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Five women who were exploited by grooming gangs in Rotherham as children say they were also abused by police officers in the town at the time.
One says she was raped from the age of 12 by a serving South Yorkshire Police (SYP) officer in a marked police car. He would threaten to hand her back to the gang if she did not comply, she says.
“In a world where you were being abused so much, being raped once [by a police officer] was a lot easier than multiple rapes [by the gang] and I think he knew that,” she tells the BBC.
We have seen written accounts from these women, plus testimony from 25 other victims of grooming gangs, with some of those women saying that corrupt police officers worked alongside the gangs or failed to act on child sexual exploitation.
At least 1,400 children were abused by men in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013 – the landmark report from Prof Alexis Jay found in 2014.
“From the evidence we read and heard, the majority of victims identified their perpetrators as being of Pakistani heritage,” Prof Jay told us.
A new criminal investigation into the involvement of police officers in the Rotherham grooming scandal is now being led by SYP’s major crime unit, under the direction of the police watchdog.
Prof Jay has told the BBC she is “shocked” that SYP is investigating its own former officers and says the criminal investigation should be handed to another force or independent body.
In response, Hayley Barnett, SYP assistant chief constable said: “We know how hard it must be for a victim or survivor, who has been so badly let down in the past, to put their faith into the South Yorkshire Police of today.”
But she added that victims and survivors were “at the heart” of the investigation, with all actions being taken in their best interests.
The 30 witness accounts seen by the BBC detail shocking allegations:
- Years of abuse from serving police officers, from the mid-90s to early 2000s, at the same time as being exploited by Rotherham grooming gangs
- Most alleged victims were in their teens but some were as young as 11
- One woman says as a child she would hear a police officer having sex with girls in exchange for drugs and money
- Another woman says as a child she witnessed a police officer supplying illegal class A drugs to a grooming gang
- Three women describe being beaten up by officers as children – one says this happened in a police cell
The women’s accounts, seen by the BBC, have been redacted to protect their identities. They were collected by a specialist child abuse legal firm, Switalskis Solicitors, as part of a bid to bring a separate civil claim against SYP and secure compensation for alleged victims.
One of the women, Willow – not her real name – says she was sexually abused by hundreds of men over five years after first being targeted, as an 11-year-old in 1997, by a grooming gang.
More than 1,400 children were estimated to have been abused by men in Rotherham
Two police officers also sexually abused her, she says. Over three years, one of the SYP officers would repeatedly track her down and pick her up in a police car in Rotherham town centre, she says.
“He knew where we used to hang out, he would request either oral sex or rape us in the back of the police car,” she tells the BBC.
If she tried to refuse his requests, says Willow, he would even contact the grooming gang directly to threaten her.
“I would rather be raped once, or give one man oral sex, than to be taken somewhere where I know it’d be 15… 20 guys one after another. That was just easier,” she says.
After she was pressured into an illegal abortion by the grooming gang, she says a youth worker contacted social services and the police. But she was left “destroyed”, she says, when one of the officers who had been abusing her turned up to interview her.
A few days later, the same officer ripped her statement up in front of her and threw it in the bin, she says, and no further action was taken.
‘No accountability’
Of the 30 women who gave their accounts to Switalskis Solicitors, only 17 have agreed to their testimony being given to the police.
Some of the remaining potential witnesses have withdrawn from the SYP investigation, say the solicitors, with some saying they do not trust the force or have lost faith in the justice system.
“It’s beyond belief, the accounts we have heard,” says Amy Clowrey from Switalskis, who has been collecting testimony of alleged police abuse, corruption and misconduct in Rotherham for 10 years.
“There has been no accountability in the town – and without accountability, there will continue to be a distrust of South Yorkshire Police,” she says.
In response South Yorkshire Police told us it has a “dedicated team of detectives working on this case who have worked diligently to explore all lines of enquiry” and the investigation is being overseen by the Independent Office of Police Conduct (IOPC).
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