Rotherham whistleblower Jayne Senior has endured countless painful conversations with me. Across many years, we have reflected on cases of brutal sexual exploitation and explored cover-ups, bullying and brutal political scheming at the expense of children battling abuse. But the first time I heard her cry was when she phoned to share the devastating news that Andrew Norfolk had died.
At the height of the crisis, Jayne passed Norfolk boxes full of key documents exposing the scandal of mass exploitation in Rotherham. When police and the council leadership of the South Yorkshire town were seeking to punish anyone who spoke out, Andrew was the lone voice that heard her and ensured the truth was revealed.
When reports of roaming sex abuse gangs made up of predominantly Pakistani men first started circulating in the 2000s, the bulk of the outrage came from the BNP, the far-right party that was soaring in the north west, and Labour MP Ann Cryer, who was derided by party grandees as a racist for sharing parents’ concerns in Keighley. Some reporters had penned dispatches from a handful of towns, but were dissuaded from continuing their coverage.
When Norfolk heard these reports he later admitted that he first dismissed the issue as a far-right fantasy. He wrote up one story on Pakistani abuse gangs and then moved on. But years later, he noticed ongoing reports that matched this pattern. Norfolk described the moment he overcame his liberal angst while on a drive up to Edinburgh for a long weekend in 2010. He heard a news bulletin about a gang being convicted in Manchester, researched the case and found that all of the men in the dock were Pakistani. Researching court records, he found dozens of other gang-based offenders with an overrepresentation of Pakistanis.
He published his first extensive report on grooming gangs months later in January 2011. On the front cover of the Times, the headline read: ‘Conspiracy of silence on UK sex gangs’. Despite mounting evidence, no one in authority would speak to him. But he pushed on against the failure of the authorities to react.
After years of coverage, working closely with Jayne Senior and several survivors to reveal one horror after another, Rotherham Council eventually ordered an inquiry into the scandal. The council’s chief executive later admitted they commissioned Alexis Jay’s investigation because ‘the Times won’t leave us alone’. During those years of reporting against a wall of ignorance, the council briefed that Norfolk’s findings were ‘the lies of the Murdoch press’.
Jay’s report found 1,400 victims from 1997 to 2013 and reaffirmed the over-representation of Pakistani men, outlining abuse so horrific it could be termed as torture. She did not mince her words and Norfolk was vindicated. Even then, left-wing academics hounded him for years. I have shared some of those crazed detractors, who fling slurs about racism and islamophobia in spite of the evidence. If their goal in attacking Norfolk was to stop others from being inspired and continuing where he led, then they have failed miserably.
His unrivalled reporting from Rotherham and Rochdale demonstrated a pattern of exploitation that has never truly been understood. In his last interview in January, he shared regret that the ultimate cause of the scandal had yet to be properly investigated. Links between religion, culture, cousin marriage, sociobiological kinship and ethnicity and the prevalence of this form of child abuse remain unknown because the establishment has not shared Andrew Norfolk’s commitment to uncovering the truth, no matter how disturbing it might be.
Norfolk encountered a conspiracy of silence in Rotherham
It has been my mission to continue coverage of the scandal that Norfolk first properly exposed. He stopped reporting on the grooming gangs after years of constant coverage due to the ‘unrelenting grimness‘ of the matter. It just became too much. Inspired by his example, GB News has collated over 50 different towns and cities affected by the same pattern, finding shocking new examples of abuse and silence.
I have also been blocked by the conspiracy of silence that Norfolk encountered in Rotherham. Recently, GB News heard from former DCI John Piekos who said that he was threatened with arrest by a senior social services director – with a uniformed officer in the room – after he presented evidence of trafficking and exploitation from care homes in Bradford. The council did not provide a response when I approached them for comment.
Even now, as there are growing calls for an inquiry across the Bradford district, political leaders such as the council leader and mayor have rejected calls for a probe, rejecting demands as recently as last month. Survivors I have spoken with and the testimony of cover-ups I have heard have convinced me that the scale of the abuse in Bradford would dwarf Rotherham.
From years of research about trafficking links from Bradford to the rest of Britain, I am certain that an independent inquiry there would expose horrors so grave that the country would struggle to come to terms with it. It is the example of Andrew Norfolk that has inspired me to continue to press against this conspiracy of silence, so that those who are yet to have their truth and justice might one day receive it.
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