❓WHAT HAPPENED: Senior officers on England’s South Yorkshire Police force failed to protect children in Rotherham from Muslim grooming gang rapists, the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) has confirmed.
👤WHO WAS INVOLVED: The IOPC, South Yorkshire Police, whistleblowers Jayne Senior and Angie Heal, and South Yorkshire Mayor Oliver Coppard.
📍WHEN & WHERE: Rotherham, England, with the investigation spanning misconduct from 1997 to 2013 and the updated findings released in 2025.
💬KEY QUOTE: “This report is the only report throughout all of Rotherham that proves that they knew what was happening and did nothing.” – Jayne Senior.
🎯IMPACT: The findings highlight systemic failures within South Yorkshire Police and renew calls for accountability, including potential inclusion of police cover-ups in ongoing investigations.
Britain’s Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) has confirmed for the first time that senior officers on the South Yorkshire Police force failed to protect children, mostly white working-class girls, from Muslim grooming gangs in Rotherham, England. The findings follow a 2017 complaint by whistleblowers Jayne Senior and Angie Heal, which the IOPC upheld in 2022. However, its main report into police failures, known as Operation Linden, did not originally include these revelations.
The updated summary released this week defines senior officers as those ranked Chief Superintendent and above. It examined misconduct between 1999 and 2011. Despite the IOPC finally acknowledging serious failures, it still concluded there was “no indication” of criminal offences, such as misconduct in public office, or grounds for disciplinary action. Notably, several of the officers involved in the grooming gangs scandal had already retired and were not legally required to cooperate with the investigation.
The report shows that South Yorkshire Police received intelligence about child sexual exploitation but failed to act. Officers attended meetings where known perpetrators were discussed, yet the same individuals continued abusing girls for years. Some of those men were not convicted until 2016, more than a decade after they were first identified. Meetings intended to address child sexual exploitation often prioritized other issues, and there were consistent failures in sharing intelligence and conducting vehicle checks that might have led to earlier intervention.
There is widespread acceptance that British police officers avoided acting against grooming gangs because their members were mostly Muslims, largely of Pakistani heritage, and their victims were mostly white, and so officers were afraid of both being accused of racism by the groomers and of potentially encouraging racism by drawing attention to ethnic minorities targeting white children.
Whistleblower Jayne Senior said, “This report is the only report throughout all of Rotherham that proves that they knew what was happening and did nothing.”
Rotherham Member of Parliament (MP) Sarah Champion has urged the National Crime Agency (NCA) to expand its inquiry into grooming gangs to include potential police cover-ups.
These revelations come as grooming gang cases continue to make headlines. For instance, Obaidullah Omari was convicted this year for raping two underage girls in the early 2000s. Concerns also remain over the early release of convicted abusers like Asghar Bostan and Basharat Hussain, whose cases have sparked public outrage.
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