Exclusive: Police get extra help to stamp out child sex gangs

South Yorkshire Police is to bring in ten new detectives and an analyst to deal exclusively with child sexual exploitation (CSE) after getting an extra £500,000 a year to tackle the problem.

The force’s chief constable and one of his top officers were criticised during a hearing of the Home Affairs Select Committee last year for having made no prosecutions for CSE in 2012.

MPs had heard evidence of a 22-year-old man going unpunished after being found in a car with a 12-year-old girl, a bottle of vodka and indecent images of her on his mobile phone; and of three unconvicted members of one family in Rotherham being linked to the abuse of 61 girls.

South Yorkshire’s new team will be looking to develop proactive strategies to identify those at risk and enable swift action, building on the force’s own experiences and those of other areas where police have also been criticised.

It emerged last week that failings by police and social services in Oxfordshire allowed a child sex ring to sexually torture girls as young as 11, despite victims repeatedly telling officers they had been abused.

South Yorkshire’s police and crime commissioner Shaun Wright has earmarked specific funds to recruit the officers to tackle “serial and organised gangs”.They include a force-wide team of five detectives to deal with cases as they occur across the county.

Five others will focus purely on child sexual exploitation, which does not include abuse by the victim’s own family, and be placed in public protection units in Sheffield, Barnsley, Rotherham and Doncaster. They will not have to deal with the units’ normal work tackling domestic abuse, sexual assault and hate crime.

An analyst specialising in child sexual abuse will aim to spot trends in offending and identify those most at risk as well as sharing information with other agencies.

Mr Wright said: “From this investment I want to ensure that a more robust warning system is in place at South Yorkshire Police and similarly robust prosecution facilities in place for when abusers are arrested. I want to see the full weight of the law bearing down on these serial and organised gangs.”

Other improvements include extra training for staff to look out for the warning signs of CSE and a dedicated solicitor. The force, which is having to make millions of pounds a year in savings, hopes to have the appointments in place by September.

Temporary Detective Superintendent Phil Etheridge, the police’s lead on child sexual exploitation, said the force-wide team would “look across the county and deploy its expertise where and when needed”.

He added: “This is moving from the traditional way we have dealt with it and hopefully demonstrate the importance that the police and crime commissioner is putting on this.”

Ellen Broome of charity The Children’s Society, said: “It is really positive news for vulnerable children in South Yorkshire that the police are committing money and people to proactively tackling child sexual exploitation.”

Mr Etheridge and chief constable David Crompton last year appeared in front of the Home Affairs Select Committee, where chairman Keith Vaz told them: “You need to get a grip on the situation in South Yorkshire.”

During a further hearing in January, Mr Vaz told the chief executive of Rotherham council not enough had been done since five Asian men from the area were jailed in 2010 after being found guilty of grooming girls as young as 13 for sex.