twelve years covered by this inquiry, the collective failures of political and officer leadership were blatant. From the beginning, there was growing evidence that child sexual exploitation was a serious problem in Rotherham. This came from those working in residential care and from youth workers who knew the young people well.
Within social care, the scale and seriousness of the problem was underplayed by senior managers. At an operational level, the Police gave no priority to CSE, regarding many child victims with contempt and failing to act on their abuse as a crime. Further stark evidence came in 2002, 2003 and 2006 with three reports known to the Police and the Council, which could not have been clearer in their description of the situation in Rotherham. The first of these reports was effectively suppressed because some senior officers disbelieved the data it contained. This had led to suggestions of cover- up. The other two reports set out the links between child sexual exploitation and drugs, guns and criminality in the Borough. These reports were ignored and no action was taken to deal with the issues that were identified in them.
In the early 2000s, a small group of professionals from key agencies met and monitored large numbers of children known to be involved in CSE or at risk but their managers gave little help or support to their efforts. Some at a senior level in the Police and children’s social care continued to think the extent of the problem, as described by youth workers, was exaggerated, and seemed intent on reducing the official numbers of children categorised as CSE. At an operational level, staff appeared to be overwhelmed by the numbers involved. There were improvements in the response of management from about 2007 onwards. By 2009, the children’s social care service was acutely understaffed and over stretched, struggling to cope with demand.
Seminars for elected members and senior officers in 2004-05 presented the abuse in the most explicit terms. After these events, nobody could say ‘we didn’t know’. In 2005, the present Council Leader chaired a group to take forward the issues, but there is no record of its meetings or conclusions, apart from one minute.
By far the majority of perpetrators were described as ‘Asian’ by victims, yet throughout the entire period, councillors did not engage directly with the Pakistani-heritage community to discuss how best they could jointly address the issue. Some councillors seemed to think it was a one-off problem, which they hoped would go away. Several staff described their nervousness about identifying the ethnic origins of perpetrators for fear of being thought racist; others remembered clear direction from their managers not to do so.
In December 2009, the Minister of State for Children and Families put the Council’s children’s safeguarding services into intervention, following an extremely critical Ofsted report. The Council was removed from intervention thirteen months later.
The Rotherham Safeguarding Children Board and its predecessor oversaw the development of good inter-agency policies and procedures applicable to CSE. The weakness in their approach was that members of the Safeguarding Board rarely checked whether these were being implemented or whether they were working. The challenge and scrutiny function of the Safeguarding Board and of the Council itself was lacking over several years at a time when it was most required.
In 2013, the council leader, who has held office since 2003, apologised for the quality of the Council’s safeguarding services being less than it should have been before 2009. This apology should have been made years earlier, and the issue given the political leadership it needed.
There have been many improvements in the last four years by both the Council and the Police. The Police are now well resourced for CSE and well trained, though prosecutions remain low in number. There is a central team in children’s social care which works jointly with the Police and deals with child sexual exploitation. This works well but the team struggles to keep pace with the demands of its workload. The Council is facing particular challenges in dealing with increased financial pressures, which inevitably impact on frontline services. The Safeguarding Board has improved its response to child sexual exploitation and holds agencies to account with better systems for file audits and performance reporting. There are still matters for children’s social care to address such as good risk assessment, which is absent from too many cases, and there is not enough long-term support for the child victims.
PA has details on some of the victims and how they were failed by the authorities.
One young Rotherham victim was trafficked for sex to Leeds, Bradford and Sheffield by the time she was 15 years old and was doused in petrol and threatened with being set alight.
Referred to as Child B in today’s report, the teenager was “groomed by an older man involved in the exploitation of other children”.
The report said: “Child B loved this man. He trafficked her to Leeds, Bradford and Sheffield and offered to provide her with a flat in one of those cities. A child protection referral was made but the social care case file recorded no response to this.”
The report detailed how “within just a few months Child B and her family were living in fear of their lives”.
The windows of their house were put in, she was threatened with being forced into prostitution and her older sibling was taken to hospital.
The report said: “Child B and her mother refused to have anything more to do with the police because they believed the police could do nothing to protect them.”
It added: “Child B had been stalked and had petrol poured over her head and was threatened with being set alight. She took overdoses. She and her family were too terrified to make statements to the police.”
The report said the teenager was homeless by the time she was 18. It concluded: “She referred herself to children’s social care and was given advice about benefits. No further action was taken. This child and her family were completely failed by all services with the exception of Risky Business (a local support group).”
A girl referred to as Child D was 13 when she was groomed, raped and trafficked by a violent sexual predator in the town.
“Police and children’s social care were ineffective and seemed to blame the child,” the report said. “An initial assessment accurately described the risks to Child D but appeared to blame her for ‘placing herself at risk of sexual exploitation and danger’.”
The report concluded: “Other than Risky Business, agencies showed no comprehension that she had been groomed at 13, that she was terrified of the perpetrators, and that her attempts to placate them were themselves a symptom of the serious emotional harm that child sexual exploitation had caused her.”
Hundal also tweets on the sensitive subject of ethnicity. As he notes, the report says frontline staff appeared to be confused on what they were supposed to say and do and how that it would interpreted as “racist”.
Rotherham report: little evidence that race of perpetrators deprived children of support. But in wider context... pic.twitter.com/zqraPKi7lb
