Oliver Coppard says action on grooming gangs will 'not be driven' by Elon Musk

The mayor said it was “nonsense” that the X owner, “who can’t even get a grip of the proliferation of pornography his own social media site, is going to tell us in South Yorkshire how to protect women and girls”.

The tech entrepreneur has used his platform to wage an online campaign against the Prime Minister and safeguarding minister Jess Phillips over the issue of grooming gangs.

He has accused Sir Keir of being “complicit in the rape of Britain” over his record as a former director of public prosecutions and called Ms Phillips a “witch” and a “rape genocide apologist”.

Speaking to The Yorkshire Post, Mr Coppard said: “As ever my first thought is always with the victims of child sexual exploitation, they seem to be entirely forgotten particularly with the online discourse of this issue and the politicisation of this issue.

“That’s always been my concern and it’s why I’ve tried desperately not to get involved in that row or that conversation because frankly that should always be how can we best help the victims of that abuse, and to crack down on that as hard as we can right now.

“That will always be my focus, not having an online row with a billionaire from California.”

Rotherham was one of the first places in the UK to have reports of systematic child sexual abuse, however the police and the council failed to respond for years.

An inquiry into grooming gangs in the South Yorkshire town, led by Professor Alexis Jay, found that 1,400 children were sexually abused between 1997 and 2013 by predominantly British-Pakistani men.

Mr Coppard said that “the abuse was horrific, it was widespread, it was ongoing”.

He said there was “no hiding from the fact” that there were “systematic problems” with the both the council and police’s response to child sexual abuse allegations.

However, Mr Coppard disputed some of the claims on social media, that the grooming gangs scandal is still being covered up.

He cited Operation Stovewood, the National Crime Agency and South Yorkshire Police investigation into the child sexual exploitation in Rotherham, which has led to almost 1,300 years of jail time being served.

“The idea that this has somehow been swept under the carpet, that somehow there hasn’t been a huge focus on significant and widespread challenges in South Yorkshire, in particular, but also the lessons that have been learned nationally is not true, it’s simply not true.

“We’re never, ever complacent about that, certainly not in South Yorkshire.

“We have had a huge amount of work go on here and we have fundamentally changed how we deal with these problems, and that does not mean we are complacent about the future.

“I am not going to be driven in my understanding of this issue by a man in California who couldn’t find South Yorkshire or Rotherham on a map,” he added.