Alexis Jay’s recent report on sexual exploitation in Rotherham gave a “conservative estimate” of 1,400 children – mostly girls, some as young as 11 – who were threatened, tortured, raped and trafficked over a 16-year period while police and a council, described as “misogynistic” in culture, failed to protect them or charge perpetrators.
This was the latest in a series of scandals revealing that police and social services employees in areas across the country and over several decades did not just turn a blind eye to abuse but also blamed young victims and, in some cases, actively colluded with perpetrators.
Powerful and high-profile offenders like Jimmy Savile and Cyril Smith MP escaped justice, their victims silenced by agencies that should have assisted them.
So far, the focus of investigation has been Wales, parts of London, the Midlands and the north of England, where the abuse of many children appears to have been organised and particularly blatant.
We should, however, not assume that casual misogyny, victim-blaming, collusion and cover-ups have not happened here in the south.
We may consider “our” politicians and officials to have been more enlightened than elsewhere.
In almost all of the known affected areas, however, councils and police services were run by people who considered themselves progressive, priding themselves on their commitment to liberty, diversity, and community cohesion.
These principles became theoretical justifications for abject failure to protect young people from sexual predators.
I trained as a social worker in Sussex in the mid-1980s. As part of my course, I worked on placement at a local mental health facility and set up a small group for women. I wanted to invite a profoundly depressed and withdrawn middle-aged patient who was said to have had an incestuous “relationship” with her father.
The consultant psychiatrist in charge refused permission for me to approach her, describing her as a “disgusting little woman”.
That woman had endured sexual abuse by her father from early childhood through into adulthood.
Ironically, once the group began, it emerged that, unknown to their doctors, at least two of the participants had been abused in childhood. One had experienced four decades of mental illness and treatment but had never had the opportunity to disclose safely the fact that she had been raped for years by her wealthy and by then long-dead father.
After I qualified, I worked in a social services-run project for vulnerable 16 to 20-year-old girls and young women in Hove (later closed in an early round of budget cuts). Most had been sexually abused.
Many had not been believed when they first disclosed and had been sent back to live with their tormentors. Several had been abused while in care in foster placements.
I attended court with a young client who gave evidence against her stepfather, a sadistic bully who for 10 years had sexually abused and tortured her, along with her siblings, her mother, and pets. I was proud of her courage and composure as she gave evidence and deeply grateful to the police officers who had prepared the case against her abuser.
After the visibly sickened jury decided the man’s guilt, a police inspector who happened to be in court, remarked with a contemptuous curl of his lip: “Well, you can see from the look of her she’s no innocent.”
