descriptions of child includes descriptions of child sexual exploitation and trafficking. the content may be upsetting for some viewers. a decade ago, people in britain woke up to shocking news in the small northern town of rotherham, 1400 young girls had been groomed, abused, trafficked and raped. >> i can't tell you how many rapes that i've had and i want to see chief constables. >> i want to see senior officials held legally to account for their neglect of duty when i was still 14. >> andrea took me to the promenade in the town where we met the pakistani kebab house workers, and then 5 or 6 of them gang raped me. >> i was locked in there for ten

weeks. >> the abuse had gone on for decades and nobody responsible had been punished. the police and council had turned a blind eye to the abuse, or even blamed the raped girls. >> but we sit here today in 2022, and not one person has ever been held accountable for what happenedin held accountable for what happened in this town. >> most of the victims were white. most of the abusers were ethnically pakistani. fears of being seen as racist had contributed to a cover up. >> they were failing them because they were prioritising social cohesion over the victims of actual crimes. >> over the following years, similar stories emerged across the nation of underage girls abused in taxis, kebab shops and housing estates. >> there were three kebab houses in the town and they all knew each other and they linked up. when they raped me, they were all linked. >> but some have said that the story has been overblown, even that it's racist.

>> people in positions of authority have always been frightened of being called racist. the racial dynamics are irrefutable. there's always been tiptoeing around that fact. >> my name is charlie peters. i'm a journalist and documentary filmmaker with gb news, and i want to know why this happened, why the authorities did so little to stop it, and whether it is still going on today. to find out the truth about the grooming gang scandal, i had to go back to the beginning. it started with a journalist at the times called andrew norfolk. he first encountered the grooming gangsin first encountered the grooming gangs in 2003, when labour mp ann cryer revealed local concerns about asian men targeting teenage girls outside school gates. he admitted later

that a story about ethnic minorities targeting white girls felt like a far right fantasy. liberal guilt kicked in, so he wrote one story and dropped it. but over the years, he kept encountering similar stories. his conscience nagged him, and in 2010, he began to research court records. what he found was a pattern. abusers would meet girls in public places. they would give them gifts or take them out on joyrides until they felt like the man was their boyfriend. then they'd give them alcohol or drugs and rape them. often they trafficked the girls between their family and friends to be raped by them too. the girls were mostly white, the abusers mainly pakistani. when andrew norfolk approached the authorities, they all refused to speak to him. finally, he found a group who would speak to him. they were called risky business

and they were based in rotherham. i went there to meet jayne senior, the former manager of the youth project and the whistleblower who exposed the scandal. >> my name is jayne senior. i'm currently the chief exec at a charity in rotherham that covers lots of different areas. i've been a youth worker for most of my working life and ended my career with rotherham borough council and manage a project that we called risky business project that predominantly worked with girls that were involved in child sexual exploitation. >> jane helped norfolk get hold of the serious case review for the murder of laura wilson, aged just 17. she'd been stabbed 40 times by ex—boyfriend ishtiaq ashgar after she told his family about their relationship. her body was thrown in a canal, and she was described as the first white victim of an honour killing. but the review revealed that laura had been groomed and abused by pakistani men from an early age, with an iq of just

58. she'd been failed by 15 different agencies responsible for her care. rotherham council censored the report, then threatened to use a high court injunction to stop the publication of uncensored extracts. jane said that the council wanted to present laura as the victim of an honour killing, rather than admit that she'd been groomed. gb news understands that more information is set to be released about laura and her family's ordeal. risky business had been set up to help local women at risk of exploitation, but they soon found that laura's case was not in isolation. gangs were systematically targeting underage girls in rotherham. the gangs were organised and violent. 115 year old girl was sexually assaulted with a broken bottle. a 13 year old was found drinking vodka in a house full of men after neighbours reported her screams. even when risky business reported the abuse to the authorities, nothing was done. but they did offer a 12 year old victim language lessons

in the punjabi and urdu used by her abusers . in the punjabi and urdu used by her abusers. to find out what that was like. i needed to speak to one of the victims. >> i think it all started when i started secondary school. i was actually targeted and bullied and i met this female on the street and considered, well, she were really 30 years older than myself. naively, i started going to her flat and after a while i was locked in there for ten weeks. >> the woman who lured elizabeth to the flat was already a person of interest to the police. she was known by up to four different aliases. she had once set up a fake rape crisis centre and a fake hotline to lure children into sexual exploitation. but the police failed to stop her. in fact, they let her continue to work for taxi firms in rotherham as she tried to set up a cab company for taking children to

school. >> she started bringing males to the house. that's obviously when things started happening. the rapes and things like that. it was absolutely horrendous. she was absolutely horrendous. she was very controlling, very manipulative. i would give him quite a lot of alcohol. yeah, i were intoxicated more than i was soben were intoxicated more than i was sober, to be honest. it was the same thing every every day. every day. it was so like getting up, getting drunk. the men come in and that was it. and then it would start again. >> during her horrifying ordeal, elizabeth came to the attention of risky business, a rotherham council youth project managed by jayne senior. >> i had a database where we had intelligence that we would put intelligence that we would put in there on a daily basis, and i'd get lots of things that were said to me in meetings such as these children were consenting, they were making informed choices. they were returning to

their abusers. they wouldn't make a good witness if it went to court. and also we were breaching the human rights issue. but it was never the human rights of the children. it was the human rights of the perpetrators. >> elizabeth's abusers were all linked. one of them was the uncle of one of the town's most prolific rapists. >> i never left the building at the flat. yeah, very chaotic for a 14 year old. i can't tell you how many rapes that i've had. >> despite the known links between rapists, south yorkshire police failed to act every time anybody new came into a senior role. >> we kind of thought, this is it now. something's going to happen. something's going to change. so i'd sit in lots of meetings and i would share all the information as my staff would. and we had car registration numbers, names, nicknames, addresses, properties of concern. so we kind of

collated a raft of that information that we kept, and we kept it in a database. and we get lots of reasons. and people still say to me today, why did they actually do nothing? and i can't give you the absolute answer to that. all i can tell you is what they said at the time. the children were consenting. the children would make good witnesses if they went to court. >> but elizabeth's suffering was not consensual. she was being exploited by a ruthless gang of rapists. elizabeth took me back to the flat, which she was kept and abused for ten weeks. eventually she was freed. but it wasn't the police that rescued her. it was risky business. >> i walked out of there five and a half store. loads of marks. i was just a skeleton, really. i came out well. my childhood had been stolen. >> the police had multiple opportunities to investigate the women who lured elizabeth to the flat. they knew that she was a

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