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Post by Admin on Aug 27, 2014 7:53:11 GMT
A damning report has revealed more than 1,400 children were victims of abuse there between 1997 and 2013. It detailed examples of 11-year-olds being gang raped and children being forced to watch violent sex abuse while being threatened that they would be next. It has emerged authorities in the town "could and should" have done more to stop the abuse but did not listen to children trying to report it. In some cases victims were treated with contempt. Shaun Wright was a Labour councillor for Rotherham until he was elected Police Commissioner in 2012, and was in charge of children's services from 2005 to 2010. Colin Ross, the leader of the Lib Dem group on Sheffield City Council, said it is "difficult to see how local people can have confidence in him to continue as our Police and Crime Commissioner". UKIP Yorkshire and Humber MEP Jane Collins also called on Mr Wright to go, adding: "The apologies we have heard are totally insincere and go nowhere near repairing the damage done." A spokesperson for Mr Wright said: "The Commissioner has previously apologised for the failure of Rotherham Council while he was in its cabinet from 2005 to 2010. "He repeats that apology today and he fully accepts that there was more that everyone at Rotherham Council should have done to tackle this terrible crime. "Since becoming Police and Crime Commissioner he has repeatedly publicly made tackling child sexual exploitation his number one priority." The leader of Rotherham Council, Roger Stone, stepped down with immediate effect following the publication of the report. The council has apologised for its failings but confirmed no staff will face disciplinary action. South Yorkshire Police also issued an apology but it too revealed that no officers have been disciplined. Several of the individuals named in the report are still working in child protection. Jim Gamble, former Chief Executive of CEOP, told Sky News: "Every person particularly in a leadership role who has got it wrong whether today, yesterday, or in the years before must take responsibility for their actions. "There's a couple of things, you need to make sure; 1) that they're not in a position of authority in any other local safeguarding board, in any other organisation that works to protect children and 2) if there is evidence that individuals surpassed information that there's a criminal investigation." A lawyer who represents some of the victims has told Sky News they intend to take legal action against the authorities. Solicitor David Greenwood said he was "appalled" by what he called a "systematic failure".
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Post by Admin on Aug 29, 2014 16:27:35 GMT
A former Rotherham care home worker has told the BBC how girls as young as 11 were "brazenly" groomed and abused in the South Yorkshire town. The man, who worked at children's homes for four years, said girls would be picked up by taxis and abusers made "no attempts to disguise" their actions. At least 1,400 children were sexually exploited, mainly by men of Pakistani heritage, between 1997 and 2013. Those in charge of care services at the time have faced calls to resign. They include Sonia Sharp, who ran Rotherham's children's services department from 2003 to 2008 and is now in charge of education services in the Australian state of Victoria. Andrew Collins, an advocate for historical abuse survivors, said Ms Sharp should resign "immediately" from her current job because her position was now "inappropriate". A care worker, who worked at children's homes from 2003-2007, told the BBC 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 carer, who wished to remain anonymous, claimed staff were reluctant to intervene in some cases for fear of being classed as "racist". "Sometimes, [the men] would phone and they would pick up around the corner, but sometimes they would just turn up and pick up at the children's home," the care worker said. "It depended on how brazen they were or how much heat they thought was on at the time. "They did genuinely think who was on shift, who would be likely to go outside the children's unit. "I used to make a deliberate attempt to let them know that I had clocked their car, that I was taking their registration plate." Police were called each time a girl went missing, but officers usually only arrived when the child got back to the home, sometimes "high on drugs" or "incredibly drunk", our source said. "They led us very much on a merry dance and there wasn't much we could do apart from keep documenting. And we documented every single night, and we spoke to social workers. The social workers were passing that on. Everything we passed on, nothing seemed to go further in any way shape or form." A previous study conducted by the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (Ceop) on "localised grooming" found that 30% of offenders (367) were white and 28% were Asian (346). It's also known that white offenders commit attacks in isolation and grooming (i.e. via Facebook), while Pakistani men were caught transferring girls among young men at ethnic food restaurants common in the Asian community. Street grooming is hard to detect because it has been done with the victims' consent in great secrecy and the victims are usually abandoned children in care homes who are unlikely to contact the police. The arrests of non-Asian offenders are often dismissed as minor stories by the media but the conviction of five British-born Pakistani men made national headlines because it was sensational and unprecedented. Moreover, the victims of street grooming are mostly white because 78% (53,030) of children looked after by care homes in 2013 were white and 9% (6,090) were of mixed racial background. Furthermore, 4% (2,620) were Asian or Asian British and 7% (4,470) were Black or Black British. The police may need to monitor care homes more closely so that teenage girls would not disappear at night with older men to earn pocket money or receive expensive gifts in return for dating with them. Care home workers are known to be reluctant to intervene physically to prevent people from leaving institutional premises, including children who repeatedly go missing and are believed to be at risk of sexual exploitation. Some former care home workers are now citing political correctness for their inaction but British society's traditional indifference towards those who are socially and economically marginalised may be at the heart of the problem.
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Post by Admin on Aug 31, 2014 14:37:37 GMT
It was an overcast October day during the half-term school holiday and I was 11 years old. I found myself sitting alone, on a plastic chair, in the empty bedroom of a terraced house. Behind me was a large, one-way mirror, in front of me a video camera on a stand. There was a small box of broken toys in the corner. I'd been taken there in the back of a police car and told to wait until the officers were "ready for me". I wasn't sure if I was being filmed or watched secretly. I wasn't sure of anything, except that I was scared stiff. So I tried to avert my eyes from the blinking red light on the camera and sat frozen and silent, staring intently at the book in my hands. I didn't read a single word. Some time later, I was led downstairs and told that I had been brought to the police house to be questioned about allegations of sexual abuse. I could hardly breathe. The officers offered me a rich tea biscuit. I'm not sure how long I was questioned. An hour perhaps, maybe two. We sat at a dining table, while questions were asked and I gave quiet, monosyllabic replies – when I could. But some of the questions I found especially difficult to answer. "What were you wearing that night?" asked one of the officers. "Um, a nightie?" I mumbled, confused by the question. "Yes, but what sort of nightie?" she continued. "Er, I don't know, just an ordinary nightie," I offered apologetically, still not understanding. The officer pressed me harder: "How short was it, though?" And then the penny dropped. As I indicated a point halfway up my thigh and swallowed back tears, I realised that I must have done something wrong when I – 11 years old, let's not forget – was sexually assaulted by this 32-year-old man. Done something wrong by wearing a short night-dress. As I felt myself flooded with feelings of shame and guilt, the questions went on. Had I touched him? Where did I touch him? How did I touch him? For years afterwards, those questions echoed in my head, followed by a relentless, inner voice of my own that said: "You must be a dirty little whore". I was reminded of it again last week when I read about the horrifying abuse and exploitation suffered by 1,400 girls in Rotherham. Many of those girls came into contact with the police, but very few of them were treated as victims who needed support. Some never got any attention from agencies at all and, according to Alexis Jay's report, they were seen as "undesirables" and "slappers" who were best left alone. There's been public outrage over the systematic failure of protection and rightly so. I was angered too. But I wasn't particularly shocked – and not only because I'd experienced first hand how abuse victims can be treated. Now, just in my thirties, I still see this kind of failure all the time, from another perspective. Knowing the harm sexual violence can do to people's lives – and how much difference it makes to get the right support – I ended up working for an organisation that supports those who've been through abuse and exploitation. We deal with teenagers who've been exploited, raped and subjected to gang violence. Some have fallen prey to gangs of Asian men, as in Rotherham, but elsewhere the perpetrators have been white men, black men or mixed gangs. What the victims often have in common is that they were either not believed or they were ignored or, worse still, blamed. We have had 13-year-old rape victims described by police as "promiscuous", 14-year-olds called "slags" and countless others who won't speak to the police at all because they are too scared and ashamed. For girls who have already suffered abuse, this victim blaming or, in some cases, total denial and disbelief, serves to crush further what little is left of their sense of self-worth. I've spent years trying to understand where these attitudes come from. Why are some victims seen as unworthy of help? Why is the label "streetwise" applied to them as if it's an excuse for doing nothing? Is it because many are from rough council estates? Is it because they often come from troubled backgrounds and have already been written off? Is it cultural? Class prejudice? Is it straightforward sexism? I do understand that it's difficult for police to handle sexual abuse, exploitation and rape. Very often, the victims can't or won't give evidence; they have sometimes got caught up in criminality themselves and frequently show misplaced loyalty to their abuser. For many victims, it's a long time before they can see that what is happening to them is wrong and they don't have to endure it. When I was questioned by police, they focused on one event, but never asked me about any of the other incidents of abuse I'd experienced over the years. And I didn't mention them either. I'd been well trained to keep "our little secret", to play things down and twist the truth. That's what the psychological grooming process does to you. It's part of the damage abuse does and I've no doubt it does make it harder to elicit "reliable evidence" from a "reliable witness" in the usual way, whether they're pre-pubescents, as I was, or older teens. That's why it's so crucial that agencies dealing with those who've been groomed are properly trained to understand it. Police, judges or council budget managers… if they don't get it they'll never stop it happening. To be fair to front-line workers in Rotherham, they did try to get senior managers to take action. But those senior managers never did. Somewhere along the line, in juggling budgets and priorities they made a compromise – and they compromised on child rape. That decision to take no proper action in Rotherham wasn't just heartless, it was a false economy. I've no doubt that, like me, those victims will struggle with the consequences for years, at great human cost to themselves, and financial cost to the taxpayer. For me, it was depression and PTSD that I battled – with help from the NHS. For countless others, it's alcoholism, drugs, serious mental illness, abusive relationships and costly disruptions to their education and employment. It costs money to stop abuse and exploitation and it costs money to support survivors to recover. But if we want a society that values and protects children and teenagers from all backgrounds, it's money we can't afford not to spend. I was one of the lucky ones. After a few false starts with an idiotic counsellor ("How much do you like boys? Would you say you liked boys too much?"), eventually I got decent support and recovered from the trauma of abuse. In the end, I was able to understand it wasn't my fault. Many years later, I no longer feel ashamed. But I do feel angry. I feel angry for the thousands who have suffered and been let down. It's no good wringing our hands about the past. Yes, failure to understand and respect survivors of sexual violence has been a problem for decades. But it remains a problem right now up and down the country. It must change now.
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Post by Admin on Sept 1, 2014 15:31:45 GMT
Child abuse is far more widespread than has previously been acknowledged, with "huge numbers" of victims, a child protection campaigner who tried to draw attention to the Rotherham scandal more than 10 years ago has warned. Hilary Willmer, the chair of trustees at the charity Parents Against Child Sexual Exploitation (Pace), was speaking out following the report into the Rotherham abuse scandal, which found more than 1,400 youngsters were abused over 16 years. She was speaking out following the report into events in Rotherham, which found that more than 1,400 youngsters were abused over 16 years from 1997. Asked if similar numbers of children could have fallen prey to abusers in other towns, she said: "I wouldn't want to bandy figures around but it's certainly a huge amount that is going on." Willmer worked with families in Rotherham in the late 1990s and was a colleague of the author of a 2002 report into the unfolding scandal, which was never published. Willmer told Channel 4 News the report "actually was drawing attention to all the failings of the local council, social care, police and everyone, who were failing to deal with information that was passed to them". She said: "We were able to identify houses where the young girls were taken as well as all sorts of other places, that there would be a big network operating in places like the shopping mall at Meadowhall. "It was well known, car numbers and information was handed to them but she was told that it was all anecdotal and therefore not enough to do anything about it." Prof Jay's report said the work resulted in a chapter of a draft report on research into the situation in Rotherham which "contained severe criticisms of the agencies" including "alleged indifference towards, and ignorance of, child sexual exploitation on the part of senior managers". She said: "Had this report been treated with the seriousness it merited at the time by both the police and the council, the children involved then and later would have been better protected and abusers brought to justice. These events have led to suspicions of collusion and cover up." Willmer said: "I think there was a denial because of the perception that these were errant teenagers who were just a nuisance. There were certainly instances of where parents have gone out and found the children and told the police where they are, not just in Rotherham but elsewhere, and it hasn't been followed up. Hopefully that is less common now than it was at the time. But certainly there was a perception, the received wisdom, was these girls had chosen this lifestyle, they are going out with these men and they have almost got what they asked for. That was really very widespread. It isn't like that now, it would be much more difficult to argue that."
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