A lot of talk on social media recently about Rotherham. I just read this from a PR agency involved with the council at the time.

[Another2Cats]

The report was released in 2014 and it can be read from the council website here

https://www.rotherham.gov.uk/downloads/file/279/independent-inquiry-into-child-sexual-exploitation-in-rotherham

What struck me was the lengths that the Rotherham council are alleged to have gone to in order to hide the bad news. There is a thread on Twitter here:

https://x.com/LizHudsonPR/status/1874876536513576988

To save people clicking on it:

My experience of Rotherham - a long thread

The attempts by those in authority to cover up and minimise the horrors of Rotherham were astonishing. Back in 2014, I had a small PR agency in Barnsley. We were commissioned to support Prof Alexis Jay & publicise her report. Rotherham Council made the task incredibly difficult

They wanted to be in control of all media around the report (with all its damning verdict on them) but Prof Jay sensibly requested independent PR support. So we were approached by the council just two weeks before the report’s publication

We were told that it wasn’t likely to be a big job, most of the report’s findings had been covered in previous investigations so not a huge story. Then we got a copy of the report’s exec summary - we dropped everything.

The council owned copyright on the report and decided to release it on the Tuesday after the August bank holiday, making preparations for a press conference of this magnitude and importance much more challenging than they needed to be.

The report was subject to a strict embargo and we were not allowed to issue the press call about the press conference until the bank holiday Sunday. We had spent hours ringing around news desks to clarify who was working on that Sunday to ensure we could get the press call

to the right people. At the 11th hour, Rotherham Council shifted the goal posts and decided we couldn’t send the press call until BH Monday. Cue a frantic Sunday spent ringing sparse newsrooms again to get contacts for BH Monday (despite not being able to tell them much at all)

We worked round the clock that weekend (a colleague cancelled her holiday!) to make sure that we got all the major media outlets in Rotherham on the Tuesday for the press conference. It was packed, and we had Prof Jay scheduled for back to back interviews following the presser.

We then had to push RMBC to allow media an hour to read the report before the presser started. The report was detailed and complex, yet the council wanted to release the report and start the press conference simultaneously, giving media no time to digest its findings

In short, I’m convinced that the council thought a relatively new, small local agency wouldn’t have the skills, capacity or expertise to publicise the report in the way it deserved. Despite all the obstacles, we managed to get Prof Jay’s report on every national front page,

leading every news programme, and shared across the world (we took calls from everywhere from CNN and NYT to Al Jazeera that day). The press conference was broadcast live on BBC and Sky.

Working in PR, I understood the council’s tactics around minimising the bad news - but there are certain stories where PR tricks have no place. This was one of them - too huge, important and devastating for anything less than total transparency.

I’ll always be incredibly proud of the work our team did that summer. After years and years of being silenced, Rotherham’s CSE victims were finally heard thanks to the hard work and diligence of Prof Jay, some excellent journalists. and a determined little PR agency in Barnsley

So, it simply isn’t true that these devastating stories of abuse and cruelty haven’t been told. They have. The issue is that despite global attention, the fundamental changes needed to prevent what happened in Rotherham happening again weren’t implemented.

As with so much, once the heat dies down, attention turns to the next crisis/disaster and the victims are once again forgotten. But for me personally, reading Prof Jay’s report for the first time will stay with me forever

We sat in stunned silence, teary eyed as the reality of what Rotherham’s girls had endured sunk in. It’s devastating to know that, a decade later, some victims still haven’t received justice and similar atrocities continue today.

With attention now back on these horrific crimes, we must focus on what matters - the safety and wellbeing of victims - and ensure they are not exploited yet again for political gain. There’s always been far too much focus on politics and not enough on protection around this.

It shouldn’t be a matter of party politics or points scoring. We’re talking about the systemic abuse of children. Every government should want to fix it. Every decent person feels sickened by it. We need bravery & working together to put measures in place to stop it. For good

Thanks for posting.

Thankyou for this

If you read the Wikipedia entry on the sexual assaults in Germany on NYE 2016 (where 1200 women were assaulted on one night) you'll see a similar thing. Authorities downplayed it and the media weren't initially allowed to mentioned the ethnicity of the attackers.

There are numerous similar events like the one in Stockholm where around 50 teenage girls (some under 15yo) were sexually assaulted/raped by a large gang of asylum seekers. The police said the concert 'went largely without incident' until the stories started coming out on social media and could no longer be denied.

The justification of the authorities was similar to the Rotherham case whereby they said they didn't want to 'stir up hostilities around the immigration debate'. I mean, how dare we complain about men from misogynistic cultures coming here and raping underage girls...

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-rotherham-cover-up/

This article sums it up.

Keir Starmer IGNORED Rotherham grooming gangs whistleblower as she battled bullying ordeal - 'He didn't even bother!'

Jayne Senior helped expose the abuse gangs crisis - but says the Labour leader is neglecting her plight.

Sir Keir Starmer ignored a letter from the whistleblower who exposed the Rotherham grooming gangs scandal as she suffered through a bullying ordeal, GB News can exclusively reveal.
Jayne Senior has opened up on how Labour's top brass left her feeling "sidelined" and like she "wasn't even worthy of a call, a letter or a meeting" despite her being subjected to a "despicable witch hunt" at the hands of council officials.

Starmer was told that Senior "consistently faced hostility from within the Labour Party and the local authority which is Labour-controlled" over her attempts to make public the scale of the abuse.

But after his office's failure to reply came to light, the whistleblower has lamented how the now-Prime Minister "didn't even bother to respond to my concerns".

Senior, who was made an MBE by the late Queen in 2016, was elected as a Labour councillor after she worked to uncover the rape gangs atrocity in the town - and has worked with grooming victims in South Yorkshire since 1999.
But despite her efforts in uncovering the abuse, the Labour council was forced to apologisee_ to her after it misled her in an investigation into her conduct at her charity.
The Local Government Ombudsman found that Rotherham Council had misled Senior about the investigation and delayed its response, keeping the whistleblower in limbo for years.
Allies of Senior maintain that the investigation was a politically-motivated witch hunt launched against her after she worked to reveal the extent of the abuse in the town - and how council officials had covered it up.

I saw this on Twitter the other day. It’s just so unbelievably awful and depressing but sadly not surprising.

I guess at the time of the earlier reports I was surprised at how little commentary it garnered on mumset but even now, with the most horrid details available on these depraved acts, there’s only a little discussion and most of that centres on Elon Musk. As though the real crime is shining a spotlight on Pakistani Rape gangs and those that failed to hold them to account rather than the rape gangs and those who sought to minimise and sweep it under the carpet. (Labour, Conservatives, the judiciary, councils, the police, the media etc ).

I read a phrase the other day that said there wasn’t a cone of silence but that it was a "conspiracy of murmuring" and it seems so true. People knew it was wrong but were too scared to put their head above the parapet and say it out loud in case it came back on them.

So depressing. I made the mistake of reading some bits on Twitter last night. Those poor girls. I look at my 11year DD and cannot comprehend anyone treating her like she is a commodity for their perverse pleasure. These men are animals and the cover up is a national disgrace

Nothing would surprise me about Rotherham council, I don't know if Roger Stone was in charge at that time but he was a union man where I worked and was completely useless. Stood in reception, chatting up the receptionists, most days, the ladies toilets were the other side of reception and everyone complained about him staring at their tits, as they crossed through.

A friend who worked for the council said it was brushed under the carpet, because of racial cohesion.

Another friend who worked at one of the secondary schools, got herself in a state, she spent hours talking to the girls, whose 'boyfriends' picked them up in flash cars, trying to convince them they were being abused. Not a single one would listen.

It is utterly revolting, however lots of people don’t want it discussed as it brings up uncomfortable immigration and cultural issues. It seems that a lot of people who support that don’t want any narrative or valid concerns that they can’t immediately shut down as racism.

It sadly appears to be that simple.

I’ve just posted this on another thread about this as I’ve been shocked at how little this has appeared in mainstream press (other than telegraph) and the little being said on mumsnet. Where are the times (which ran an expose 10 years ago), the bbc, the so called champion of the people - the guardian? Obviously this is partially due to political allegiances but that is why we are in this horrific position. I read some of the testimony on X and it was so incredibly disturbing. Maggie Oliver has been doing amazing work for years trying to bring this to justice (the councils and police enabling the abuse to continue and not a single person in those positions being held to account). The abuse continues as well. The interview on x is worth a listen.

It is not on Mumsnet as people are being told that this is a dog’s whistle, that we all are racists ( for even commenting on a specific area) and that we should trust the system and make life easier for the current government.

to be honest, I don’t care who people are, what ethnicity they have, what power they have or what religion they practice. If they abuse children, they should go to jail. If people turn a blind eye to other people abusing children, they should be investigated, shamed, and prosecuted.

Exactly. Don’t care who is saying it. I’m following another thread where women are rightly indignant. The mass organised rape of children in the most horrible and brutal fashion shames all of Britain. It needs to stop and not only the rapists but those enabling them need to be called to be prosecuted. What many are saying - and I echo the sentiments - is whilst we were vaguely aware of the cases, the media had portrayed this as teenagers being coerced into exchanging sex for money, drugs and alcohol. Horrible. But the truth is it’s brutal and sadistic raping by organised groups which has been covered up for generations. (And by that I mean no institution has been criticised for failure or held to account.)