Police and authorities might be 'downplaying' the scale of child sexual exploitation by criminal gangs over concerns they could be seen as 'another Rochdale or Rotherham'.
That's just one of the findings in a new report which has found 'extensive failures' in the way this form of abuse is tackled.
Referring to the 2012 Rochdale child grooming scandal, the story of which was told in BBC 1 drama Three Girls, the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) said there was 'a flawed assumption' that child sexual exploitation was 'on the wane', with councils and police forces denying the scale of the problem, despite evidence to the contrary. READ MORE: Maggie Oliver blasts national child abuse inquiry and says not enough is being done to help young survivors The report concluded this might be down to a determination to assure they are not seen as 'another Rochdale or Rotherham – towns blighted by recent child sexual exploitation revelations – rather than a desire to 'root out … and expose its scale'.
Child victims – some of whom reported being raped, abused, and in one case forced to perform sex acts on a group of 23 men while held at gunpoint – were often blamed by authorities for the ordeals they suffered while some were even slapped with criminal records for offences closely linked to their sexual exploitation.
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