"It is hard to describe the appalling nature of the abuse that child victims suffered."
August 26 marked ten years since the publication of the Jay Report, an independent inquiry into child sexual exploitation in the British town of Rotherham. The 2014 report found that at least 1,400 underage girls were abused predominantly by Muslim men of Pakistani heritage between 1997 and 2013 in this South Yorkshire town.
“It is hard to describe the appalling nature of the abuse that child victims suffered,” the report noted.
“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.”
The report – written by Professor Alexis Jay – criticized Rotherham Council for failing to protect the victims, saying that the Council had not addressed the “scale” of grooming prior to 2014.
The mainstream media’s stance towards those abuses committed by Muslim men were a combination of a blackout, censorship or whitewashing – with a few exceptions. In 2011, for instance, journalist Andrew Norfolk published an article in The Times entitled “Revealed: conspiracy of silence on UK sex gangs”. The report said, in part:
“A culture of silence that has facilitated the sexual exploitation of hundreds of young British girls by criminal pimping gangs is exposed by The Times today.
“For more than a decade, child protection experts have identified a repeated pattern of sex offending in towns and cities across northern England and the Midlands involving groups of older men who groom and abuse vulnerable girls aged 11 to 16 after befriending them on the street.
“Most of the victims are white and most of the convicted offenders are of Pakistani heritage.”
Eight years after the publication of the Jay report, another inquiry found that rape, sexual abuse, brainwashing, drugging and other crimes had “thrived unchecked” in the English town of Telford since the 1970s. The Independent reported in 2022: --->READ MORE HERE
Child sex abusers are continuing to prey on youngsters in Rotherham more than 12 years after the grooming gang scandal was first exposed, locals have claimed.
Although another seven men were this week found guilty of a horrific catalogue of multiple rapes and sexual assaults, many more trials are in the pipeline – casting a continued shadow over the area.
And local people, including victims, say they believe criminals are still grooming and abusing the young – this time involving gangs from a swathe of ethnicities rather than just groups of mainly Pakistani Muslim men.
The latest prosecution follows a five-year investigation by officers from the National Crime Agency's Operation Stovewood, the UK's biggest investigation into child abuse.
A spokesman told the Daily Mail: 'Our caseload so far involves over 200 arrests out of 300 suspects, and 1,150 victims. So far, there have been 33 convictions after 15 trials but there are further trials due to start and we have more than 50 live investigations.'
Stovewood was set up in the wake of the Jay Report, which sent a shockwave across the nation in 2014 when it found that at least 1,400 girls were abused, trafficked and groomed by gangs of men of mainly Pakistani heritage in the town between 1997 and 2013.
The report by Professor Alexis Jay - now chairing the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse - prompted a swathe of resignations and further inquiries from public bodies after it emerged how police, social workers and other agencies had done little to tackle the issue.
But while Stovewood has been welcomed, there is concern about it only investigating historic grooming.
Locals say they have received no information about when any prosecutions for more recent allegations of grooming – investigated by South Yorkshire Police – will reach the courts.
And Rotherham abuse survivor and campaigner Sammy Woodhouse, who was just 14 when she was raped and became pregnant, said progress on changes to help victims has stalled.
She said: 'We're never going to be able to stop exploitation but that doesn't mean the authorities can't be determined to stop it. Mountains should be moved in terms of changing the way things operate but this isn't happening.
'People are still more bothered about protecting their reputations and there is still no legal definition of a victim of child exploitation, which would help enable cases to be recognised.
'The sentencings need to be higher. Rape carries a maximum term of life – why is it not being given out more often?
'Children who are being exploited by grooming gangs are still being criminalised rather than recognised as victims - and there's not one support service in this country for a child born of sexual violence.'
The legacy of what Ms Woodhouse, now 38, went through more than two decades ago has continued to affect her life.
Her rapist, Arshid Hussain, who was one of three brothers who groomed and abused over 50 girls, was jailed for 35 years in 2016.
But the following year, it emerged Rotherham Council had contacted Hussain about the boy Ms Woodhouse had given birth to after being raped.
The authority promised to keep him informed about future proceedings, after he was listed as a 'respondent' in a Family Court case. --->READ MORE HERE
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