Rotherham cabinet resigns over further damning child abuse report

The cabinet of Rotherham council has resigned en masse over an absolutely damning report which suggests that the council was "not fit for purpose." The report found that despite the previous absolutely damning report which found that over 1,400 young girls from being raped in the borough and that local council and police authorities had utterly failed in their duty of care to these girls, Rotherham council was still in denial about the fact that there is a problem.

Regular readers of this blog will note that I have done something unusual for me, and deliberately ignored an opportunity to kick the ball into an open political goal. I resisted the temptation to use the name of the political party which runs Rotherham council into the headline of this post.

That's because the horrifying situation in Rotherham is far too serious to play party politics: I hope the voters of Rotherham will refuse to elect anyone of any party who cannot demonstrate that they have a serious commitment to helping solve the problem that the town has.

But the most frightening thing of all is that although Rotherham is probably the worst case which has come out in the UK of the organised grooming and rape of young girls on an industrial scale, other court cases in towns and cities up and down the country demonstrate that Rotherham is not the only place where gangs of child-rapists are operating.

Which means that every police force and every authority with responsibility for young people should be asking themselves, not just "Could anything like that be happening here?" but also "If something like that is happening here, how do we find it and stop it?"

We need to get back to the principle that justice takes no regard of the race or standing of the victim or the person accused. No social or racial group should automatically be assumed to be guilty and no social or racial group should be automatically assumed to be innocent.

There must be one law for everyone and nobody is above that law.

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