Owen,

I’m still not convinced that Anna’s point has been addressed.

The essence of the point made in the blogpost, if I understand it correctly, is more or less:

– Rotherham is no small village but a large town with a population of around a quarter of a million.

– Even assuming the much-quoted 1,400 figure is accurate, 1,400 isn’t necessarily an enormous amount, over ten years, in a large urban centre of a quarter of a million.

– We have not seen similar extensive investigations/reports into the problem of child sex exploitation in (say) Barnet (331k) or Cheshire West (population 332k), or Edinburgh (population 495k).

– Ergo, how do we known Rotherham is necessarily any worse (or better) for the problem of CSE than Barnet, or Cheshire or Edinburgh. As far as I can see, we don’t. We simply don’t have enough information to make that assessment.

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Gawd, can I be bothered? Oh, go on then: the information given above by Owen is misleading & plain wrong.

There was no ‘random sample of 66 of 998’ files. Jay doesn’t claim that there was.
“The Inquiry was given a list of 998 children known to children’s social care, or the Police…”
From these 998 was taken a “randomised sample of 19 current and 19 historic cases” (i.e. 38).
The remaining cases (28) could hardly be described as ‘random samples’ (and that may explain why Jay never claimed that they were):

“A further 28 case files were read. 22 were historic cases sampled from lists of suspected victims in police operations, including Central, Czar and Chard. Three were current cases brought to our attention during the course of the Inquiry, and three were historic cases of children who had been highlighted by national media. All 28 children were victims of sexual exploitation.”

What is astonishing about the ‘random sample’ (38 out of 998 “children known to children’s social care”) is that Jay found evidence of CSE (E = Exploitation) in 95% of them, and in the remaining 5% found that there had been a ‘risk’ of CSE.

(It’s worth pointing out that the definition of CSE used by Jay covers an incredibly wide range of behaviours & offences and relates to those under the age of 18. I don’t think it’s exagerating to say that someone buying a girl a bunch of flowers in the hope of receiving a snog in return could easily be classified as an example of CSE, even if the flower-buyer was himself under 18. This is one of the concerns I have with the report as the terribly serious offences of multiple group rape, witness intimidation, petrol being tipped over heads, etc., MAY be being conflated with other far less serious ones. Before Owen grabs hold of the wrong end of the stick again I’ll state what really shouldn’t need stating: a less-serious offence should not be ignored just because it doesn’t involve legs being broken, windows being put through & a jerry-can of petrol.)

Back to those 998 cases of children known to social services. One of the points raised in the report is that cases of CSE were not being given the attention they deserved (and weren’t even logged by the police as BEING CSE until, I think, 2013 – no time to check), and one of the reasons for this is that they formed a tiny percentage of the cases actually being dealt with – the overwhelming majority were of ‘neglect’.
It seems to have been accepted by all (now) that this was a mistake, as despite forming a statistically small part of the caseload, the children involved (CSE) were at higher risk of coming to serious harm (than in the other non-CSE examples). But I can easily understand how a wrong decision was reached – to concentrate on the vast majority of cases (neglect).

(It all gets very complicated when we read that a strong indicator for a child being at risk of CSE is a background of… neglect. Perhaps concentrating on those neglected would reduce the possibility of them later being at risk of CSE, for example. Crystal balls…)

As TDF says “1,400 isn’t necessarily an enormous amount”, but the period the report covers is actually 16 years and not 10 (i.e. the headline figure is less than 90/year amongst 250,000 when the definition of CSE is very wide – see above). If I’d have been asked to come up with a figure – given the definition of CSE being used – I think I’d have guessed far more than this.

The points raised in the CS ‘critique’ seem quite justifed to me. The unknown researcher, for example. From Jay:

“A chapter of a draft report on research into CSE in Rotherham, often referred to as ‘The Home Office Report’, was written by a researcher in 2002… … Had this report been treated with the seriousness it merited at the time by both the Police and the Council, the children involved then and later would have been better protected and abusers brought to justice.”

A ‘chapter’ of a ‘draft report’ from an unknown researcher who didn’t even get to finish their research (was the chapter ever actually completed?). Did the report ever progress beyond the draft stage? “The report was not dated but we understand that it was written in 2002…” Oh.

Nevertheless: “Had this report been treated with the seriousness it merited…”

Finally, I’d still love to hear some concrete proposals for how to deal with a case such as this one from Jay:

“One parent, who agreed to her child being placed in a residential unit in order to protect her, wrote to children’s social care expressing her fears for her daughter’s safety. She described her despair that instead of being protected, her child was being exposed to even worse abuse than when she was at home:

“My child (age 13) may appear to be a mature child, yet some of her actions and the risks to which she constantly puts herself are those of a very immature and naïve person. She constantly stays out all night getting drunk, mixing with older mature adults, and refuses to be bound by any rules.””

It seems fair to assume a turbulent home life, a girl refusing to do what she’s told, being handed to the state to do what the mother is unable to – control her. The care-workers can’t physically restrain her, she thinks she knows what she is doing. What’s the solution, Owen? (And I mean the solution to the problem of her being at risk, not the solution to the problem of bringing those who harm her to justice once it’s already too late.)

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