'Life's ruined': UK town broken by grooming gangs wants answers

by James PHEBY

Once famed as an industrial powerhouse that produced some of the world's finest steel, Rotherham is now known as the epicentre of the UK grooming scandal, leaving the town angry, ashamed and needing answers.

The issue of UK grooming gangs was again thrust into the spotlight when tech billionaire Elon Musk launched incendiary attacks on his X platform against the UK government for resisting calls for a new national inquiry.

Over the course of several decades, men of mostly South Asian origin in various English towns are suspected of abusing thousands of mostly white girls from working class families, often from troubled homes. More than 100 people have been convicted of the crimes.

"Of course it's still going on -- I think it's going on across every town, every city in the UK," Jayne Senior, an early whistleblower about the problem, told AFP.

Senior is a former manager at Risky Business, a youth project set up in 1997 by the local authority in Rotherham, where an estimated 1,400 girls fell prey to the gangs.

- 'Horrendous abuse' -

Her group helped almost 2,000 girls and boys at risk of being groomed, and she lodged a successful complaint against police for failing to act on evidence she presented.

"There was physical, mental torture, trafficking and horrendous, horrendous abuse," Senior said.

At the start of the group "it tended to be predominantly girls 15 to 16, upwards. By 2012, what we saw is the majority of referrals were from about age 12," she explained.

She frequently clashed with police and local authorities, accusing them of indifference.

"We'd share telephone numbers, registration numbers, descriptions, names, dates of birth of those that we believed were harming, raping, trafficking our children."

There was "very little response," she said, adding: "We could have done so much more."

The decline of the steel industry over recent decades has hit the town hard, and more than one in four high street units now stand empty.

Trauma over the grooming gang revelations still runs deep.

"A friend ... it happened to her daughter and she's all over the place now with her mental health," said Sandra Shirtliffe, 59.

Standing outside the hair salon where she works, Claire, 50, also told AFP she knew one of the gang's victims.

"Sarah, whose sister was killed, she comes in for her hair done."

Sarah Wilson was groomed by the town's gangs as an 11-year-old and raped multiple times.

Her younger sister Laura was murdered by her Pakistani boyfriend, who had treated white girls "as sexual targets," the sentencing judge said.

- 'Swept under the carpet' -

When asked why police were reluctant to pursue her leads, Senior said: "I've never been able to give a definitive answer".

"What I can share with you is what was said at meetings. And it could be that these children were consenting.

"How children consent to gang rape, I have no idea. Or they were in relationships, you know, 12-year-olds in relationships with 30-year-old men."

But the majority of the time, police thought a jury would not believe the children "because some of the stories that they were sharing were so horrifying".

"Life's been ruined in Rotherham," former miner Ralph Spooner, 80, told AFP in the town's indoor market.

"There's a lot of anger," he added, saying he would like to see officials who ignored the grooming scandal "answer under oath" at a national inquiry.

"It's been swept under the carpet. There's obviously something that's not quite right," added market stall holder Paula.

- 'Dereliction of duty' -

A 2014 inquiry into child sexual exploitation in Rotherham found evidence of "blatant failures" by the authorities. Then-interior minister Theresa May denounced what she called "a complete dereliction of duty".

The current government under Prime Minister Keir Starmer has resisted calls for a national inquiry focused on the grooming gangs, and says it will conduct a series of local probes.

Instead of showing contrition, Senior says the authorities have targeted those who spoke out.

Senior and a colleague complained to the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) in 2019 that senior local police officers had failed to protect children.

The complaint was upheld, but the IOPC refused to publish it.

"We were told very clearly that if we published it ... then the senior officers that we complained about would sue us," said Senior.

IOPC whistleblowers have revealed that Senior, who is demanding a wide-ranging national inquiry, was seen as a "bit of a pain".

"Not one senior professional in Rotherham has ever been held to account," she said, and no officials have answered questions under oath.

"Why was this allowed to happen? Why did it happen? Why did nobody do anything?" she asked.

"A lot of these victims and survivors still do not have their answers."

© Agence France-Presse