BBC News Special: Rotherham Abuse Trial BBC News Special

Reaction from South Yorkshire Police to that case involving those six

people were found guilty of systematic sexual abuse of girls in

Rotherham including three brothers, Arshid, Basharat and Bannaras

Hussain. The senior investigating officer gave the statement. This

lengthily try Max accommodation of a two and a half year investigation.

Into the systematic and organised sexual abuse of young girls in

Rotherham. The verdict today marks a crucial milestone for those victims

and survivors who endured years of horrific sexual abuse at the hands

of these individuals. They have shown incredible bravery. For many

of these young women it shattered their lives and caused life changing

damage. I cannot begin to Britain towards that these women experienced

from young age. For their courage and support in this investigation I

am eternally thankful and I cannot express how pleased I am for them

that their voices have been heard, and believed, and those responsible

have been publicly accountable. The vulnerable victims project and

voluntary agencies employ fantastic people who are extremely passionate

about supporting victims and I cannot thank them enough. We want to

recognise our team, the prosecution barristers who have guided the

victims through this process and done a fun does the job of

prosecuting this case. Two defendants were found not guilty and

I respect the verdict and the legal system I work too. This prosecution

covers offences dated from 1987 until 2003. We have secured the

conviction of six individuals with 45 criminal offences and accept

there is still much to do. I have an extremely dedicated and passionate

team and we will regroup tomorrow with the same enthusiasm for the

next stage of the investigation. I can only hope the victims see the

result on the work of the agencies involved throughout to bring this

case before the courts. I hope this gives them the confidence to come

forward and tell someone what happened and may still be happening.

If victims of sexual abuse come to the police we will help them,

support them and do everything we can to put these criminals

responsible in prison where they belong. Prosecutors say the victims

suffered degrading and violent abuse.

It has been 16 years and I feel I cannot get closure until I went to

court. How much control that he have over your life? I first met him just

after my 40th -- 14th birthday and I was involved with him for two years.

For the majority of my life I did not recognise that I was groomed and

abused. When I first met him he came across really nice and paid me

compliments, took me to nice places, but very quickly he started being

controlling. I was not allowed to do anything without his permission. He

isolated me from friends and family, friends I had had since I was four.

It became that the only person in my world was him. He was very violent

towards me. But were times when I thought he was going to kill me.

People were trying to get you out of this. Why wasn't so difficult escape

from? I remember my family were trying to get me out of it -- was

it. Professionals as well. I thought they were against me. He would be

telling me they were jealous and do not want us to be together and I

believed him. How much power, influence, did the Hussain brothers

have over you? Very powerful for a very long time. There was a lot of

people scared of them, not just children like myself. They had

connections within police, the council. They totally dominated

Rotherham. That was a lot of police officers that saw me as a child with

an attitude problem. There were failings on massive levels. The fact

that the police officer can leave... I was a child... With an adult that

was so dangerous, it sickens me. Everyone needs to recognise the

signs of grooming and abuse and act on it and deal with victims in a

proper way so that they come forward and victims can trust the

authorities. One of the victims of that systematic abuse according to

the police. We can join our team in Yorkshire.

Now on BBC News we join the Look North team in Yorkshire

for a special programme on the Rotherham abuse trial.

They had written letters and told a reporter they had effectively been

stopped from doing their job. Every service they had contact with let

them down. We had known about those seen brothers for more than a

decade. They were well known before. Rotherham knew this was going on but

nothing was done. We have spoken to three women who tell their own story

of speaking to the council and police about it over and over again.

They said they were ignored. Adele Gladman was researching a project

for the Home Office Rotherham Council in the early 2000. It did

not take her long to find out what was happening. It was the first week

I started work, people were telling me about this family in Rotherham,

what was happening, and as time went on I heard it from more and more

people. This person runs a charity which worked with parents in

Rotherham. We tried our hardest to tell people but what we found was we

were continually being blocked so we went to the police, the local

authority, the chief executive, the Home Office. Obviously I was raising

concerns with the council but I was also sharing information regularly

with the police. Jane senior ran a project working with young girls in

the town. One of the most upsetting thing is for everybody and for me is

these children were telling the truth. Repeated warnings were given

to those who could have helped. A series of letters and evidence was

given to the council and police but no one listened and Adele claims

that worse than that her research was changed. When it became obvious

that that was the information that was going to go back to the Home

Office attempts were made to cleanse the data, to change the research

findings, to dilate them. They did not want to have this dirty washing

boot out into the public. They did not want to face up to the problems

that they had. I genuinely believed that the other professionals in

Rotherham would work alongside me in addressing the criminal behaviour

that was going on but preventing further abuse, and the amount of

effort that went into suppressing the research findings was shocking.

These three women tried to tell whoever they could what was going

on. Add they been listened to it could have been stopped over a

decade ago. The frustrating thing for me is that the evidence, the

foundation of the court case, was there 15 years ago. When every

institution that you're trying to tell will not listen to you it is

very difficult to know where to go next. One of the things one of the

girls says to us is nobody can ever change what happened to me, nobody

will ever make that go away and it is going to be with me for the rest

of my life. We were the whistle-blowers and they chose not

to hear us, hair chose to in a way get rid of us. James Vincent put

some of their allegations to police and the council.

Are you undertaking any investigation as to what went wrong

and if things were covered up? There is still work being done looking at

whether there were individuals who can be held to account. The failings

were serious and widespread than most of the senior personnel have

changed but there is work on going. If there are people who held to

account they will be. There has been an appealed to the IPCC. The Chief

Constable has commissioned a review. I cannot go into detail at the

moment. Do you not want to apologise to the bebop would have been in

court telling their that this was not all out 15 years ago? I have

apologised before and we and we recognise we made mistakes. We have

to make sure we rectify those mistakes and that those responsible

are brought to justice. The IPCC says it has 55 ongoing

investigations into houses Yorkshire police dealt with child sexual

exploitation ranging from failure to act to corruption. 26 police

officers have been served notices advising they are the subject of an

investigation into their conduct but there are more than 100 allegations

of officers not being identified. Alan Billings joins us. How could

the police allow these men to get away with it? That is the

extraordinary question. It beggars belief. This was a major scandal.

People whose job it was to recognise a crime did not see this as the

crime and act upon it and it is extraordinary. They did not see

these children as children and these victims as victims. 26 officers have

misconduct notices on them, another 100 not identified and we assume

they are working for the force. How can people have confidence in South

Yorkshire Police? My job as Police and Crime Commissioner is to speed

up that process. They are with the IPCC at the moment. We need those

reports, their investigation, to be completed because some officers will

be exonerated and some will have to face serious charges but until that

work is done you do not know how to act. 18 months since the report

findings, when will these officers be held to account? You have the

opportunity to see a date. The problem as it is not up to me, it is

with the IPCC. We are seeing them on Mandy and saying it is intolerable

and you must bring your investigations to a conclusion

because we must be able to act on these officers. Until they complete

that we cannot know who they are. Some of the victims of child

grooming in Rotherham have got justice. 12 women whose children

were sexually abused by the gang put themselves forward to be witnesses

and expose what was going on in the town. We can hear from one of them

who we cannot identify for legal reasons. Her words are performed by

an actress. I first met him when I was about 11.

It was just before I went into care. I used to hang around. He got to

know where I was. He started asking for sex. I told him I did not want

to do it. He used to get nasty, dragging me by my here or pieces of

clothing into the churchyard. I used to get punched, kicked, he did what

he wanted until I did what he wanted. To stop me getting hurt I

did as he pleased. After so long he got his brother and friends

involved. We had to do one thing with him and straight after with his

brother and between three or four having to do what they wanted. Wendy

one of them had climbed up a drainpipe, and he got in, he was in

my room. I was pleading him to leave my room because I would get into

trouble and he said he would only leave if I came out with him. I

ended up going out with him to get him out my room. I did not want to

have sex. I was just getting pushed, my head banged into a wall, my hair

was being ripped out. I thought I was going to end up, I thought they

would end up killing me. Where did the grooming take place and how wide

was the web operated? These survivors were essentially

traded like currency, these teenage girls lost their adolescence. The

abuse did not just a place in Rotherham, it was also trafficked

out to Sheffield. One victim spoke about being taken to the north-west

and abused and another said she was put in a car and taken to London for

sex. Arshid, Basharat and Bannaras

Hussain ruled Rotherham. According to evidence heard during the trial.

Their associates, Qurban Ali, and Shelley Davis, helped facilitate the

abuse. They were allowed a free card to do what they wanted. One victim

said she came from a happy home until she met Basharat Hussain at

14. She later described being forced into sex on her 16th birthday at a

disgusting flat. Much of the abuse took place around Rotherham, some in

Sheffield. On another occasion the same woman talked about how she was

blindfolded, tied up and had petrol poured on her feet while hearing

other people nearby having sex. She said...

Karen MacGregor ran a Hansel and Gretel style house. Vulnerable girls

were offered clothing and a roof over their heads and in return would

have to pay their way and were pimped out for sex. One of the

victims was 12. When her mother discovered school exercise books

hidden in a kitchen cupboard. Detailing sexual activity with men

of Pakistani heritage. They were abused and churchyards, lock-up

garages and even public spaces. One girl was taken to Blackpool on the

pretext of delivering a parcel and was kept in a room above a

restaurant and made to have sex with men on a daily basis over several

months. The victims, mostly in their 30s now, the they have lived under

the cloud of a scandal for too long wondering if justice would ever be

done. With the perpetrator is facing jail their long wait is finally over

Over tonight. Rotherham Council are asking that anybody who feels they

may have been the victim of child exploitation to come forward, they

say concerns will be taken seriously and lessons have been learned.

We are joined by someone from the Ramadan foundation. You are a

distant relative of the three men. It has been a long-term coming.

These girls have been raped and sexually exploited with the

laboratory is refusing to look at the fact that their police officers

light down these girls that finally we have seen justice so I am happy

for them. I hope this gives them the closure they need to rebuild our

life. At the centre of this has been the Pakistani community in

Rotherham. How have they reacted? When the report came out I was at a

protest called by the Pakistani community against grooming. I was

there last week. Delivering a training course around child sexual

exploitation. There is overrepresented in of Pakistani men

get involved in these crimes and we have to deal with this because if we

do not... I do not see any difference between my daughters and

the girls who were abused and we must confront it. What can you do?

We need to be more vocal. There needs to be more training of the

police. We should not differentiate between a Pakistani girl being

abused and a white girl being abused and in this case it was the white

girls being abused or that of the form of racism. This case would

have come to court if it was not for have come to court if it was not for

Andrew Norfolk who wrote his first story five years ago.

I received over 200 confidential documents and there was a culture

laid showed for the decade what had been going on, the names of dozens

of girls, the names of the men who were abusing them, the places they

were being taken. The evidence was there in the internal police report,

social services documents. It has been going on for this long and you

knew about it and did nothing. When we publish that story I was

convinced there would be an outcry that would immediately lead to all

sorts of inquiries. Were you met with a brick wall every time you try

to find out? The council tried to get a High Court injunction against

us. The police tried to prevent us from publishing the story. Rotherham

Council tried to get a criminal investigation launched into who was

supplying me with documents. In August 2013I did what I have never

done in 26 years, we named a man, Arshid Hussain, who be accused of

being a serial abuser of young girls, a man who had not been

arrested. To have the evidence to persuade our lawyers that it was

safe to do that meant that that evidence was overwhelming. Rotherham

Council bowed to the pressure. They commissioned an independent inquiry

to understand what had happened. That made global headlines because

1400 girls had been abused over 13 years. As justice being done? Some

of them never believe this day would come when they would see charges

brought against the men who ruined their childhood. Then have the

chance to land in court until a jury what had happened to them and

critically to be believed and the jury believed those accounts.

Remarkable investigative journalism. We are saying goodbye to the BBC

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