Rotherham in N.Ireland e n d e m i c of Sexually Abusing Children
Rotherham has been labelled a town of shame in the wake of revelations that 1,400 children were sexually exploited over a 16-year-period, but experts and campaigners argue the same abuse is continuing to happen across the country, and is hidden in other boroughs that refuse to acknowledge the problem.
"When you look at the Rotherham report – nature of the abuse, the failures – you could write the same report about any number of different places," said Dr Helen Beckett, of the International Centre, which researches child sexual exploitation, violence and trafficking at the University of Bedfordshire. "What we see time and time again is that young people are not treated as victims, there is a real failure to see the vulnerability of these young people and instead write them off as out of control, problematic teenagers."
There is mounting evidence that the shocking revelations in the Rotherham report could provide a glimpse of the scale of childhood sexual abuse across the country, and not just in one town.
In an extensive report into the nature of child sexual exploitation, the Office of the Children's Commissioner identified 2,409 victims over a 14-month period and estimated that 16,500 children were at risk of a specific type of abuse that can see gangs of abusers grooming children as young as 11 in order to rape, sexually abuse and, in some cases, traffic them among other men and between cities.
"It's endemic," said Ray McMorrow, a health specialist at the National Working Group, a charity set up in Derby in the wake of the first prosecutions into child sexual exploitation. "Rotherham is just one of the places that it's been identified."
McMorrow acknowledged that in Rotherham, as well as other cases such as Derby, Rochdale, Telford and in Oxford, perpetrators have been mainly Asian, but said other cases were emerging with white perpetrators. Analysis of the 2012 report by the deputy children's commissioner said that 33% of child sex abuse by gangs in Britain was committed by Asians, where Asians are 7% of the population, but similarly concluded that it was "irresponsible" to dwell on ethnicity.
But he pointed to Operation Kern in Derby which saw the conviction of white abusers but received no national media coverage. White men were also found guilty in Torbay and a recent case in Peterborough involved men of Czech and Slovak Roma and Kurdish backgrounds.
"If we are only looking at one type of network involving only certain types of men and boys, then we are missing victims," he said.
According to Beckett, one of the leading voices of research into child sexual exploitation, while the crime is not new there is a sense that young people are more vulnerable to the type of grooming that can be carried out online, on social networks and by mobile phones. In Rotherham and other cases that have emerged since 2010, children have been groomed online, or controlled via texts. In some instances, explicit videos and pictures have been used to blackmail victims. "These avenues have given perpetrators more access and increased the risks for victims," she said.
Dr Ella Cockbain, a researcher at University College London (UCL), argues that the nature of the crime – and its victims – has enabled it to spread under the radar.
A Barnardo's report into child sexual exploitation in Northern Ireland found that in a sample of children aged between 12 and 17 who were known to social services, one in seven were judged to be at risk of exploitation. The UCL study led by Cockbain which was released yesterday – looking at 9,042 children affected by sexual exploitation and supported by Barnardo's since 2008 – found that 48% of male victims and 28% of female victims who were helped had a criminal record. "While it is true to say this could happen to anybody, victims are more likely to be in the care system, and to have previous convictions," she said. "In some ways they are not obvious victims and that is why there has been a lag in response from the authorities."
A culture of impunity among abusers can also create an environment where abuse is almost casual. "Condom use is very low because they are not expecting to get caught. They use their own phones, take girls to their own houses – there has been this sense that everybody does it and everyone gets away with it.
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