Thursday 23 June 2022 01:59 AM DAILY MAIL COMMENT: When will grooming victims get justice? trends now
The principal function of the police service is to protect the vulnerable and apprehend the offender.
But when constabularies succumb to twisted priorities, moral disintegration and institutional cowardice if confronted with vile criminality, that worthy ideal is lost.
Those failings were all too evident in the notorious Rotherham grooming scandal.
At least 1,400 mainly white girls suffered grotesque sexual exploitation by predatory gangs of predominantly Muslim Pakistani men. Yet despite a wealth of evidence of this industrial-scale depravity, police officers, social workers and council leaders turned a blind eye to avoid aggravating 'community relations'.
After Professor Alexis Jay's devastating inquiry in 2014, one might have thought it impossible for this shameful episode to become even more depressing. But it has.
An excoriating report into South Yorkshire Police's handling of the horrors has revealed that not a single officer has been sacked. This is deplorable.
At least 1,400 mainly white girls suffered grotesque sexual exploitation by predatory gangs of predominantly Muslim Pakistani men. Yet despite a wealth of evidence of this industrial-scale depravity, police officers, social workers and council leaders turned a blind eye to avoid aggravating 'community relations'
The document makes harrowing reading. The force treated the victims with contempt, regarding them as complicit in their own abuse. Appallingly, one father was told his 15-year-old daughter's rape ordeal would teach her a 'lesson'. In another case, officers shrugged when a girl was discovered under the bed of a half-naked paedophile.
Yet the worst punishment meted out to those found to have committed
