Rotherham: The key questions answered

Why was the inquiry commissioned?
The independent inquiry was commissioned by Rotherham Council in September 2013 after South Yorkshire Police was criticised by the home affairs select committee for its handling of child sexual exploitation and a lack of successful prosecutions.

The extent of child sexual exploitation (CSE) in Rotherham first became apparent following police operations, that led to five men - Zafran Ramzan, Razwan Razaq, Umar Razaq, Adil Hussain and Mohsin Khan - being jailed in 2010 for child sex offences.

In the same year, 17-year-old single mother Laura Wilson, who had been known to agencies over a long period of time, was found dead in a canal having suffered multiple stab wounds at the hands of her boyfriend – Ashtiaq Ashgar. The judge at the trial said he believed Asghar, who was sentenced to life for the murder, treated white girls as "sexual targets" and not like human beings and a serious case review was carried out.

Although these incidents came to light there was concern that many others were being missed, not being dealt with or investigated appropriately.

What did the report find?
Author Alexis Jay, former chief social work adviser to the Scottish government, is highly critical of the handling of CSE by both Rotherham Council and South Yorkshire Police.

Shockingly, she makes the conservative estimate that approximately 1,400 children were sexually exploited over the full inquiry period, from 1997 to 2013.

In just over a third of the cases, children subjected to sexual exploitation were previously known to services because of concerns raised about child protection and neglect.

Girls as young as 11 were raped by large numbers of male perpetrators, trafficked to other towns and cities in the north of England, abducted, beaten, and intimidated.

The report even gives examples of children who had been doused with petrol and threatened with being set alight, threatened with guns, made to witness violent rapes and threatened that they would be next if they told anyone.

When did it happen?
Much of the abuse happened in the earlier time period covered by the report (1997 to 2009), but the report warns that it continues to this day.

It found that the caseload of the specialist child sexual exploitation team at the authority in May this year was 51, with more CSE cases held by other children's social care teams.

There were 16 looked-after children who were identified by children’s social care as being at serious risk of sexual exploitation or having been sexually exploited, and, in 2013, police received 157 reports concerning CSE in the borough.

Did anyone know about it?
Yes. The report states that “from the beginning” there was evidence that CSE was a serious problem in Rotherham.

Evidence came from those working in residential care and from youth workers at the Risky Business youth project who knew young people in the area well.

Indeed, Risky Business was set up in 1997, following concerns by local staff about young people being abused through prostitution.

Did they warn anyone?
Yes. In 1998, a small survey conducted by Risky Business identified 70 young women and 11 young men under 18 who were being sexually exploited.

In 2003, the council’s Area Child Protection Committee received reports about runaway children and the work of Risky Business.

Why was no action taken?
Action was taken – but the issue was not prioritised. The leader of the council set up a "Task and Finish Group" to consider safe travel, safe houses, witness protection, training and publicity to raise public awareness of the issue.

Senior councillors attended a conference on CSE held in Rotherham in April 2006. A training session for councillors was arranged in June 2007 and another conference in 2011.
However, the report found that, within social care, the scale and seriousness of the problem was underplayed by senior managers.

Meanwhile, at an operational level, the police gave no priority to CSE, “regarding many child victims with contempt and failing to act on their abuse as a crime”.

The report also found that there were “too many examples” of young people who were properly referred by Risky Business to children’s social care who ”somehow fell through the net and were not treated with the priority that they deserved”.

What has been done?
The report says many of the failings have been addressed by Rotherham Council after the government issued its children’s services with an improvement notice in 2009.

However, Jay still makes 15 recommendations for improving how the council tackles CSE, including introducing a single manager for the joint CSE team; clarifying its remit and responsibilities; developing a more strategic approach to protecting looked-after children who are sexually exploited; improving support for victims; and reviewing the resources allocated to CSE work.

Did ethnicity play a part?
Yes. By far the majority of perpetrators were described as "Asian" by victims, yet throughout the entire period, councillors did not engage directly with the Pakistani-heritage community to discuss how best they could jointly address the issue.

“Some councillors seemed to think it was a one-off problem, which they hoped would go away,” the report states.

Staff were also nervous about identifying the ethnic origins of perpetrators for fear of being thought racist. Others said they received clear direction from their managers not to do so.

What has happened since the report was published?
Rotherham Council leader Roger Stone stepped down with immediate effect.

There were also calls for South Yorkshire’s police and crime commissioner Shaun Wright, who was previously lead member for children’s services in Rotherham, to stand down, including from the Labour Party, who he represented as PCC.

Wright later resigned from the Labour Party but has insisted he will not leave his PCC post.

Wright's deputy Tracy Cheetham quit yesterday — saying she can no longer work for him.

There have also been calls for Sonia Sharp, who was director of children’s services in Rotherham between 2005 and 2008 to stand down from her current job in Australian state government.

Sharp’s successor Joyce Thacker remains strategic director of children and young people's services in Rotherham – with chief executive of the council Martin Kimber describing her as "part of the solution in achieving better services".

Meanwhile, the government has announced that Rotherham’s next safeguarding inspection will be brought forward.

And children's minister Edward Timpson has written to the authority seeking "urgent reassurance" about how it is responding to the issues identified in the inquiry report.

What else has come to light?
A former Rotherham care home worker told the BBC how girls as young as 11 were "brazenly" groomed and abused in the South Yorkshire town. The man, who worked at children's homes for four years, said girls would be picked up by taxis and abusers made "no attempts to disguise" their actions.

And today the Times reported that senior staff at Rotherham Council ordered a raid on one of their offices to remove case files and wipe computer records detailing the scale and severity of the town’s CSE issue. It reports that a raid was carried out at the office of Risky Business in 2002, after council staff became aware of the contents of a draft 2000/01 research project detailing the scale of CSE in the town.

What are the outstanding questions?

• Is the situation in Rotherham indicative of other authorities in England? According to recent research – the answer could well be yes. An inquiry by the Office of the Children’s Commissioner for England identified more than 2,400 children as victims of sexual exploitation, and estimated that a further 16,500 are at risk of abuse.
  
  The second part of the inquiry found that only six per cent of local safeguarding children boards comply with all the requirements of government guidance on safeguarding children and young people from sexual exploitation.
  
  
• Should Ofsted have spotted the issue earlier?
  In December 2009, the council’s children’s safeguarding services were placed into intervention, following a critical Ofsted report.
  
  The council was removed from intervention 13 months later. Concerns were raised about the authority's response to CSE. Should the regulator have recognised that children were being left at risk to abuse?

• How far will government go in Rotherham?
  The current government has made it clear that it will intervene in failing children’s services departments.
  
  An independent trust is being set up to deliver children’s services in Doncaster and action is being taken in both Birmingham and Slough. Will Rotherham be next?
  
  
• Are government cuts partly to blame?
  The report highlights the fact that a lack of resources within children’s social care contributed to the failures. Although this was later addressed it raises questions about local authority priorities as councils face the prospect of having to continue to make savings throughout the next parliament up to 2020.
  
  Speaking in April this year, the then Association of Directors of Children’s Services president Andrew Webb warned that local authorities must find different ways of working in light of this.
  
  "We need to create a much lower unit cost for everything we do while keeping the same number of children in the system, or we have to look differently at the system," he said.