What makes me so upset is that I saw these girls deteriorate because of the terrible abuse. They could’ve done anything, but they didn’t...
HERO OF GROOMING SCANDAL ON HOW IT INFECTS UK TOWNS
She was just a girl. A white British teenager, dressed in a sari, injured, distressed, her body covered in cuts and bruises. She had been dumped on the Pennine moors in the middle of the night and told to walk home. Distraught and terrified, she instead made for the Rochdale Crisis Intervention Team’s office to wait for Sara Rowbotham to arrive at work.
That was just one harrowing memory from Sara’s 10 years as an NHS sexual health worker in the town where she uncovered evidence of horrific sex abuse being perpetrated against dozens of girls by older Asian men.
Her hard work won Sara and her team a Special Recognition honour at the NHS Heroes Awards, brought to you by ITV and the Mirror, which will be screened on Monday.
The Rochdale abuse scandal shone a light on other towns and cities and helped expose other child grooming rings in Telford and Aylesbury. But while Sara is pleased victims are now taken seriously, she says still more needs to be done.
She says: “I think every area in the country now has a strategy, a procedure, a dedicated team, so lots of investment has been put into this. Everyone is more aware.
“But at the same time I saw a story in the local paper a few months ago where a 12-year-old girl was walking down the street in a state of distress.
“Some people came out to make sure she was okay – she was upset because her boyfriend had finished with her. But her boyfriend was 25 and he had groomed her online. So it hasn’t stopped, has it? And the prevention techniques that have been used haven’t stopped that 12-year-old from becoming involved with that perpetrator.”
Tackling the predators should be the main priority, she says. “All they ever talk about is making children and young women resilient to the pressures. They don’t talk about why the hell aren’t we making these men pack it in?
“What are we doing to change their attitude and stop their behaviour? Where is the prevention around that?
“I don’t think long sentences are deterrent enough. We are still in an environment where predatory men are seeking out children.”
For years, Sara and her team banged on the doors of police and social services trying to get help for the girls and action against the men who preyed on them.
In 2012, nine men were finally convicted for grooming young girls after an investigation had found more than 40 girls across Rochdale had been targeted and groomed at takeaways in the area.
Some girls were raped by several men, one after another, or taken in taxis to locations across the North of England, plied with drugs and alcohol, and raped. Some of the girls got pregnant. One, aged just 13, had an abortion. Fighting back tears, Sara says: “Those girls had so much potential. What makes me so upset is that I watched them deteriorate because of the terrible abuse they suffered. They could have achieved whatever they wanted, but they didn’t. “Now some of them have substance addictions, severe mental health problems, have had their own children taken into care. What happened to them impacted on their entire futures.”
Sara, now 51, had set up the Crisis Intervention Team in 2003, and very quickly realised that Rochdale had a problem with child sexual exploitation.
She says: “The first girl who was referred to the team was described as performing sex acts for free to year 10 boys in school hours.
“By the time she was about 14 she started to make disclosures about situations she was involved in, like going to parties, taking other girls, getting really drunk, having sex with multiple people at parties, sometimes she would be given money, sometimes she wouldn’t.
“That group of girls got bigger and we were concerned about all of them.
“But then, completely separate to that, we met another group of girls who started to say similar names of men. We
started to piece things together. It was very rare that a young person would come in and say they had been sexually assaulted or exploited.”
The BBC drama, Three Girls, showed how Sara, who was played by Maxine Peake, and her team compiled lists of names, and started to flag up their concerns to police and social services. But their reports fell on deaf ears, as shown in the drama, which also starred Liv Hill, Lisa Riley and Molly Windsor, who won the Leading Actress TV BAFTA last Sunday for her portrayal of one victim
Sara made more than 180 referrals to police and social services, but little or no action was taken.
She says: “It just became a case of batting the ball back and forwards. Sometimes social services would do an
It hasn’t stopped. Predatory men are still seeking out children SARA ROWBOTHAM ON ABUSE IN THE UK
initial assessment and that was it, sometimes the police would take information for intelligence, but that was it.”
In 2008, a girl arrested for smashing up a takeaway in Heywood, near Rochdale, told police she was being abused and provided DNA evidence on her underwear. Two men were arrested, but prosecutors took no action as she was not deemed a “credible witness”.
Finally, police launched Operation Span in December 2009 and in 2011 new Chief Prosecutor Nazir Afzal reversed the decision not to charge the two men. The following year nine men were convicted and jailed for a total of 77 years, and the police and local council apologised for failures.
In 2015, another four men were jailed for a total of 37 years for similar grooming offences, and Sara says she has been involved in nine court cases so far.
Across the country, more and more girls have spoken out, largely due to Sara. She described her gong, presented by Lisa Riley, Will Mellor and Sue Johnston, as an “amazing accolade”.
She said: “It feels a bit weird to be getting this award. I just kind of wish it had never happened in the first place. This award is for the team, and the girls who were brave enough to tell their stories and bring those men to justice.”