Jay Report: How inquiry shone a light on Rotherham abuse

Prof Jay described the abuse as “appalling”. She found children had been raped by multiple attackers, trafficked to other towns and cities in the north of England, abducted and beaten.

Some were doused in petrol and threatened with being set alight, while others were threatened with guns, made to watch “brutally violent rapes” and warned they would be next if they told anyone.

In just over a third of cases, the victims were previously known to social services because of child protection and neglect issues.

Prof Jay wrote in her report: “By far the majority of perpetrators were described as ‘Asian’ by victims, yet throughout the entire period, councillors did not engage directly with the Pakistani-heritage community to discuss how best they could jointly address the issue.

“Some councillors seemed to think it was a one-off problem, which they hoped would go away.”

She added some council staff described their nervousness about identifying the ethnic origins of perpetrators for fear of being thought racist; others remembered clear direction from their managers not to do so.

The report found there had been “blatant” collective failures by the council’s leadership, a failure by South Yorkshire Police to prioritise the issue and said senior managers had “underplayed” the scale of the problem.