Rotherham grooming scandal 10 years on: 'progress has been made'

A decade on from the shocking report into child sexual exploitation in Rotherham, it’s claimed progress has been made – but there is still work to do.

The Jay Report was an independent inquiry which found at least 1,400 underage girls had been abused between 1997 and 2013.

The report criticised Rotherham Council and South Yorkshire Police for failing to protect the victims.

All this week we’re hearing from people involved in tackling the issue of child sexual exploitation in Rotherham about what’s changed over the last decade, and what challenges still remain.

THE COUNCIL: ‘COMMUNITY INTELLIGENCE HAS DOUBLED’

Leader of Rotherham Council Chris Read says the Jay Report was ‘shocking and appalling’.

“Clearly we couldn’t go back and change the terrible things that had happened, but we could make every effort to make the future brighter and prevent it from happening ever again,” he says.

“There have been huge changes in the way that we respond. If you go back to Alexis Jay’s report, you see a culture that doesn’t understand child sexual exploitation and wasn’t taking it seriously.

“We’ve transformed the way our children’s services works.”

Darren Downs is responsible for scrutinising the council’s safeguarding of children in Rotherham and agrees that things have fundamentally changed:

“If we do get information and intelligence when a crime has taken place we will be relentless in pursuing the offenders, getting them into custody and making sure we get justice for the victims and survivors.

“Rotherham are now nationally seen as one of the leaders in this activity. Very responsive with a massive amount of scrutiny across the whole partnership.

“One of our key aims is around prevention and the amount of community intelligence coming in in the last three or four years has doubled. Which is brilliant because it means the communities have got a bit of faith in us, they’ve got some trust in us.

“We’re continuing to push for more community intelligence, more information. Talk to us, tell us what’s happening, what your concerns are. And we will educate communities, professionals and the children around what to look for and how to keep themselves safe.”

Councillor Read says the challenge now is children being approached online typically by individual perpetrators rather than groups of men acting together.

“So very much moving away from on-street grooming, although those things can and do still happen. But the model has definitely shifted.”

We'll hear from more voices on this through the week.