Investigations into the Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal included local, national and media reviews, inquiries and investigations into the organised child sexual abuse of girls that occurred in the town of Rotherham, South Yorkshire, Northern England, from the late 1980s until 2013,[11] and particularly the failures of local authorities to act on reports of the abuse throughout most of that period.

[b] The Times articles, along with the 2012 trial of the Rochdale child sex abuse ring, prompted the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee to conduct hearings.

[17] In 2013, Rotherham Council commissioned an independent inquiry led by Professor Alexis Jay, former chief social work adviser to the Scottish Government.

[36][37] Localised grooming involves a group of abusers targeting vulnerable children in a public place, offering them sweets, alcohol, drugs and takeaway food in exchange for sex.

Ann Cryer, MP for Keighley, had complained that "Asian men" were targeting teenage girls outside schools, while parents alleged that police and social services were declining to act.

[43][44] Norfolk interviewed two of the affected families, and in January 2011 the first of a series of stories appeared over four pages in The Times, accompanied by an editorial, "Revealed: conspiracy of silence on UK sex gangs".

"[45] In 2012, Rotherham Council applied to the High Court for an injunction to stop Norfolk publishing an unredacted version of a serious case review written after the murder of a local girl, Laura Wilson.

[46] Known in the review as "Child S", Wilson was 17 in October 2010 when she was stabbed 40 times and thrown in the canal by her 17-year-old ex-boyfriend, Ashtiaq Asghar, an act the police called an "honour killing".

The council had referred her to Risky Business three months after her 11th birthday,[46][52][53] and when she was 13, Wilson and her family had appeared on The Jeremy Kyle Show to discuss children who were out of control.

[55] After Gove's intervention, the council withdrew its legal action, and Norfolk published the story under the headline "Officials hid vital facts about men suspected of grooming girl for sex".

[16][56] The newspaper cited a 2010 report by the police intelligence bureau that said, locally and nationally, and particularly in Sheffield and Rotherham, "there appears to be a significant problem with networks of Asian males exploiting young white females".

"[16]In August 2013 Norfolk published the story of a 15-year-old Rotherham girl, later revealed to be Sammy Woodhouse,[58] who had been described in Adele Weir's report in 2001, and who was allowed by social services to maintain contact with Arshid Hussain, despite having been placed in care by her parents to protect her from him.

[68][69][64] According to Weir, she encountered "poor professional practice from an early stage" from the council and police; child protection issues were, in her view, "disregarded, dismissed or minimized".

They used untraceable mobile phones, had access to expensive cars, were linked to a taxi firm, and may have been involved in bed-and-breakfast hotels that were used by social services for emergency accommodation.

[81] Following this, with the consent of her manager, Weir wrote in October 2001 to Mike Hedges, the Chief Constable of South Yorkshire Police, and to Christine Burbeary, the District Commander.

Heal wrote in 2017 that her report was widely read, but she "could not believe the complete lack of interest" in the links she had provided between the local drug trade and child abuse.

[120] During a hearing in September 2014 to discuss Rotherham, Vaz told Crompton that the committee was shocked by the evidence, and that it held South Yorkshire Police responsible.

Asked about an incident in which a 13-year-old found in a flat with a group of men was arrested for being drunk and disorderly, Crompton said it would be referred to the Independent Police Complaints Commission.

[121] The committee's follow-up report on 18 October 2014 detailed the disappearance of Adele Weir's files containing data on the abuse from the Risky Business office in 2002.

[131][132] Several council staff described themselves as being nervous about identifying the ethnic origins of perpetrators for fear of being thought racist, since most were of Pakistani heritage; others, the report said, "remembered clear direction from their managers" not to make such identification.

The Jay report noted that "[t]he existence of such a culture ... is likely to have impeded the Council from providing an effective, corporate response to such a highly sensitive social problem as child sexual exploitation.

"[135] Several people who spoke to the Jay inquiry were concerned that Rotherham Council officials were connected to the perpetrators through business interests such as the taxi firm; the police said there was no evidence of this.

[153] In response, David Crompton, Chief Constable of South Yorkshire Police from 2012 to 2016, invited the National Crime Agency to conduct an independent inquiry.

She blamed several factors, including Rotherham Council's "institutionalised political correctness", inadequate scrutiny and culture of covering things up, combined with a fear of being seen as racist and a "disdainful attitude" toward the children.

[h] Denis MacShane, MP for Rotherham from 1994 until his resignation in 2012 for claiming false expenses, blamed a culture of "not wanting to rock the multicultural community boat".

He also said the handling of the cases was a matter of incompetence rather than political correctness, and said that the nature of the night-time economy skewed the picture—more Pakistani-heritage men work at night and might therefore be more involved in that kind of activity.

[166] The council had a history of failing to deal with issues around race: "Staff perceived that there was only a small step between mentioning the ethnicity of perpetrators and being labelled a racist.

In one incident in March 2000, he and a local taxi driver—who later became a Rotherham councillor—are alleged to have arranged for Arshid Hussain, arguably the gang's ringleader, to hand a girl over to police at a petrol station "in exchange for immunity".

[180][181] Writing in The Guardian, Cockbain and Tufail wrote of the report that "The two-year study by the Home Office makes very clear that there are no grounds for asserting that Muslim or Pakistani-heritage men are disproportionately engaged in such crimes, and, citing our research, it confirmed the unreliability of the Quilliam claim".

[140] According to the Muslim Women's Network UK, Asian victims may be particularly vulnerable to threats of bringing shame and dishonour to their families, and may have believed that reporting the abuse would be an admission they had violated their cultural beliefs.