WHY DID NO ONE DO ANYTHING?

THE unfathomable failure to act in cases such as Sarah’s was once commonplace — as a Whitehall commissioned independent review published in July spells out. The review investigated the police’s and the Home Office’s lamentable reaction to sex grooming in the late 1990s and well into the 2000s.

It told of a teenager called H, who was one of 1,500 girls abused by sex groomers in Rotherham, South Yorkshire. H’s mother told the police her child was in the clutches of a gang, only to be instructed to ‘go and get your daughter yourself if you know where she is. It is not the role of the police to run around after 14-year-olds’.

Time and again, while reporting on grooming gangs and their victims for more than a decade, I have encountered the same thing: parents regarded by police as hysterical time wasters, while their daughters were dismissed as ‘silly girls’ who had ‘asked for it’.

Incredible as it seems, some brave mothers who went to gangs’ houses to try to rescue their children were even threatened by police with harassment offences, according to this review.

The fact is, the widespread culture of political correctness meant the authorities were deeply afraid of being accused of racism if they went after Asian sex-grooming gangs. Their reluctance to act led to the nationwide scandal of grooming being kept from the general public.

Many of the cases recently brought to court — cases that finally resulted in convictions of gang members — have involved girls who were abused up to two decades ago, and whose families’ cries for help were conveniently ignored for years.

When we asked the police force involved in Sarah’s case why they took so long to act, they replied: ‘Our understanding of and approach to issues such as child sexual exploitation and modern slavery has evolved and improved over the past decade, as is the case with police forces up and down the country.

‘ We have had major success stories in recent years in these areas, securing lengthy prison sentences for those perpetrating such crimes and establishing specialist support services to help victims.

‘Officers are far more aware of issues around vulnerability, while we also have specialist, dedicated resources to deal with such cases, including historic ones.

‘Victims of these crimes should have every confidence in our force’s ability to tackle criminal exploitation and bring those responsible to justice.’