Why did no-one take me seriously?
SAMMY Woodhouse, a victim of the Rotherham scandal, has slammed the failure to punish police officers who let down abused girls.
Now a campaigner for victims of Asian grooming gangs, she has turned her life around after years of sexual abuse during her teens.
Mother-of-two Miss Woodhouse, 36, whose tormentor Arshid Hussain was jailed for 35 years, said: ‘I’m absolutely disgusted that not one professional will ever be held to account for the sexual and criminal exploitation of myself and others in Rotherham.’
She was put into foster care by her parents to try and stop her relationship with Hussain, a married 24-year-old fatherof-two, when the sexual abuse began at 14. Yet because she had said at the time she was besotted with Hussain, police and social workers stood by.
She twice became pregnant by Hussain but no action was taken as the authorities deemed she consented and refused to lodge a complaint. They regarded her as a girlfriend rather than abuse victim.
Hussain forced her to abort the first pregnancy. She escaped her abuser at 15 when he was jailed for a violent offence.