Rotherham Abuse Victim Claims The Times Story Was ‘Only Reason’ Police Took Action

A victim of serious sexual abuse in Rotherham has claimed that having her story printed in The Times was the “only reason” police launched a two-year investigation into sex-grooming in the town.

Writing in today’s The Times, chief investigative reporter Andrew Norfolk detailed how the investigation had started:  “It began with a voicemail. A young woman, sounding nervous, said that she wanted to talk to a journalist about what had happened to her as a child in Rotherham.

“Her call led to a series of meetings and a story published in 2013 across four pages of The Times. It examined the life of one groomed girl — we called her Jessica — and the repeated failure of child-protection authorities to take action against her adult abuser.”

“The articles prompted a two-year police inquiry and a trial in which the same brave young woman found herself in the witness box at Sheffield crown court.”

Mr Norfolk wrote that the legal team for one of the men convicted of serious sexual offences yesterday had claimed in court that the victim and The Times “were at the heart of an elaborate criminal conspiracy involving stolen documents, secret recordings, contaminated evidence and the payment of large sums of money.

The man’s legal team had “suggested that she had set out to make money by telling lies to destroy an innocent man. He demanded to know how much this newspaper had paid for her story. Jessica told the truth: she did not receive, and would not be receiving, a penny.

“She told him that she had contacted the journalist because she did not trust South Yorkshire police and had no confidence that officers would take her seriously. She hoped that if she spoke to a national newspaper other victims would come forward. They did.

““The only reason the police started this investigation is because The Times printed my story. It triggered everything,” she told the jury.”

The Independent Police Complaints Commission has now commenced 55 investigations into alleged police misconduct linked to Rotherham child sex crimes. It has received complaints against 92 named officers, The Times reported.

An investigation into all past sex grooming cases in the town, begun in June and led by the National Crime Agency, has identified more than 300 suspects and 9,000 lines of inquiry.