BBC News: “Police officers ‘also abused’ Rotherham victims”; “children say they were also abused by police officers

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Warning: This story contains descriptions of sexual violence

Five women who were exploited by grooming gangs in Rotherham as children say they were also abused by police officers in the town at the time.

One says she was raped from the age of 12 by a serving South Yorkshire Police (SYP) officer in a marked police car. He would threaten to hand her back to the gang if she did not comply, she says.

“In a world where you were being abused so much, being raped once [by a police officer] was a lot easier than multiple rapes [by the gang] and I think he knew that,” she tells the BBC.

We have seen written accounts from these women, plus testimony from 25 other victims of grooming gangs, with some of those women saying that corrupt police officers worked alongside the gangs or failed to act on child sexual exploitation.

At least 1,400 girls in Rotherham were abused by gangs of men, identified by victims as being of mainly Pakistani heritage, between 1997 and 2013, the landmark Jay Report concluded in 2014.

A new criminal investigation into the involvement of police officers in the Rotherham grooming scandal is now being led by SYP’s major crime unit, under the direction of the police watchdog.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn9y0lvpyqvo

h/t dr0id