Rotherham child abuse victim condemns police ‘who failed to act’
A WOMAN whose sexual exploitation as a child was ignored by police over fears of increasing racial tensions in Rotherham has said the force “aided and abetted” the abuse of hundreds of children.
The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) upheld six complaints against South Yorkshire Police by a woman abused as a child for several years, starting in 2003.
According to a leaked report, the watchdog said it was “very clear that you were sexually exploited by Asian men” and found police were aware of suspects but “took insufficient action to prevent you from harm”.
The woman, who received the 13-page report last Wednesday after first making the complaints in 2014, said children were “sacrificed” by police failings.
She said: “I always thought that maybe the police didn’t understand what was happening until I got the report, and now I fully understand that they knew exactly what was going on. How could they do this to hundreds and hundreds of children?
“How could they go home at night after doing a shift and go to sleep? We were never seen as children abused, they didn’t care at all.”
The woman said the abuse began in her early teens when she was befriended by a woman, known to the police as being involved in child sexual exploitation, who introduced her to older Asian men to be groomed.
Her mother complained that South Yorkshire Police “would not listen and left you in dangerous situations, letting people do what they wanted and they never questioned anybody about what was happening”, the report said.
The IOPC upheld the complaint that the force was aware of suspects involved in her exploitation and failed to act, leaving her with people who were grooming the teenager.
South Yorkshire Police said it accepted the IOPC’s findings and “recognises the failings of its past”.
The IOPC’s Operation Linden was launched in 2014 with the watchdog conducting 91 independent investigations into the allegations that senior officers failed in their statutory duty to protect children between 1999 and 2011.