Baroness Louise Casey: “I felt I had let grooming gang victims down”
Baroness Louise Casey, who investigated child protection failings at Rotherham Council more than a decade ago, said she felt she had let grooming gang victims down when the issue hit headlines again last year.
Speaking at the Hay Festival on Sunday, Baroness Casey said victims “still weren’t believed” and people are “still squeamish” over the religion and ethnicity of perpetrators.
Baroness Casey led an investigation into Rotherham Council after a separate report found more than 1,400 children were sexually exploited by gangs of mainly Asian males in the South Yorkshire town between 1997 and 2013.
Her report, published in 2015, found widespread failings across the council’s culture and services.
Baroness Casey said: “Last year, when the grooming gangs thing hit national headlines again, and I got a call about it, I was kind of thinking, what’s going on here?
“I was very disappointed, to put it mildly, I was really upset that in the intermediate 10 years (since Rotherham), not enough had changed.
“Victims still weren’t believed, people didn’t gather the right evidence, everybody was still squeamish over looking at both religion and ethnicity of perpetrators.
“I felt there was a sense of denial and I felt possibly, personally, that I had let those victims down … That is never, ever going to happen again.”
The Government announced a national audit by Baroness Casey last year, which found the lack of data showing the ethnicity and nationality of sex offenders in grooming gangs was “a major failing over the last decade or more” and listed 12 recommendations, including for a national inquiry.
The grooming gangs inquiry was set up in response to this recommendation from Baroness Casey’s National Audit on Group-based Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse.
Baroness Casey added: “It’s like a war of attrition, every single recommendation … I’m like a dog with a bone, I just won’t let go.”