Rewriting history! RMBC literally tried to…bury a body under the carpet

“Something Rattled RMBC’s cage in late 2011 and early 2012 an ultimatum given but by whom”!…”unlikely place”

• Jay report: 11; Issues of ethnicity.
“Both  women  and  men  from  the  community  voiced  strong  concern  that  other  than  two meetings  in  2011,  there  had  been  no  direct  engagement  with  them  about  CSE  over  the past  15  years,  and  this  needed  to  be  addressed  urgently,  rather  than  ‘tiptoeing’ around the issue”. (a bit further away than the truth)

“The issue placed on the agenda, the 5 jailed for CSE, and the murder. They questioned if both cases had been prosecuted with a successful outcome, and if never before they had been consulted on anything, they RMBC were hiding something.
And an ultimatum given, without an independent inquiry into CSE, they would not accept anything less for the sake of all communities”. (Unlikely place)

●The issue transpired to be :

•Child S SCR.
This Executive Summary was written by Professor Pat Cantrill, Independent Overview Author April 2011.

http://www.rscb.org.uk/safeguarding/download/downloads/id/10/rlscb_executive_summary_for_child_s.pdf

• Casey report : p134;
“The SCR was not published until late May  2012 and was so extensively  redacted that The Times newspaper contacted RMBC signalling its intention to publish some of the details which had been removed.  The Times’  journalist Andrew Norfolk had extensively  covered CSE as  a national and  Rotherham specific problem from 2010 onwards. He received the un-redacted report from an anonymous source.
Casey report: p134/5
The Times  contended that the redactions sought  to minimise Child S’s involvement with CSE and mask associated  failure on the part of professionals within  RMBC.   The Council justified its redactions on the basis of seeking to protect the identities of child S and her family and there is some  validity in the claim, although the related murder trial had been extensively covered in the media. RMBC sought  a legal injunction against  The Times  to  prevent it from publishing. The matter attracted criticism from the then Secretary of State for Education Michael Gove. A less heavily redacted version of the SCR was finally published in 2013”.

●The something they were hiding was child S, Operation Central, and the failed Operation Czar. “unlikely place”.

In Rotherham  in 2009/10  two major  police investigations  took  place  into  offences of  sexual exploitation.  XXXXXXXXXX  and  Child S  were  mentioned in  both of  the  investigations  but  neither provided any evidence as part of the enquiry. The two investigations were:

Operation Central
Operation  Central  was the  code‐name  given  to  the investigation and  prosecution in  Rotherham  of  a large  number  of  serious  sexual  offences  alleged  to have been  committed  by  adult  males aged 20‐29  against  young  girls  aged  13‐16.  8  men  were  charged  with a  total  of  2  offences  of  rape  and 16  of  sexual  activity  with underage  girls.  Five offenders  were  found  guilty  in  September  2010.  The men received a total of 33 years imprisonment.

Operation Czar
This  operation  took  place in  Rotherham  in 2009.  It  related  to  sexual  exploitation of  children  and young  people in  a  specific  area  of  Rotherham.
The operation  did not  result  in any  prosecutions because there  was a  failure  to  get  victims  to  disclose  offences  and  therefore  to progress complaints.

http://www.rscb.org.uk/safeguarding/download/downloads/id/1/rlscb_overview_report_for_child_s.pdf

Andrew Norfolk was originally here regarding child S, then SCR for child S and the redactions to be made public, and a big thank you to all who made their own stories public.

●Jay couldn’t find the computers!

For all those out there let me set you straight regarding the missing computers and the files, don’t worry Casey was on the case.

•Casey report: p135;
“Inspectors were told about missing files,  including children’s case  files  belonging to Risky Business that the Council could not find. Our inspection established that these files had been in an office at Riverside House, the Council’s main building, for some considerable time. Professor Jay also comments on the fact that  the minutes of ‘key players meetings’ could not be found. We  are advised that the interim Chief Executive asked the Council’s internal auditors to find these and  within weeks, they had been tracked down. It seems that when RMBC says  things are missing and lost, that they may not have looked that hard”

●For those who need to be reassured, the lines of enquiry just didn’t turn up over night, lost computers and files ring a bell.

“It has examined more than 120,000 documents from police, council and health services”.

Over 10,000 lines of enquiry as Rotherham abuse probe expands – The Star
http://www.thestar.co.uk/news/over-10-000-lines-of-enquiry-as-rotherham-abuse-probe-expands-1-7949403

Robust scrutiny of all things political in and around Rotherham.

Hotspot

Previously: Rewriting history no, just making it clearer.