Rotherham: How scale of abuse shocked even the man who exposed it

Looking back at the impact of Professor Alexis Jay’s findings in 2014, Mr Norfolk said that the outcome of his investigative work proved the value of the “mainstream media” in exposing crime and the failings of authorities.

He admitted that he had had to balance his instinct to reveal the abuse with concerns that the story’s publication would both stoke the reaction of the far-right and lead to accusations of racism.

“If you’d asked me the day before that press conference how many young teenage girls had been groomed and exploited in Rotherham over the time period the report covered, I would have guessed 150,” he said.

He was “staggered” to hear Prof Jay reveal how 1,400 girls had been abused, trafficked to other cities, or had petrol poured on them.

“They were treated like sub-human species for the pleasure of these men,” he added.

Mr Norfolk had first identified a “pattern” of Pakistani-heritage grooming gangs exploiting white girls in the north of England and the Midlands in 2010, but came up against a “conspiracy of silence” when he tried to elicit responses from police forces and councils.

He said that hearing Prof Jay explicitly refer to the perpetrators’ ethnic backgrounds was an “extraordinary” moment.

“It was so hard-hitting, she didn’t mince her words. The response was seismic across the world.”

He added: “When the leader of Rotherham Council was asked by the Home Affairs Select Committee why it had ordered that inquiry, he said: ‘Because The Times wouldn’t leave us alone’. That in itself, in 35 years of journalism, is vindication for being a journalist.”