skip to main |
skip to sidebar
(Telegraph) Rotherham's sex abusers "brazenly" picked up girls as young as 11 from their children's home and in some cases sent taxis to collect them, a former care worker has disclosed.
The unnamed male care worker told the BBC that the abusers made "absolutely no attempts to disguise what they were doing."
He claimed staff were reluctant to intervene in some cases for fear of being classed as "racist".
The taxi drivers would get to know the girls while working on official council business, the source said.
The girls would be taken by cab from the home to schools. But they would quickly start grooming them, giving them drugs and alcohol, the source added.
Young girls told the inquiry they actively avoided using taxis at night. Drivers would take the longest route possible and ask them how old they were. The conversations would become flirtatious, often with the references to sex.
Girls told how they would sometimes exchange sexual favours for lifts in taxis.
“One of the taxis was under contract to via RNBC. A phone call from us with a password and that would then be charged to Rotherham Borough Council,” the source told the BBC.
His allegations follow claims in The Times that senior staff at Rotherham council ordered a raid on one of their offices to remove case files and wipe computer records detailing the scale and severity of the town's sex-grooming crisis.
A report has found that at least 1,400 children were sexually exploited in the town by men predominantly of Pakistani heritage between 1997 and 2013.
The abuse they suffered included beatings, rape and trafficking to various towns and cities in England, Prof Alexis Jay's report revealed on Tuesday.
The care worker told the BBC men would arrive almost "every night" and often the girls, who lived at the home and escaped using a range of methods, would be collected by taxis.
"Sometimes, [the men] would phone and they would pick up around the corner, but sometimes they would just turn up and pick up at the children's home," he said.
"It depended on how brazen they were or how much heat they thought was on at the time.
"They did genuinely think who was on shift, who would be likely to go outside the children's unit.
"I used to make a deliberate attempt to let them know that I had clocked their car, that I was taking their registration plate."
He said he confronted some of the men, despite warnings from his colleagues some carried knives.
"They would laugh it off with a good smirk," he continued.
"It was very much about the drug culture and the alcohol and the party.
"They would sometimes say that they would have you stabbed or shot by one of their associates."
Each time a girl went missing police were called, but officers usually only arrived when the child got back to the home, sometimes "high on drugs" or "incredibly drunk", he said.
"They led us very much on a merry dance and there wasn't much we could do apart from keep documenting," he said.
"And we documented every single night, and we spoke to social workers. The social workers were passing that on.
"Everything we passed on, nothing seemed to go further in any way shape or form."
He said he eventually left the home over his frustrations he was failing the children in his care and said he was not surprised at the revelations in Prof Jay's report.
"These young people have already been sexually abused, in many cases," he said.
"The abused very rarely blame the abuser.
"There were some horrific cases of abuse within the family and yet they still loved their parent."
He said children who have been abused do not blame their attacker simply because they "are struggling for love".
"[But] you cannot provide love in a children's unit," he said.
"It's one thing that you can't provide, and as a corporate parent it's where we fail. "
"And if [the abusers] are providing that, plus drugs, and alcohol and freedoms, or perceived freedoms, then we're never going to be able to keep them safe."
