Sir Keir Starmer is under renewed pressure to call a public inquiry into the grooming gangs scandal after victims of the Rotherham ring accused police of being complicit. South Yorkshire Police (SYP) announced an investigation into its own officers, under the direction of the police watchdog, after five women said they were sexually abused by members of the force.
There have since been questions raised over the efficacy of the major crimes unit’s proposed investigation, as it may be less likely to hold officers to account than an independent inquiry. Emma Barrow, senior solicitor in the abuse team at Bolt Burdon Kemp, called it a “further betrayal of trust” and demanded a fully independent public inquiry into what she called the “cycle of concealment”. She told the Express: “As we have seen from the recent revelations from survivors of abuse by Rotherham grooming gangs, institutional failure has been persistent and survivors have been completely let down by those who were meant to protect them.
“A lack of independence in the police’s investigation is a further betrayal of trust and will surely lead to a failure to hold senior officers to account.
“Institutional self-protection underscores the necessity for a fully independent, statutory public inquiry empowered to compel evidence, confront senior culpability, and break the cycle of concealment.”
One victim of the Rotherham grooming gang alleged that a serving SYP officer raped her in a marked police car when she was 12, threatening to give her back to the gang if she resisted.
She told the BBC: “In a world where you were being abused so much, being raped once [each time] was a lot easier than multiple rapes, and I think he knew that.”
The outlet saw the women’s written accounts, as well as testimonies from grooming gang victims who said corrupt police officers worked alongside them or failed to take child sexual exploitation seriously.
Three of the witness accounts, collected by child abuse legal firm Switalskis Solicitors, reportedly describe being beaten up by officers when they were children, one of which allegedly happened in a police cell.
Another woman said she, as a child, overheard a police officer having sex with girls in exchange for drugs and money. Drugs were also allegedly supplied to a grooming gang by police.
A further anonymous victim said two police officers sexually abused her over three years, one of whom would track her down in a police car and threaten her if she refused to engage.
She told the outlet: “He knew where we used to hang out, he would request either oral sex or rape us in the back of the police car.
“I would rather be raped once, or give one man oral sex, than to be taken somewhere where I know it’d be 15… 20 guys one after another. That was just easier.”
The woman said she was then pressured into having an illegal abortion by the grooming gang. After a youth worker contacted social services and the police regarding her story, she agreed to do an interview.
However, she was left “destroyed” when one of the officers she said had been abusing her showed up to the interview. The same officer then ripped up her statement and threw it in the bin, leading to no further action, she said.
In 2014, the Jay Report concluded that at least 1,400 girls in Rotherham were abused by gangs between 1997 and 2013.
Hayley Barnett, SYP assistant chief constable, said: “We know how hard it must be for a victim or survivor, who has been so badly let down in the past, to put their faith into the South Yorkshire Police of today.”
SYP told the BBC that none of the former officers forming part of the force’s current inquiries “had an allegation of rape against them at the time of their retirement”.