Survivors of Rotherham grooming scandal put on national CSE conference
Women affected by Rotherham's grooming scandal, including survivors, have organised a national conference.
Police officers, teachers and policy makers from Government are going to be amongst those reflecting on what lessons have been learned from the Rotherham grooming scandal.
Survivors as well as those who've supported them will be sharing their experiences at a national conference in Leeds.
It's called Coming out of the Darkness and will also explore what postitive work is being done now and how much progress has been made.
Jayne Senior and Adele Gladman have organised it.
Both women have worked with issues around child sexual exploitation in Rotherham.
Jayne was the manager of the specialist CSE service, the Risky Business Project in Rotherham for 12 years and is currently the Chief Executive of Swinton Lock.
She's contributed to several inquiries and investigations into Rotherham and continues to work closely with those affected by CSE.
She told Hallam FM:
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"One of the things that they regularly say to us is that it's been a dark period in their life for a lot of years. From day one they have been part of organising this. This is their one opportunity to get across that this could be anybody's child.
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"This is not just an issue for Rotherham. Child sexual exploitation is happening everywhere. We want people to be actively looking at this issue. For me, one of the main goals is that at the end of the day everybody that leaves the conference walks away and says 'If we've only got one child going through this, we've got one child too many'."
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Amongst the speakers are Louise Casey who carried out an independent inspection of Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council and Professor Alexis Jay whose report exposed the town's grooming scandal.