"'Our conservative estimate is that at least 1,400 individual children 'in Rotherham were victims of sexual exploitation over the 16 years.'" "It's been ten turbulent months since the south Yorkshire town of Rotherham made headlines across the world." "Centred around the town of Rotherham, and exposes the abuse of roughly 1,400 children... 1,400 children they say..." "Ten months since an independent report detailed abuse, ignored by the police and local council." "And I was in the town reporting for the BBC." "Rotherham effectively shows the damage that is done by not dealing with a problem..." "I'm back now to hear from young women who are only just beginning to talk about what happened." "Their shocking testimony is of criminal networks allowed to flourish, adults looking the other way and a legacy that shames us all." "This is Lisa." "Her story demonstrates how, not just the authorities, but we as a society failed a vulnerable child." "I have, for the last 13, 14 years, felt it were just me and that I were a stupid person to go into these types of situations." "As with all the young women and families we've spoken to, we've disguised her identity." "Lisa and another girl were befriended by a group of men of Pakistani heritage, 15 years ago." "They'd just make out as if it were going to be fun, we'll have a laugh." "Then we'll have beer and fags." "She was just 12 years old." "They knew full well that I wasn't 16." "I didn't have any boobies or anything." "She started going missing regularly." "Her worried mother would try to track her down." "She did everything that she possibly could, finishing work after a 12-hour shift, coming looking for me, for hours and hours and hours in the rain." "Despite her mother's pleas for help, social services and the police did nothing." "So far, her story is tragically familiar, but what was being ignored was horrifying." "You would end up in a car full of guys on your own." "And you'd think that you were sleeping, like having sexual intercourse, with one, but then..." "..they'd get out." "Another one would get in." "You couldn't say no because you were in a situation where you were in the middle of nowhere and there were no-one near that would help or hear you screaming or shouting for help." "Across Rotherham, the head of one of the town's most successful secondary schools was struggling to get the authorities to act, too." "Three years before Lisa's abuse began, he had alerted police and social services after four of his pupils had told teachers they were being exploited." "They told us the names of those involved." "They told us where they were picked up by the taxis." "So we were able to supply police and social services with an awful lot of information." "In 2001, his school was propelled into the headlines." "The police had told him exploitation was being investigated." "But then another pupil was targeted." "He wrote a warning letter to parents." "Picked up by the national newspapers, it was the children who were judged." ""My vice girl pupils"." "Awful headline." "But they weren't vice girls, they were young girls who were being exploited." "The story doesn't get any better, does it, when you read it?" "He says the police and council moved quickly to stop him from saying more." "The roof fell in, basically, on...on me." "Social Services then told me that I had put children at risk and police indicated to me that they might prosecute me for compromising an ongoing investigation." "The threat was later withdrawn." "NEWSREADER: 'Newspaper headlines have shocked the town of Rotherham...'" "Just two months later, Rotherham was in the news again." "12-year-old Lisa was pregnant." "It made national headlines." "She'd identified five men as possible fathers." "There was a police interview with me." "They arrested the five names that I gave in." "Erm..." "Some of them denied knowing me." "Some of them agreed, whichever ones agreed get put on the sex offenders." "NEWSREADER: 'It was here at Rotherham police station 'that five men were questioned at length about the pregnancy of...'" "It seems extraordinary now, but again, the girl was being judged, not the abusive men." "Newspapers even talked about her having a complex sex life." "This was a national story there for everyone to see." "The headlines jump out at you." "For instance, "Pregnant girl, 12 names five lovers."" "That was one that I remember seeing." "I just remember thinking to myself..." ""Having five lovers at the age of 12", and they're just trying to embarrass me." "They're just trying to make me look like I'm an adult." "Why would a 12-year-old be having five lovers anyway?" "Legally, a 12-year-old can't consent to sex." "But the discussions that followed were about teenage pregnancy and sex education, not abuse." "The child at the centre of this national debate was bewildered." "They should have been treating it as an abuse case." "They never did." "I gave him five names and two of them names, they were guys that were over 30 and I were only 12." "Questions should have been asked, answers should have been sought." "Prosecutions should have been brought." "It was in the public domain." "In Lisa's case, DNA tests showed none of the men she named were the baby's father." "She says that didn't lead to more detailed questions from the police and her abusers were threatening her." "They threatened to kill me, some of them threatened to kill me." "They threatened to stab me in the stomach so that the baby would die." "They just said some horrible stuff... to scare me." "South Yorkshire Police didn't want to be interviewed." "They say it might jeopardise current complex investigations." "It also says one man has recently been arrested in connection with Lisa's case." "We can't go back to that place where the headlines that we've been looking at are seen as the norm." "But we also need to realise this isn't an historical issue." "This is an issue for children today, last week and possibly next week too." "So, it has an urgency about it." "We need to learn from the past to really offer children the care they deserve." "Back then we didn't learn." "The national debate moved on - leaving children unprotected, like Elizabeth." "The last time the Harper family walked along this beach, she was 13." "Before all this started, it used to be a regular family holiday." "Them memories now are even more special, because of the hell what come after it." "That hell started in 2003." "For the next four years, she went missing repeatedly." "You're constantly living it, 24 hours a day, seven days a week." "You can't switch off from it." "You don't know what time the police are going to knock on your door." "Sometimes we'd have them at 2, 3, 4 o'clock in the morning." "I first met Elizabeth last August." "She was just realising she wasn't alone in being exploited, that she wasn't to blame." "It's now given her the confidence to tell me more." "She talked about a woman who groomed girls for men to abuse." "She was a white woman, who told people that she'd converted to Islam." "She drew Elizabeth into exploitation and she wanted to know if the woman was still out there." "She dressed in Pakistani clothing." "She used to smoke a lot." "She were just really friendly and like, treat you like an adult." "This woman invited Elizabeth to her flat." "The first her mother knew was when the woman phoned her." "She made it out that my daughter was going to her property because my daughter knew her daughter." "I think we later found out that this girl wasn't actually her daughter." "It was somebody that she'd provided in her property, if you like, to befriend other girls." "She introduced herself as Shafina Ali." "We'd heard of Shafina Ali before." "She was named in a confidential document we've seen." "It includes information about suspected perpetrators." "It describes Shafina Ali as an associate of men viewed as key abusers." "She worked for taxi firms in Rotherham and was said to be trying to set up a cab company to transport school children." "It looks like she used at least four different names." "So what happened to that intelligence?" "A former Rotherham social worker agreed to meet." "She was newly qualified when she was first told about Shafina Ali." "She doesn't want to be identified." "I was given the information that this particular woman was dangerous and that she had set up a fake rape crisis centre in Sheffield, or on the outskirts of Sheffield, and that she was potentially luring young girls," "through this rape crisis centre." "We've been told it involved a fake helpline, which was shut down in 1999." "Two years later, Rotherham social workers were worried" "Shafina Ali was again targeting vulnerable girls." "She was called to a meeting." "She was quite aggressive with me." "I was quite worried." "I was quite frightened of her, really." "She says frontline staff did their best, raising concerns about Shafina Ali at strategy meetings with police and senior council officials." "What happened after we expressed our concerns in the strategy meetings and given all this information, we had no idea what was happening with that information." "Rotherham Council says it can't comment because of ongoing investigations." "It accepts and apologises for past failings." "The council is now run by Government-appointed commissioners." "But it was those failings that allowed Shafina Ali to target Elizabeth." "The thing is with her, that she used to live in darkness." "The curtains, everything, but she'd know what everybody were doing outside that property, without even being outside." "That's what I couldn't..." "That's what I still can't understand, how a woman can sit and not go out, but she knew everything." "Shafina Ali no longer lives in the flat, but Elizabeth's parents now know more of what went on there." "I know she's..." "There has been sex involved and she's been forced." "These taxi drivers would come in and they were taking them somewhere." "Where, I don't know because my daughter, obviously, she don't want to talk to her dad about these things." "When Elizabeth went missing for nearly ten weeks, police found her at Shafina Ali's flat." "Did you see the person who was in the flat?" "Only a faint image when she were glancing out the front window." "But when her father went to get Elizabeth, the police arrested him." "Twice." "Officers said she wanted to stay in the flat." "I should have kicked that door in and took her myself, because sometimes when I get up in the morning and look in the mirror," "I can't stand knowing that I left her in that flat." "It kills me." "I shouldn't have cared what the police said." "I should have gone in and got her." "It is the sort of abuse that was being spelt out in reports written by Dr Angie Heal, while she worked for an analyst for South Yorkshire Police." "Those warnings were ignored." "She now knows a key report in 2006 was sent to about 90 people, including high-ranking police officers." "It was sent to each of the district commanders in the six policing districts in South Yorkshire Police, there were two in Sheffield and one in Rotherham at that time." "It went to two officers, senior officers, within the senior command team of South Yorkshire Police." "Even so, the Chief Constable at the time, Med Hughes told MPs he didn't see any of her reports." "So you're saying to this committee you knew nothing about any of these issues?" "I had no understanding of the scale and scope of the problems that have come to light." "If this was going to senior officers, would you have expected this to be raised at the level of chief constable?" "I would have thought so, yes, considering the seriousness of what was in the report." "The failure to act on Dr Heal's warnings is being investigated by the Independent Police Complaints Commission." "In a statement, South Yorkshire Police says it is in a very different position to where it was." "And that it's working other agencies to strengthen the support it gives victims and survivors." "But there are more sinister claims about some police officers failing to act in Rotherham." "12-year-old Lisa's abusers boasted they wouldn't be investigated." "They didn't care." "They knew that, somewhere they had help to cover up their tracks." "They said plenty of times that certain police officers would help them." "This flat, which has since changed hands, is where Lisa was locked in and abused for two days." "It was just dirty, with a small bed in the middle of room and a small chair in the back of room." "Just nothing else." "It were really bare and just really damp and disgusting." "Her mum found the flat, then asked a local policeman to help get Lisa out." "The police officer walked in and shined a torch, because there were no electric." "And shined the torch towards me and said, "She's here, come on."" "Do you think it would have been obvious to anyone who came in what had been happening?" "I look back on it now, and it would have been obvious to me." "If I walked in and I saw that, it would have been obvious." "The officer was PC Hassan Ali." "He asked if I wanted a lift home." "Me mum said, "No."" "Then he asked my mum if she wanted to do a statement and because she was working the next morning she said she couldn't do anything there and then." "He said he would get back to her about it, and he never did." "Two people have made complaints against PC Ali." "He had been referred to the" "Independent Police Complaints Commission." "A few months ago, he died after being hit by a car." "This is where PC Hassan Ali was crossing the road when he was struck by a car..." "PC Ali's death was described as a tragic accident." "The IPCC is investigating at least 42 South Yorkshire police officers for alleged failures in dealing with exploitation cases." "But it wasn't just Rotherham where too many people looked the other way for years." "The abuser took her through and then locked it behind her..." "Across the Pennines, Margaret Oliver was one police officer who was frustrated by the lack of action." "As a detective with Greater Manchester Police, she supported a girl who gave hours of evidence about abuse in Rochdale." "She talked of five sets of doors and gates which were all locked." "She's then inside this house with the man who's going to rape her." "She was terrified that she was never going to get out." "That girl was Louise." "She gave detailed information about a number of men." "Other officers should have recorded each crime she described." "They didn't." "I told them that there was around about 50 men." "I had given the numbers and the names and the places where they lived, or where they used to go with us." "There is no official crime recorded based on the video interviews she gave." "Not one man was arrested for any of those crimes committed against her." "To this day." "Anna was another girl who was supported by Margaret Oliver." "She says she also named a number of men, but only one was convicted." "What's the point in me spending all those hours, sat in interviews and everything and going to court when really only one guy got charged?" "Which is pretty shitty to take." "Margaret Oliver wrote a letter telling MPs that these crimes hadn't been recorded and resigned from her job." "Ultimately, I decided that the neglect that I was seeing and what was happening in the investigation of this kind of crime was just so, so bad and so wicked and I was so ashamed of my role in it," "that I couldn't do my job any more." " RADIO REPORT:" " 'The nine men who've all been convicted 'will be sentenced tomorrow...'" "In 2012, nine Rochdale men were jailed for their role in the sexual exploitation of children." "Greater Manchester Police insist none of the intelligence it received was lost, but admits at the time it was driven by targets and child sexual exploitation wasn't one of them." "The message was constantly around things like burglary and vehicle crime, because that was the pressure that we were getting from the Home Office at that time and other agencies." "That said, that in no way excuses that any police officer, any social worker has always got to have their prime responsibility as the protection of a vulnerable person." "He says they have changed the way they investigate these cases." "But the legacy of police not making such crimes a priority, of not recording them, is it's difficult to know the true scale of exploitation now." "We'd just get picked up from Rochdale and you ended up somewhere like, let's say Bradford or Leeds or somewhere." "Halifax." "And then they'd take you in a house, with other men and give you alcohol, get you drunk." "If they're not recording it in the first place, then we are not even on the starting base to understanding this network." "And in Rochdale, as in other areas where there's been exploitation, victims describe abusers moving them around the country." "It was like a circle of paedophiles." "And then every so often they would chuck you to somebody else, and somebody else will take you somewhere else." "And then they'd meet their people and then you'd meet their people." "Only now are we starting to understand the extent to which children have been trafficked within the UK." "Dr Angie Heal wants to ensure front-line professionals understand the importance of asking probing questions and it is the trafficking networks that worry her." "Greater Manchester, Reading," "Rochdale, Rotherham, Sheffield..." "She highlighted the issue of trafficking in her 2006 report, which we now know was sent to senior officers in South Yorkshire." "No other area has had the level of scrutiny that Rotherham has had." "And if they did, what else would we find?" "If you are not sharing information between forces, you can just think they are street-level criminals and not committing offences across a much wider geographical area and of a much more serious and organised nature." "Elizabeth's was one case highlighted by Dr Heal." "She was trafficked with another girl to Bristol." "Two Asian men in a car." "We went down there." "They made out that they were going to a car auction." "What is unusual in this case is we actually know something of what went on during that journey because Elizabeth kept a mobile phone line open, so that a support worker back in Rotherham could listen in as they were trafficked to Bristol." "Elizabeth has blocked out a lot of what has happened, but the support worker believes the girls were being taken there as sweeteners in a drugs deal." "Elizabeth could be heard trying to protect the other girl who was with her, so she was saying to her, "Don't take that drink," ""because it might be drugged."" "She was also trying to prevent the men splitting the two of them up." "They ended up on this industrial estate, on the outskirts of Bristol." "So, it looks like the car auction is somewhere behind, somewhere over there." "But do you know..." "I guess, depending on the time of night..." "And we know that this was out of normal hours..." "It would have been really deserted round here." "The girls managed to escape." "The support worker called the police, who picked them up." "We are told neither the police in Bristol, nor in South Yorkshire, were willing to pay the girls' train fare home." "No record of an investigation into what happened can be found." "That's just one case." "Six years later, an internal South Yorkshire Police report describes criminal networks trafficking children frequently." "It says, "Nationally, the organisation of "these groups" ""and the trafficking of children, is increasing."" "It was yet another warning, but it took the independent report, ten months ago, into the failings in Rotherham, to finally make this a national priority." " DAVID CAMERON:" " I think it is very important we recognise the horrific nature of what has happened in our country." "Young girls, and they are young girls, being abused over and over again on an industrial scale." "I am not going to defend the indefensible." "I am just not going to do that." "There are occasions when we have let victims down, and I will apologise for that." "But what I would say is - we are now putting in place the plans, the training, the infrastructure, that means in years to come, the crimes that we have seen perpetrated in places like Rotherham will be far harder to commit." "There is little evidence yet that there's been the change in practice in a wholesale way, that means that any of us can yet be confident that a vulnerable child won't be prey to the attentions of those that wish to groom them and to exploit them sexually." "That yet still is an issue that is very much at large within the country." "Five years ago, South Yorkshire Police had only three officers investigating exploitation cases." "Now it says there are 74, with 61 people facing charges as a result." "That's little comfort to Lisa." "But she has been remarkable in her determination to move on." "I just knew I needed to finish school and to be able to do that I needed to focus." "I just ignored everything that anybody would say or anybody labelled me, and got on with school." "And how did you do?" "Really well." "And what happened to the woman who groomed Elizabeth for abuse," "Shafina Ali?" "We found one important official document - her death certificate." "She died in 2009, aged 51." "She won't face justice, but we can now put a face to the shadowy figure behind the curtains." "This photo was taken at her wedding in the late '70s." "A young version of the woman who went on to exploit Elizabeth and others." "Some of Elizabeth's questions have been answered, but for the family, many remain." "She just looks ordinary." "How can you imagine what an evil person she's turned out to be." "Shocked." "It's like when, I don't know..." "Seeing her, isn't it?" "After all them years." "It has taken strength for Elizabeth to confront the past." "Her hope for the future is others are better protected." "You have put a lot of trust in us, allowing us to find out about what happened to you." "Why has it been important to know that?" "Because maybe...it's just a little bit of justice." "Because obviously, when the authorities let her get away with it," "I wasn't going to get any justice." "But by doing this it pieces it all together." "Maybe help other people come forward as well."