Who will be held to account for the horror in Rotherham?

If Rotherham council were a family, its children would have been removed by social services long ago, and Ma and Pa Rotherham would be safely behind bars. Professor Alexis Jay’s report, which was published this week, reveals depravity on an industrial scale in the South Yorkshire town. At least 1,400 children, Prof. Jay estimates, were subjected to sexual exploitation between 1997 and 2013. Many were raped multiple times by members of gangs whose activities either were or should have been known about. Children were trafficked around the country to be abused. Those who put up resistance were beaten. And when they complained they were treated with contempt by the people who were employed to protect them.

We don’t hold out much hope that anyone in a position of authority will be going to jail, nor even that anyone will lose their pension. Roger Stone OBE, leader of the Labour-run council for the past 11 years, has ‘stepped down’, saying that he would be taking responsibility. There was no mention of the 71-year-old Mr Stone ceding his pension, and neither did he show much in the way of contrition; he seemed to see his resignation as a noble act, falling on his sword so that his minions might continue in employment.

It is always the same with public authorities and scandals relating to children in care. No one is ever to blame, only ‘systems’. There is always room, of course, for these nebulous ‘systems’ to be improved. But there must never be any finger-pointing. If, on rare occasions, people are forced out of their jobs, then an action for unfair dismissal invariably follows.

If Rotherham Council’s social services department does have anything that deserves to be described as a ‘system’, it is a deeply flawed one.