`Broken and Betrayed`

"Broken and Betrayed is an account of the Rotherham abuse scandal by the key whistleblower, Jayne Senior. Last month three drug-dealing brothers known locally as Mad Ash, Bash and Bono Hussain - were convicted of offences going back to 1997. The time scale, the severity of the crimes and the sheer number of victims are so staggering that even after three official reports the affair is far from over."

Jayne Senior

"Rotherham’s investigation put the number of victims at 1,400, `all barely pubescent`. Senior spent 13 years working for a Rotherham council-funded programme aimed at identifying children at risk of sexual exploitation and she estimates there are more than 1,700 victims: this in a town of just 250,000. As of now, eight men of Pakistani origin and two white women have been convicted of abuse; five in 2010 after an investigation prompted by Senior; and, this year, the Hussain brothers’ circle, also on evidence collected by Senior’s team in 2002..."

"When Senior approached the police, she was given an electronic dropbox and told to deposit testimonies, details such as car registration numbers, and the names of men and descriptions. Many years later, she discovered the box could not be accessed by outside forces, and was never consulted by Rotherham police. Senior’s information only ever leaked accidentally and, each time it did, Senior received a reprimand and Rotherham social services hid the evidence away."

"The first cover-up came in 2002. An academic named Adele Gladman had been seconded to Senior’s team, where she collated existing files to show the weight of evidence that already existed against the Hussain brothers. Gladman shared her report with the council, and local and South Yorkshire police commanders, with the result that social services raided Senior’s office and confiscated the files. Gladman was sacked. Information leaked a second time in 2008 when a young policeman took evidence directly from Senior and logged it on the national police computer where it was accessed by Sheffield police."

"This information led to the 2010 convictions of five Rotherham offenders. Only then did Rotherham police mount an investigation, but this case fell apart. Senior tells how Rotherham social services took the girls from her team’s care and left them without protection; they were open to intimidation and began to refuse to testify."

Read more http://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/what-to-read/rotherham-whistleblower-explains-why-sex-abuse-ring-was-covered/