The failures of responsible bodies to deal with reports of child abuse contributed to the sexual exploitation of 1,400 children in the British town of Rotherham over a 16-year period, a report says.
According to the report written by Professor Alexis Jay and published on Tuesday, “approximately 1,400 children were sexually exploited over the full inquiry period, from 1997 to 2013.”
The report revealed dreadful details about gang rape of children, including rape of “girls as young as 11 … by large numbers of male perpetrators.”
Some of the children were trafficked to other towns and cities in the north of England, the report said.
“There were examples of children who had been doused in petrol and threatened with being set alight, threatened with guns, made to witness brutally violent rapes and threatened they would be next if they told anyone,” the report added.