Panorama.S2014E30.Stolen.Childhood
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00:00Young voices ignored.
00:04He told me to lay down on the floor and I told him I didn't want to.
00:08And he said, well, I've got to.
00:11Children targeted, groomed and sexually exploited by older men.
00:15It needs to stop. Children are getting hurt.
00:18Children are getting abused.
00:21Three key warnings dismissed.
00:24Those who made them speak out.
00:27One of the things that kept coming back was, where's your evidence?
00:32And I was thinking, isn't that your job, to collect evidence?
00:36And disturbing findings suppressed.
00:40I was subjected to the most intense personal hostility.
00:44I've never seen back covering like it.
00:47The abusers who remain free.
00:50We identify one of them.
00:53I don't understand why my life's been affected
00:56and he hasn't.
00:58The police and council in Rotherham
01:00finally called to account for failing children.
01:04They were raped by multiple perpetrators.
01:07They were trafficked to other towns and cities in the north of England.
01:11They were abducted, beaten and intimidated.
01:15Tonight, Panorama investigates the scandal
01:18that has devastated the lives of more than 1,400 children
01:23in just one town.
01:27This is a story of stolen childhoods.
01:32Of abuse dismissed and ignored for years.
01:37Each time Emma Jackson tells professionals about what happened,
01:42she wants to open eyes so those at risk today are protected.
01:47I was a child.
01:49I was a child.
01:51I didn't know what I was involved in or what I was doing
01:54or what risk that I was taking.
01:56We're protecting Emma's identity
01:58and that of most of the girls and their families
02:01who've talked to us about sexual exploitation.
02:04I would get picked up, I'd go into town.
02:07People would pull up in cars and I'd have to have sex with them
02:11or whatever they wanted and then they'd drop me back off
02:14and then another man called and said,
02:17That was 11 years ago.
02:19She did try to tell the police what had happened to her.
02:23She was just 13, confused and vulnerable.
02:27Me and you were pushing me head on the floor and that
02:30and grabbing me neck and stuff and pulling me by my hair.
02:34I was saying that I didn't want to do it and stuff
02:37and he said, of course you want to do it,
02:39and I said, of course I want to do it,
02:41and he said, of course you want to do it,
02:43and he said, of course you want to do it and stuff
02:45and he said, of course you want to do it and that.
02:47He didn't like girls saying that no to him
02:50and he didn't accept it when they said no.
02:53She describes being abused by one man,
02:56with his friends watching, egging him on.
02:59He said that I were a white bitch and he'd had enough of me
03:02and he'd punch me in the mouth
03:04and then he said if I ate half of my mouth again he'd do it harder.
03:09Emma was just one of at least 1,400 children
03:13groomed and targeted for sex by older men,
03:16here in the South Yorkshire town of Rotherham.
03:20I was just going on a weekend with my friends
03:23and I started talking to some young boys
03:27and I built a friendship with them
03:30and then as time went on they started to introduce older people
03:35and they just seemed to get older and older.
03:39She was being groomed.
03:42The child psychiatrist who treated Emma says it was like brainwashing.
03:47She was totally enthralled to those people.
03:51They had her under their thumbs and, you know,
03:54absolutely enslaving her to do everything that they wanted.
04:00For the first time, Emma was keeping secrets from her parents.
04:04She was soon out of her depth.
04:08I wasn't mature enough to think about sex or anything like that.
04:12And one evening she was singled out.
04:16We went up to the outdoor market stalls
04:19and then my main perpetrator took me away from my friend and the other man
04:24and the next thing I knew he was raping me.
04:30In Rotherham, the exploitation of young girls by older men
04:34was first talked about in the 1990s.
04:37Back then, this abuse was labelled child prostitution.
04:41A youth organisation was set up by the council.
04:44It was called Risky Business.
04:47It became a place where victims felt listened to.
04:51They described their experiences
04:53to a researcher involved in a Home Office project.
04:56She's asked not to be identified.
04:59The workers in that project were the only people
05:04that those young people trusted, that were telling the complete story to.
05:09And some of the stories that I heard very early on
05:13were just so graphic that I don't think I will ever forget them.
05:20We've spoken to nearly 20 families where children have been exploited.
05:25Their stories are shocking, often violent.
05:29Here in Clifton Park,
05:31some describe being forced to go from abuser to abuser.
05:35Others talk about being trafficked to places like Manchester,
05:39Bradford and Bristol to have sex with strangers.
05:44Most, though not all, of the girls asking for help were white.
05:48For many years, Risky Business passed vital intelligence
05:52about their abusers to the police and social services.
05:56Among the men named was Arshid Hussain, known as Ash or Mad Ash.
06:01He has convictions for violence and intimidation.
06:06In 1999, he was targeting a girl who we're calling Isabel.
06:13I'd just turned 14. It was very polite, he had good manners.
06:17He was very kind to me and my friends.
06:19And what did you know about him?
06:22He was into some things that he shouldn't be.
06:24What do you mean by that?
06:26That he was into drugs and violence.
06:30He drove flash cars and dressed smartly,
06:33had a wife and children at home
06:35and was 24 when he began to abuse 14-year-old Isabel.
06:41My mum and dad were trying to stop things.
06:44My parents went to his house, to the police, to the authorities,
06:47and he just continued it.
06:50They must have been desperate.
06:52The authorities said because I was consenting to it,
06:55there was nothing that they could do.
06:57Even though you were 14 years old? Yeah.
07:01Over the next two years, she became pregnant twice,
07:05once whilst in the council's care.
07:08Social workers often referred to Arshid Hussain as her boyfriend,
07:12even though they viewed him as dangerous.
07:16When I was pregnant, they had concerns for the baby
07:20because they said that he was a violent man.
07:23So if, you know, a baby shouldn't be around a man like that,
07:26then why was I allowed to be around a man like that?
07:29Because you were still a child. Yeah.
07:33Information gathered by the Home Office researcher
07:36showed Isabel was one of 18 girls
07:39who described Arshid Hussain as their boyfriend.
07:42All were said to be under 16.
07:45In 2002, the researcher identified nearly 270 girls in Rotherham
07:51being exploited by a number of men.
07:55I was collecting data on who the perpetrators were,
07:59what cars they were using, their grooming methods,
08:03their offending methods.
08:05And what I was also collecting
08:07was information on professional responses.
08:10One of the cases she examined was Isabel's.
08:14She was going missing for weeks, sometimes months.
08:17And once, when police raided a house she was hiding in,
08:21they found Arshid Hussain.
08:24Me and him was upstairs in a bedroom
08:27and we was being intimate when the police raided it.
08:31They would have seen me with just some pants on, run under the bed,
08:37and they would have seen him pulling some joggy bottoms up
08:40and heading towards a corner of the room.
08:42Would it have been obvious what had been going on?
08:45Yeah. That was the first time I ever saw him scared
08:48and I think he honestly thought,
08:50this is it, I'm going to get arrested.
08:52Now 15, it was Isabel who was arrested, not Arshid Hussain.
08:58I was given a truncheon by him and he told me to save it.
09:04So I was arrested for having a dangerous weapon.
09:07What happened to him?
09:09Nothing, he just went about his daily business.
09:13This man has been having sex with this underage girl.
09:18That's a case that should be prosecuted.
09:21I don't understand why the police or social services
09:25took it upon themselves to excuse that behaviour.
09:30And Isabel says Arshid Hussain was stopped by police on many occasions,
09:35with her next to him.
09:38Even if, you know, the police was kind of looking for him for something,
09:42he'd be able to turn around, which he did plenty of times,
09:45and say, I'll play the race card, so they let me off.
09:52A quarter of a million people live in Rotherham.
09:55While most are white, about 8% come from different ethnic backgrounds
09:59and there's a well-established Pakistani heritage population.
10:08When the Home Office researcher began to share her findings
10:11with the council, she told them most of the perpetrators being named
10:15were from that community.
10:17She was taken aback by the response from one official.
10:21She said, you must never refer to that again,
10:24you must never refer to Asian men.
10:26And her other response was to book me on a two-day
10:30ethnicity and diversity course to raise my awareness of ethnic issues.
10:38In 2002, the draft of her final report was sent to the Home Office
10:42and the council on a Friday.
10:44She says that weekend, the risky business office had unwanted visitors
10:49who let themselves in.
10:51They'd gained access to the office and they had taken my data,
10:57so out of the number of filing cabinets,
11:00there was one drawer emptied and it was emptied of my data.
11:04Who do you think would have done that?
11:06It had to be an employee of the council.
11:09Rotherham Council says it's unable to find anyone
11:12who recognises this series of events.
11:16The researcher then came under pressure to change her findings.
11:20She wouldn't.
11:24This report, written more than a decade ago,
11:26was given to both the council and the police.
11:29It clearly should have led to action.
11:32But here it says, responsibility was continuously placed on your part
11:36on young people's shoulders rather than with the suspected abusers.
11:40And when the issues were raised with senior officials,
11:43the response was defensiveness and hostility.
11:47Her report was never published
11:50and the council even tried unsuccessfully to sack her.
11:54I was subjected to the most intense personal hostility.
11:58There were threats made from a range of sources.
12:01I've never seen back-covering like it.
12:04I've never seen back-covering like it
12:06and I still feel extremely angry about that.
12:10The response, in a nutshell,
12:13was that she was punished for speaking truth to power.
12:17Alexis Jay carried out the independent review
12:20that last week revealed the damage done
12:23by not tackling exploitation in Rotherham.
12:26If they had taken account of the content
12:29and been less concerned with their own images,
12:33then a great deal more might have been done at an earlier stage.
12:38There would soon be more warnings.
12:41In the meantime, the abuse continued.
12:46In 2003, it was 13-year-old Emma who was being abused.
12:51They started to just use me more and more.
12:55And I was just seen as trash, really.
13:00Emma's mother knew something was wrong
13:03when neighbours told her they'd seen two men hanging around the house.
13:07She asked her daughter about it when she got home from school.
13:11That's when she just broke down and just kept saying,
13:14they're raping me, they're raping me.
13:16I just couldn't believe it and my reaction, I rang 999.
13:20It was just devastating.
13:23And the sergeant came in to me and he said,
13:26do you realise all your daughter has got involved with?
13:29We can't deal with it, we'll have to get the serious crime squad.
13:33Emma was able to provide detectives with important evidence.
13:39He made me take my coat off and lay it on the floor
13:43and then he told me to lay down on the floor
13:47and I told him I didn't want to.
13:49She'd hidden the clothes she was wearing
13:51on the different occasions when she was raped.
13:54She gave them to the police.
13:56She didn't want me to see them, she did them.
13:58She went and got them out and there were like six bags of clothes.
14:01There was a cream coat that had got blood all over it
14:04and they took all these clothes away.
14:08But the police lost the coat
14:10and the rest of the potential DNA evidence.
14:13Emma then began to get threats from her abusers.
14:17Feeling frightened and unsupported, she withdrew her allegations.
14:23I was very confused
14:25and basically I just wanted to go back to my life before
14:31and get rid of it all.
14:35It wouldn't be long before her exploiters would draw her back
14:39into their world.
14:41That year, 2003, the authorities received their second clear warning
14:47about the seriousness of what was happening.
14:51It came from Dr Angie Heal.
14:53She was employed by South Yorkshire Police to look at drugs crime.
14:57In Rotherham, she quickly identified links to sexual exploitation.
15:04It really didn't make any sense as to why there were
15:08major police operations that were being launched
15:12to investigate these issues.
15:15So she decided to write a letter to the police.
15:18So she decided to write a report on the problem.
15:22Some police officers for the report gave information about
15:25circumstances in which young people were being found,
15:29the levels of abuse and violence and rapes that were happening.
15:34Her report was sent to senior police officers in South Yorkshire
15:38and Rotherham council managers.
15:41She pointed to the lack of convictions and to the police named names.
15:48I mean, I didn't hold back on what I was reporting.
15:52And what actually happened?
15:54I don't think anything happened at that time.
15:57And one of the things that kept coming back was,
16:00where's your evidence?
16:02And I was thinking, isn't that your job, to collect evidence?
16:09It was another warning dismissed.
16:12But the wider community was also getting worried.
16:18For many years, Jim Stevens ran a charity
16:21for homeless young people in Rotherham.
16:23His staff saw men targeting 16- and 17-year-old girls and boys
16:28at hostels.
16:30They told the police and the council.
16:34We were getting responses from quite senior people
16:39within social services, particularly in safeguarding,
16:43that there wasn't actually a problem in Rotherham at that time,
16:46of any kind.
16:47We raised the issue of sexual exploitation.
16:50We were considered to be unprofessional alarmists.
16:54However strong the denials, there was no let-up in the abuse.
16:59The parents of yet another girl found themselves constantly
17:03on the phone to police, reporting her missing.
17:08I really lost count of how many times I would phone them in a week.
17:12It just depended. Sometimes probably twice a day.
17:16How is their daughter able to describe how the people
17:19meant to protect her made her feel?
17:23They try and make you feel ashamed and like it's your fault,
17:28that I were just a naughty child and that I'd got bad behaviour.
17:37For four years, the family existed on a knife edge.
17:42She went from a normal 13-year-old, reading books,
17:45Harry Potter books, stuff like that.
17:47She used to love it, into when police were fetching her back,
17:50she used to be dressed differently.
17:52She looked like she were going out clubbing.
17:55They were taking her away from us and we had to deal with it like,
17:59well, no, you're not, you're not having her.
18:02We're going to fight back.
18:04We're going to keep changing her back,
18:06so that they knew there was somebody at the other end
18:09not letting them win and have his daughter.
18:14By now, this abuse had been blighting Rotherham for nearly a decade.
18:19At the end of 2004,
18:21the council finally appeared to be waking up to the problem
18:25and sexual exploitation was discussed at an important meeting.
18:30We invited ourselves. We gatecrashed the meeting.
18:34It was chaired by the leader of the council.
18:37There were lots of heads of department there.
18:41There were senior social workers, people from police,
18:46from the youth service.
18:49They were given details of how girls were being groomed
18:52and exploited in Rotherham.
18:54Council leader Roger Stone appeared to some visibly shaken.
19:00He was very angry. He was very shocked.
19:03And I remember him saying,
19:05we are not having this, this has got to stop.
19:08We were very, very optimistic after the meeting.
19:13For the first time,
19:15the statutory sector had seemed to recognise the issue
19:19and make a commitment to do something about it.
19:23But little seemed to happen, and finally their patience ran out.
19:28More than 30 voluntary organisations wrote a joint letter
19:32to the council's then chief executive.
19:36We felt, right, let's go to the top,
19:39let the chief exec explain to us
19:43why there has been such apparent lack of progress.
19:47What was the response to your letter?
19:49We didn't get a response.
19:54So why did it appear nothing was being done?
19:58At another council meeting in 2005,
20:01Roger Stone seemed to offer an explanation.
20:05The leader said,
20:07oh, well, we have to tread carefully on this
20:09because we don't want to upset the community.
20:12We had been told at the previous meeting
20:14that the perpetrators were Asian men.
20:17And because of that, and only because of that,
20:20I assumed the leader meant the Asian community.
20:25Mr Stone has told Panorama
20:27he can't remember what he said more than a decade ago,
20:30but he insists he did take action.
20:34Elsewhere, parents were challenging the police.
20:38I said, well, why can't you investigate what's going off now?
20:42And all I got after that were,
20:44I've told you, we cannot because of racial tension.
20:47When this, it weren't about race, this.
20:50This is about what some adults were doing to some children
20:53which left us devastated because we got nowhere else to turn.
21:00And in 2006, another report from Angie Heal raised the issue.
21:06She said some workers in the town feared the abuser's ethnicity
21:10was one reason for a lack of police investigations.
21:13It was a third detailed warning about Rotherham's problems.
21:18There was issues of ethnicity
21:21and some people felt that ethnicity was a barrier to investigating.
21:28It seemed to be too sensitive an issue.
21:32If there had been direct engagement
21:35with the Pakistani heritage community
21:38and not through the conduit of the traditional,
21:44I have to say, male domination of the imams in the mosques
21:49and elected members in the council,
21:53a lot more might have been done much sooner.
21:58Within Rotherham's Pakistani heritage community,
22:01there is bewilderment about why that wasn't done.
22:05I think also it was lack of service as a response
22:08to what was going on, turning a blind eye for so long.
22:12And some ask what message the lack of investigations sent.
22:17Abuse is abuse and you should never, ever shy away
22:22from pinpointing abuse.
22:24In terms of those men that perpetrated against white young girls,
22:28they will have been abusing internally within their own communities
22:31and it's about time that we started to recognise and prosecute.
22:37Without prosecutions, new abusers were able to claim new victims,
22:42as one mother probably knows better than anyone.
22:46Both of Maggie Wilson's daughters were sexually exploited.
22:50It began when her eldest, Sarah, was just 11.
22:55She had two phones because there were a pattern with phones.
23:00If it rung, it was as if it were a sign,
23:02right, it's time to meet and things like that.
23:04It got to a stage where I even had to lock the bedroom windows,
23:09but she'd still get out because there were no lock on the bathroom window.
23:14Again, she was desperately trying to get the police and council to help.
23:19Even when Sarah should have been protected in care, the abuse continued.
23:24Only later did Maggie discover her youngest daughter, Laura,
23:28was also being groomed.
23:30Did you think that she was getting drawn into exploitation
23:34in the same way as Sarah had been?
23:37I didn't, no, because she always said that she wouldn't.
23:43Laura was seeing a boy called Ashtiak Ashgar.
23:46When they were both 17, he murdered her,
23:49after she revealed her involvement with him and another man to their families.
23:54It's a lonely spot here where Laura was murdered.
23:57An official inquiry found the authorities had known for four years
24:01that Laura, like her sister, was being groomed.
24:06Maggie believes if she'd been given more help when she first asked,
24:10things would have been different.
24:14If they'd have listened to me all them years ago...
24:19..Laura wouldn't be where she is now. She'd be alive.
24:23Finally, in 2010, nearly 15 years after the abuse was identified,
24:28Rotherham got its first convictions for sexual exploitation.
24:32These men were involved in the organised sexual abuse of three...
24:36Five men were jailed for a total of 32 years.
24:40It should have been a turning point for the town,
24:43but there have been no other major prosecutions since.
24:46And still, the grooming and exploitation goes on.
24:51Until two years ago, this man's daughter was a target.
24:55Sometimes we found her in Park, sometimes we found her in Sheffield.
25:00They'd already had a lot of contact with social workers
25:03and felt all the blame was being put at their door.
25:07We're not excellent parents. Nobody's excellent parents.
25:10We're not good parents.
25:13He was shocked when he discovered Rotherham Council had known
25:17about the men suspected of abusing his daughter since 2007,
25:22long before her abuse began.
25:26I was just sifting through it.
25:28I wouldn't look at, basically, no-one.
25:30I'd look at the men who'd been abusing their daughter.
25:33I'd look at the men who'd been abusing their daughter.
25:36I'd look at the men who'd been abusing their daughter.
25:39I was just sifting through it.
25:41I wouldn't look at, basically, notes they were sending.
25:44And then I saw that, Rotherham Safeguarding.
25:48And I read it and I went absolutely ballistic.
25:51Social workers had accidentally left this document
25:55in a bundle of other papers.
25:57This is a list of names.
26:00What they were keeping from us.
26:02Did you know any of this?
26:04No. Not one bit of it.
26:06It says here that your daughter and another girl are in contact...
26:12Yeah. ..with two of the males listed here.
26:15Yeah.
26:17Again, down here, it says,
26:19these males have also featured in previous strategy meetings
26:23held by Safeguarding dating back to 2007.
26:27So why weren't notes done then?
26:29So if they'd acted in 2007...
26:31Yeah.
26:33It might not have happened to my daughter.
26:37Instead, she became yet another child in Rotherham
26:41to be sexually exploited.
26:44The only person in authority to resign for such failure
26:47has been the council leader, Roger Stone.
26:51Both Rotherham Council and South Yorkshire Police have apologised.
26:55They refuse to be interviewed for this programme,
26:58but say improvements have been made
27:01and they will act on Alexis Jay's recommendations.
27:07Arshid Hussain, who abused Isabel when she was 14,
27:11has still not been prosecuted.
27:14I don't understand why my life's been affected
27:18and he's just completely got away with it.
27:23Through his solicitor, Arshid Hussain has told us
27:27he denies the criminal allegations made against him.
27:31There is now a major police investigation into past cases.
27:39This is a scandal that has caused shock
27:42far beyond this one South Yorkshire town.
27:45A warning to all communities.
27:49It's essentially a hidden problem.
27:52You need to seek it out and identify it
27:55because the one thing that won't happen
27:59is that the individuals will come forward themselves easily
28:03and ask for help.
28:06And it is children who live with the consequences
28:09when others fail to act.
28:12Being betrayed by the people that you thought were there to protect you,
28:16that you genuinely believed would protect you,
28:19can you imagine what that does to a child?
28:22That is lifelong damage and that could have been prevented.
28:28For details of organisations which offer advice and support,
28:32go online or call the BBC Action Line
28:35to hear recorded information on 0800 077 077.
28:39Lines are open 24 hours and are free from most landlines.
28:43Some networks and mobile operators will charge for these calls.
28:58.