Evil exposed in Alexis Jay's Rotherham report 10 years ago must never be forgotten: Oliver Coppard

But their violence and depravity make them all the more important to acknowledge and remember.

The report contains details that will be seared into the memory of anyone who has read the 159 page account of what happened and why.

Children raped by multiple perpetrators, trafficked to other towns and cities in the north of England, abducted, beaten and intimidated. Children doused in petrol as they were terrorised into silence. Girls as young as 11 raped by large numbers of men.

There have been 1,300 crimes recorded and 200 arrests, but Alexis Jay makes clear that ‘at least’ 1,400 children were abused and exploited.

But even those terrifying numbers do not take into account the long shadow of those crimes; the families ripped apart, those who were themselves abused, who went on to become abusers themselves, the fear and shame brought down upon whole communities.

There is no criminal penalty that will ever truly do justice to those acts.

It is undeniably true that the last decade has seen an unprecedented response from national and local government, police and the criminal justice system.

A total of 34 people have now been convicted of offences as part of Operation Stovewood, the National Crime Agency investigation into child sexual abuse in Rotherham. The latest of those convictions happened just last week, with David Saynor given 24 years for crimes carried out when using his limousine business to collect children from parties and teenage discos. In total, those convicted of offences have received sentences totalling over 250 years.

The leadership of both South Yorkshire Police and Rotherham Council has been transformed and there has been root and branch reform of the personnel, style and approach of those agencies tasked with protecting children in Rotherham.

But there are – of course – vital lessons that must endure.

Simply, there can never be any room for complacency; no excuse for organisational silos, the protection of reputations or community sensitivities getting in the way of any and every effort to protect children.

The Jay Report lists in harrowing detail the systematic failures that contributed to the abuse in Rotherham being allowed to continue; the wilful ignorance, self-preservation and self-protection that only served to protect the abusers.

Not only were those efforts unconscionable, they were entirely futile.

There is almost no organisation or individual that was supposedly responsible for the protection of children in Rotherham that came out of that shameful period without their reputation shattered, or without their legitimacy fundamentally undermined.

Far from avoiding community tensions, the denial of very real cultural and racial dynamics in the abuse that was carried out continue to be used as a tool to poison and undermine community relationships in Rotherham and across South Yorkshire.

While it may be all too simple to say that the protection of children must always be our priority, that does not absolve us of the need to repeatedly say it.

Back then, not enough people did.

So communities across Rotherham and South Yorkshire have a right to be angry about what happened; to have been mistrustful of the institutions and systems responsible for ignoring that simple maxim.

Because the cost of the failure of institutions and organisations is always, ultimately borne by the communities they are designed to serve. The consistent theme of the Jay Report is the opportunities missed by organisations to properly respond to the evidence that children were at risk.

The report includes a recital of those many, repeated failures of organisations to check themselves and each other; to properly place the needs of our communities above the need to protect themselves.

Time and again, despite very clear warnings, the failure of institutions to act left vulnerable children and families at the mercy of violent and dangerous people.

All the evidence says we are in a different and better place now.

But it is incumbent on all of us in positions of power across South Yorkshire to continue to acknowledge that failure, and to continue our shared efforts not just to restore those institutions but to restore our community’s trust in their intentions and their actions.

Ten years on from Alexis Jay’s Report, the journey along the road to restoring that trust will carry on. Those crimes should never have been allowed to happen here in South Yorkshire, but we must not, will not, and cannot forget they did.

Oliver Coppard is South Yorkshire Mayor and Police and Crime Commissioner