Standing up to child sex gangs

THE verdict against Rotherham Council’s response to those vile gangs who groomed young girls for sex could not have been more damning. The authority was “inexcusably slow” to act. The same can also be said of South Yorkshire Police which is also censured by a scathing Parliamentary report – it took considerable time and pressure before the force was convinced of the need to recruit to additional officers following the horrific murder of 17-year-old Laura Wilson.

The Home Affairs Committee report makes depressing reading. One haunting passage quotes Emma Jackson who was a victim of localised grooming in Rotherham. She said: “My social worker just seemed not even to be on this planet.” On being threatened with being kidnapped by a gang who claimed that she owed £500 for alcohol and drugs, she says the council advised her parents to pay up. The only comfort is that the young woman escaped the clutches of these sexual predators and is no longer perceived to be at risk.

Rotherham is not alone. Recent criminal cases in Oldham and Oxford have revealed that this is a national crisis, rather than one consigned to Northern towns, and that “there is no simple link between race and child sexual exploitation” according to today’s report which has, again, highlighted the importance of Parliamentary committees in exposing serious wrongdoing.

As such, it is clear that local authorities require strong leadership – backed up by staff on the ground with an abundance of common sense – to ensure the vulnerable are protected, while also ensuring that they work with the police to bring these gangs to justice.

However, Rotherham’s failings must not deflect attention away from the Government’s indifference to this issue. Three working groups were set up by Tim Loughton, the former children’s minister, to investigate grooming. However the report concludes that none of these panels have produced “any practical action” – a revelation which highlights the need for a joined-up strategy nationally and locally to counter this growing menace to those young people who are still at risk of being groomed because the safeguards to protect them are so fragile.