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A report found at least 1,400 children were subjected to sexual abuse in Rotherham
An investigation has found South Yorkshire Police did not do enough to protect a girl in Rotherham from sexual abuse.
The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) said officers “took insufficient action”, in a report that was leaked to the Times newspaper.
A woman complained to the IOPC about the police investigation into her abuse complaints when she was a child.
The force said it accepted the report’s findings.
‘Disappointing’
The complainant was repeatedly abused over several years from 2003.
The watchdog’s report, seen by the BBC, upheld the victim’s complaints that “police took insufficient action to protect you from harm” and that “police failed to adequately deal with offenders and this failure led you to be exposed to abuse”.
It also upheld a complaint that the victim’s father was allegedly told by a senior officer, whom the IOPC has been unable to identify, that the force was aware abuse “had been going on 30 years and the police could do nothing because of racial tensions”.
Speaking to the BBC, the woman said she felt “vindicated” by the report’s findings.
“For 18 years I have being trying to prove that I’m not a liar, that I didn’t make it up,” she said.
She said she was “astounded” when she read the IOPC report.
“I’m really, really disgusted in what was in there.
“Basically that victims and their families were sacrificed. Their lives ruined, living with a life sentence because of fear of racial tension.”
In a statement, the force said: “South Yorkshire Police accepts the findings of this report and have been working to address the issues it raises since the publication of the Jay Report in 2014.
“After such a lengthy IOPC investigation it is disappointing that no individual officer has been identified as this is not something we would tolerate in today’s force.”
A report in 2014 by Prof Alexis Jay found at least 1,400 children were subjected to sexual abuse in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013, predominantly by men of Pakistani heritage.
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