Police escape blame despite child sex-abuse blunders

NOT a single police officer has been held accountable for a string of appalling mistakes that allowed ruthless grooming gangs to traffic, abuse and rape more than 1,400 girls during Britain’s biggest child abuse scandal, a damning report has revealed.

South Yorkshire Police have admitted failing to protect vulnerable children in Rotherham who were targeted between 1997 and 2013 by gangs of largely Pakistani men. A lengthy investigation and report by the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) has identified numerous shocking examples of officers turning a blind eye or ignoring the plight of girls as young as 11.

In one case, they failed to investigate an older man who was found undressed in a bedroom with one of his victims.

In another, they did not act when a perpetrator handed over a missing girl as part of a deal not to arrest him. One victim’s father was told by a senior officer nothing could be done to help his daughter because of “racial tensions” surrounding the investigation.

When victims attempted to report cases to the police, they were often ignored or in some cases even blamed for being abused.

After the scandal was exposed in 2014, the police watchdog carried out 91 investigations covering 265 separate allegations against the police, made by 44 victims of abuse and exploitation.

Out of the 47 police officers investigated by the watchdog, eight were found to have a case to answer for misconduct and six for gross misconduct.

But the final report, published yesterday, confirmed that not a single officer had lost their job or been prosecuted as a result of the scandal.

Seven officers who were found to have committed either misconduct or gross misconduct had retired, which meant no action could be taken against them. Only five others received sanctions ranging from management action up to a final written warning.

Outlining the findings, Michael Lockwood, the IOPC director general, said: “We found that officers were not fully aware, or able to deal with, child sexual abuse and exploitation offences and showed insufficient empathy towards survivors who were vulnerable children and young people.

“We saw examples of SYP seeing children, and young people, as ‘consenting’ to their exploitation, and a police culture that did not always recognise survivors as victims, or understand that, often, neither did those being groomed or abused.”