Officials turned blind eye to child sex abuse on an industrial scale
HUNDREDS of young girls are feared to have been abused by paedophile gangs while social workers and police turned a blind eye, a shock report revealed yesterday.
The “indescribably awful” exploitation in Oxfordshire mirrors scandals in Rotherham, Rochdale and Derby.
And yesterday David Cameron spoke of child abuse taking place “on an industrial scale” across the country.
The independent report was commissioned after seven men, all Muslims, were jailed for a total of 95 years two years ago for a series of sexual offences against six vulnerable white girls in the county.
Author Dr Alan Bedford, on behalf of Oxfordshire Safeguarding Children Board, found that victims as young as 11 were groomed by gangs with drugs, alcohol and gifts.
The girls were physically and sexually assaulted and forced into prostitution.
Unlawful
Some were forced to undergo “crude abortions” and one was even branded with the initials of the man who raped her.
There were as many as 373 victims over the course of 16 years.
Dr Bedford found Oxfordshire County Council and Thames Valley Police had either not believed victims’ accounts or seen them as exaggerated.
“There were misguided interpretations of the law around consent, and an apparent tolerance of ( or failure to be alarmed by) unlawful sexual activity,” the report said.
One girl who arrived at a police station in the early hours of the morning with the crotch of her trousers soaked in blood was dismissed as “naughty” and a “nuisance”.
Victims were described as “prostituting themselves” and “deliberately” putting themselves at risk.
In one case officers refused to tell one couple where their daughter was because she seemed “happy” with her abusers. Dr Bedford stopped short of calling for individual resignations.
He wrote however: “What happened to the child victims of the sexual exploitation in Oxfordshire was indescribably awful.
“The child victims and their families feel very let down. Their accounts are disturbing and chastening.”
Although five of the seven men convicted for abuse were of Pakistani origin, he said that there was “no evidence of any agency not acting when they should have done because of racial sensitivities”.
Sara Thornton, chief consta- ble of Thames Valley Police, said: “We are ashamed of the shortcomings identified in this report.”
Jim Leivers, of Oxfordshire County Council, admitted it had “made many mistakes and missed opportunities to stop the abuse”.
The Prime Minister, whose Witney constituency is in West Oxfordshire, unveiled proposals to extend the crime of wilful neglect to include those responsible for children’s social care and education.
Speaking at a child protection summit in Downing Street, Mr Cameron said: “It’s very important we take a step back and just recognise the horrific nature of what has happened in our country – young girls being abused over and over again on an industrial scale, being raped, being passed from one bunch of perpetrators to another bunch of perpetrators.
“We have got to really resolve that this stops here, it doesn’t happen again and we recognise abuse for what it is.”
Jon Brown, of the NSPCC, said: “We mustn’t assume this kind of abuse is a thing of the past.”