373 girls ‘groomed and abused in Oxfordshire’

A highly-critical serious case review published today reveals that a catalogue of failings by authorities meant the scale of the exploitationwas not recognised and opportunities to tackle it were missed.

Victims were groomed using drugs, alcohol and gifts before they were physically assaulted, forced into prostitution, raped and drugged, the report said.

Its publication follows that of reports of similar patterns of abuse in Rotherham.

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The victims’ abusers kept them “hooked in” by making the girls dependent on alcohol and drugs, which they then “paid for” with sex.

However, investigations of the response of organisations including Oxfordshire County Council and Thames Valley Police found that victims’ accounts were not believed or they were seen as exaggerated

Scores of “professionals” across a string of organisations or departments “took a long time to recognise child sexual exploitation (CSE), used language that appeared at least in part to blame victims and see them as adults, and had a view that little could be done in the face of ‘no co-operation’,” the report said.

The review was commissioned in 2012 after the activities of a paedophile ring emerged and was founded on the experiences of six victims in that case, which led to the convictions of seven men,

Alan Bedford, the author of the independent review, wrote: “What happened to the child victims of the sexual exploitation in Oxfordshire was indescribably awful.

“The child victims and their families feel very let down. Their accounts of how they perceived professional work are disturbing and chastening.”

Five of the seven perpetrators convicted over abuse in the county were of Pakistani heritage, while the victims were all white British girls.

The report said: “The association, not of all CSE but group-based CSE, with mainly Pakistan heritage is undeniable, and prevention will need both national understanding, communication and debate, and also work with faith groups at a local level.”

However, the report said that there was “no evidence ... of any agency not acting when they should have done because of racial sensitivities”.

Failures in the official response outlined in the 114-page report include:

• The issue of CSE was not understood and national guidance was not followed;

• The “terrible” nature of victims’ experiences was not recognised because of a view that they were consenting or bringing problems on themselves;

• Girls were treated without common courtesies and subjected to “snide remarks”;

• There was an insufficient understanding of the law around consent and a tolerance of unlawful sexual activity;

• There was insufficient curiosity about what was happening to the girls;

• There was insufficient attention to investigating and disrupting the activities of perpetrators compared with efforts used to “contain” behaviour of the girls;

• The organisational response was weak and lacked any management oversight;

• Information about worrying cases was not “escalated” to those at the top of organisations.

In response to the question “Could CSE have been identified or prevented earlier?”, the report said: “The simple answer is yes.”

It concluded: “A group of approximately 370 girls and young women have been identified as possible victims of sexual exploitation within the last 16 years.”

Maggie Blyth, independent chair of the Oxfordshire Safeguarding Children Board (OSCB), said that “systemic failings” between 2005 and 2010 and “unacceptable delays” in tackling the issue of CSE “allowed offenders to get away with their crimes”.

“It is shocking that these children were subjected to such appalling sexual exploitation for so long,” she said.

“On behalf of the OSCB I would like to apologise for how long it took organisations in Oxfordshire to see what was happening to these children and bring perpetrators to justice.

“It is clear that between 2005 and 2010, despite the efforts of some front line staff working with children individually, there was no understanding of the type of abuse which later emerged, a culture across all organisations that failed to see that these children were being groomed in an organised way by groups of men and therefore no concerted or organised response across Oxfordshire agencies working with children against this terrible child abuse.”

However, the report found that there was no evidence of wilful neglect nor deliberate ignoring of clear signs of CSE.

Sara Thornton, chief constable of Thames Valley Police, said: “We are ashamed of the shortcomings identified in this report and we are determined to do all we can to ensure that nothing like this ever happens again.”

Jim Leivers, director for children, education and families at Oxfordshire County Council, said the authority is “horrified”, adding: “We fully accept that we made many mistakes and missed opportunities to stop the abuse.”

The report said that since around 2011 “many lessons have been learned” and services for children vulnerable to CSE “have been improved considerably”.

At a press conference, Ms Blyth said that parents and carers of vulnerable girls raised concerns which were sometimes “not given the weight they deserved”.

There was an “absence of acknowledgement” among social workers, police officers, teachers and health staff that children were victims of CSE, she said, adding that there was a “lack of any understanding of why children were running away and the pull towards their groomers”.

She described the number of known perpetrators of activities exposed in the report as “the tip of an iceberg” and added that there are likely to be more children at risk.

Ms Blyth said she had been assured that organisations identified in the report will look at “whether there is an individual or corporate responsibility for what happened”.

Asked if she supported the plans outlined by Prime Minister David Cameron to hold officials who fail to protect children from sexual exploitation to account, including the possibility of a prison sentence, she said: “I think it’s essential that those who run organisations across this country are held to account in making sure we have an effective and robust child protection partnership that protects the most vulnerable children.”

Today’s revelations follow inquiries into similar scandals in Rotherham and Rochdale.