Six reports published into ‘blatant’ failure at council
SIX REPORTS exploring the “blatant” failures by senior figures at Rotherham Council over the town’s abuse scandal – and alleged attempts to cover up what was happening – are to be published this afternoon.
Independent investigations have been conducted into a series of issues relating to the child sexual exploitation scandal, in which an estimated 1,400 victims were abused over a 16-year period in the town – largely by men of a Pakistani-heritage background.
Each of the reports are to be discussed during a meeting at Rotherham Town Hall at 2pm.
The investigations are into issues raised by reports by Professor Alexis Jay and Dame Louise Casey in 2014 and 2015.
The first report examines the conduct of senior council employees between 1997 and 2015.
Professor Jay’s report said: “The collective failures of political and officer leadership were blatant.
“Within social care, the scale and seriousness of the problem was underplayed by senior managers.”
The second report is a review of 15 case studies contained in Professor Jay’s report which laid out how police and social workers “completely failed” abused children.
The third report relates to an incident described to MPs on the Home Affairs Select Committee in which key child abuse files belonging to a researcher who was investigating the activities of grooming gangs in the town were allegedly stolen from a locked council office in 2002.
The fourth report relates to missing minutes of meetings relating to child protection cases between the late 1990s and 2003/04.
The fifth report is focused on the theft of 21 laptops from Rotherham Council’s Norfolk House offices on the night of October 26, 2011.
One of the laptops held details about an ongoing police investigation into alleged child sexual exploitation offences in the town involving taxi drivers.
The final report examines taxi licensing and enforcement in the town since 2010 after Professor Jay highlighted the “prominent role of taxi drivers” in abuse in her report.
Professor Jay is a former senior social worker.
She was previously chief social work adviser to the Scottish Government and a former president of the Association of Directors of Social Work.