Rotherham Child Sex Abuse Investigation Uncovers Several Hundred Suspects And Several Thousand Leads

Rotherham Child Sex Abuse Investigation Uncovers Several Hundred Suspects And Several Thousand Leads

The Huffington Post UK   By Steven Hopkins 24/06/2015

Hundreds of potential suspects have been identified in an investigation into child sex abuse in Rotherham, along with several thousand new lines of enquiry, police have said.

The National Crime Agency began an investigation in December last year following the Alexis Jay report that revealed there were 1400 victims of abuse in the town between 1997 and 2013. Police and other authorities knew about the abuse, but failed to act.

Police said Wednesday that "stage one" of their investigation had uncovered "a significant number of potential offenders. The current figure is in the low hundreds"....

Steve Baldwin, who is a Senior Investigating Officer involved in the operation, said police now had more than 3,300 lines of enquiry.

He said the abuse was "horrific" and the evidence police had gathered "details some very disturbing events".

Police believe the 1,400 victims identified in the Alexis Jay report remains a "very good assessment" of the numbers of children abused during the time period....

Last month two new reports revealed that authorities in Rotherham had been warned about child sexual exploitation in 2003 - and given a list of the suspected main offenders - and told three years later that the problem was established and very serious, but had failed to investigate.

Dr Angie Heal provided a list of potential abusers as part of a report on the links between grooming and drug dealing in 2003 to police and council officials. That report and another from 2006 were released under the Freedom of Information Act to The Sheffield Star....

Last year, an inquiry found 1,400 children were abused by gangs of men, mainly of Pakistani origin, in South Yorkshire between 1997 and 2013.

The inquiry concluded: "It is hard to describe the appalling nature of the abuse that child victims suffered."....

Prof Jay said: "They were raped by multiple perpetrators, trafficked to other towns and cities in the north of England, abducted, beaten and intimidated."....
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/06/24/rotherham-child-sex-inquiry-hundreds-of-suspects_n_7652706.html