No Accountability: Rotherham Grooming Gang Review Ends with Zero Police Officers Punished

ROTHERHAM, ENGLAND - AUGUST 27: A general view of the Town Hall in Rotherham, South Yorksh
Nigel Roddis/Getty Images
Kurt Zindulka

An eight-year, £6m investigation into the Rotherham grooming gang scandal has been accused of providing zero accountability after no officers were held responsible for the numerous failings during a time in which over 1,400 girls were sexually abused in the northern English city.

On Wednesday, the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) published what it described as an “uncomfortable to read” report on the police response to the child sexual abuse carried out by mostly Pakistani Muslim grooming gangs between 1997 and 2013 in Rotherham.

The latest report from the IOPC said that they had carried out 91 investigations into the South Yorkshire Police, which was subject to 265 separate allegations made by 51 individual complainants levied by 44 survivors of sexual abuse, three family members and four third parties.

A total of 47 officers were investigated by the police watchdog, which found eight had cases to answer for misconduct, and six for gross misconduct. Yet despite these findings the report mirrored previous police investigations in that none of the officers will face losing their job, pension, or face criminal charges. The most severe sanction for any officer involved was a written warning.

The report found that officers in the South Yorkshire Police were “not fully aware, or able, to deal with Child Sexual Abuse and Exploitation offences and showed insufficient empathy towards survivors who were vulnerable children and young people.”

The SYP was shown to have viewed children as “consenting” to their sexual abuse, with one officer telling the mother of an abused child that it had become a “fashion accessory” for girls in Rotherham to have an “older Asian boyfriend” and that she would “grow out of it”.

According to the review, many officers laid the blame on the young girls for their sexual abuse, including a former detective sergeant who told the IOPC that some of the victims were “worldly-wise and not meek and mild victims”.

Commenting on the attitude directed towards victims of the grooming gags, one survivor said that officers “treated us like child prostitutes”.

The complacency was so rampant, that some officers even failed to act when they personally witnessed young girls in “an intimate situation” with older man, including an instance in which a young girl was “involved in a sexual act with a perpetrator”.

One father was told by a police officer investigating the rape of his 15-year-old daughter in a local park that the sexual assault would teach the child a “lesson”.

Another father was told that there was nothing that the police could do to protect his daughter as it would stoke “racial tensions” in the area.

This mirrors the findings of numerous reports into the failings of police in dealing with the mostly Pakistani Muslim grooming gangs.

A previous report from the Independent Office for Police Conduct found that officers in Rotherham systematically overlooked children being sexually abused by “Asian” rape gangs due to politically correct fears within the police force.

One police chief inspector was quoted in the report as telling a father of a missing girl that Rotherham would “erupt” if they were informed that “Asian” grooming gangs were abusing young white girls.

Just this week, a report on the response to the child rape grooming gangs in nearby Oldham found that the “Messenger” service set up to help highlight the abuse suffered by young girls had developed a media strategy which expressed concern that the press might see that “child sexual exploitation was carried out by men from ethnic minorities against White girls, which could create community tensions, and that Oldham’s Asian community could feel it was disproportionally associated with child sexual exploitation.”

The latest report into the grooming gangs of Rotherham was condemned by Labour MP and victims’ advocate Sarah Champion, who said: “With so many survivors having to relive all the horrors they went through and with all the failings that are catalogued, I’m incredulous that no concrete action has been taken against any of these officers.

“We don’t know whether any of them are still serving. That makes it almost impossible, in my mind, for us to rebuild the trust that we need in our police force locally.”

The police and crime commissioner for South Yorkshire, Alan Billings, said: “I am disappointed that after eight years of very costly investigations, this report fails to make any significant recommendations over and above what South Yorkshire police have already accepted and implemented from previous investigations some years ago.

“It repeats what past reports and reviews have shown – that there was unacceptable practice between 1997 and 2013 – but fails to identify any individual accountability. As a result, it lets down victims and survivors.”

Former detective turned grooming gang whistleblower Maggie Oliver added: “Where is the accountability of Senior Police, social services bosses, Cps prosecutors… nowhere to be seen! An ongoing National scandal which makes me sick to my stomach!”

Accepting the findings of the review, South Yorkshire Police Deputy Chief Constable Tim Forber said: “Whilst I am confident we are a very different force today, I will not lose sight of the fact that we got it wrong and we let victims down.”

Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka

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