The last couple of years has been quite a period of revelation and shocks. Whilst many, myself included, thought Jimmy Saville at best eccentric, few could have imagined that much loved Rolf Harris, or Steward Hall, were serial sex offenders. That they all preyed on the vulnerable and did so within a trusted institution is simply awful. But the revelations from Rotherham are simply unbelievable.
This scandal began to unfold a couple of years ago with the arrest, and conviction, of a gang of serial sex abusers. This sent shockwaves through the system not just because of the scale of the crime but because of the fact that police had let down the victims by ignoring their pleas for help. As a result of this, in October 2013 Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council commissioned an independent enquiry by Alexis Jay OBE to look at the periods from 1997 to 2013 to understand what was going on.
Far from being just a single gang exploiting children, it seems that at least 1,400 children have been systematically abused and sexually exploited over the review period. A third of those were known to services as at risk due to child protection and neglect.
Staggeringly, the problem was known about by social care services, but the problem was underplayed by managers. At an operational level, the police gave no priority to child sexual exploitation. Some children were blamed for bringing this on themselves; in other cases the authorities were reluctant to tackle the perpetrators thinking that this would ferment racial tension between communities and in some way breach race relation legislation. Three reports were known to the police, in 2002, 2003 and 2006, which, according to Jay, could not have been clearer in their description of the situation in Rotherham. Police disbelieved these reports, doubly worrying when two of them set out links between child sexual exploitation and drugs, guns and criminality within Rotherham.
Heads are, of course, rolling. The Labour has taken the wise decision to suspend four of its members within the town, three councillors and one the Police and Crime Commissioner. The leader of the council resigned immediately.
This is a tragic story not just because it details the appalling destruction of young people’s lives and chances, but because it highlight how, in the 21st century, as a society we are still struggling with the basics of care for the vulnerable.