Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Exploitation in Rotherham

Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal

Rotherham town centre, March 2010
Date	At least 1980s–today
Location	Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England
Coordinates	53°25′48″N 1°21′25″W / 53.430°N 1.357°W / 53.430; -1.357Coordinates: 53°25′48″N 1°21′25″W / 53.430°N 1.357°W / 53.430; -1.357
Events	Child sexual abuse of at least 1,400 girls(1997-2013) aged c. 11–15
Reporter	Andrew Norfolk of The Times, with information from Jayne Senior, youth worker
Inquiries	Home Affairs Committee (2013–2014) Jay inquiry (2014) Casey inquiry (2015)
Trials	Sheffield Crown Court, 2010, 2016–2017, convictions for rape, conspiracy to rape, aiding and abetting rape, sexual intercourse with a girl under 13, indecent assault, false imprisonment, procurement.
Convictions	Nov 2010: Five men Feb 2016: Five men and two women Oct 2016: Eight men Jan 2017: Six men
Awards	Andrew Norfolk: Orwell Prize (2013), Journalist of the Year (2014) Jayne Senior: MBE (2016 Birthday Honours)

Andrew Norfolk: Orwell Prize (2013), Journalist of the Year (2014)

The Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal has been described as the "biggest child protection scandal in UK history". From the late 1980s until the 2010s, organised child sexual abuse continued almost unchallenged in the northern English town of Rotherham, South Yorkshire. It was first documented in the early 1990s, when care-home managers investigated reports that children in their care were being picked up by taxi drivers. From at least 2001, multiple reports passed the names of the perpetrators, several from one family, to the police and Rotherham Council. The first prosecutions took place in 2010, when five British-Pakistani men were convicted of sexual offences against girls aged 12–16, but the ringleaders remained at large. From January 2011 Andrew Norfolk of The Times pressed the issue, reporting in 2012 that the abuse in the town was widespread, and that the police and council had known about it for over ten years.

The Times articles, along with the trial in 2012 of the Rochdale child sex abuse ring, prompted the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee to hold hearings. Following this and further articles from Norfolk, Rotherham Council commissioned an independent inquiry led by Professor Alexis Jay. In August 2014 the Jay report concluded that at least 1,400 children, most of them white girls aged 11–15, had been sexually abused in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013 by predominantly British-Pakistani men. A "common thread" was that taxi drivers had been picking the children up for sex from care homes and schools. The abuse included gang rape, forcing children to watch rape, dousing them with petrol and threatening to set them on fire, threatening to rape their mothers and younger sisters, and trafficking them to other towns. There were pregnancies—at least one at age 12—terminations, miscarriages, babies raised by their mothers, and babies removed, causing further trauma.