Six men and women were found guilty of offences relating to the sexual exploitation of teenage girls in Rotherham, as it emerged that the conduct of more than 50 officers from South Yorkshire who had dealt with the victims is now under investigation.



A gang of three brothers, their uncle and two women were found guilty of 55 serious offences, some of which lay undetected for almost 20 years. They targeted 15 vulnerable girls, one as young as 11, and subjected them to brutal and degrading acts between 1987 and 2003 including rape, forced prostitution, indecent assault and false imprisonment.

Allegations by victims that those found guilty – Arshid, Basharat and Bannaras Hussain, their uncle Qurban Ali and their associates Karen MacGregor and Shelley Davies – were able to commit crimes for so long with apparent impunity are now the focus of two separate investigations into the police.

It can now be reported that the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) has launched 55 separate investigations into how South Yorkshire police dealt with victims, in one of the biggest inquiries into potential neglect of duty and corruption in recent policing history.

The police watchdog said that 46 misconduct notices had already been served on 26 officers, and warned the figure could increase. It is understood that more than 50 officers are being investigated. Complaints cover “a range of allegations from a failure to act on reported child sexual exploitation to corruption by police officers,” it said.

The National Crime Agency (NCA) is also undertaking what it described as the “largest criminal investigation of its kind in the UK” into grooming and sexual exploitation in the South Yorkshire town, with 9,000 lines of inquiry.

The NCA said it currently had a total of 23 designated suspects but added that it had “hundreds of potential suspects still to investigate”. So far it said it had identified and recorded 57 serious sexual offences.

Child sex abuse in Rotherham: 'I was treated as a criminal … never as a victim' Read more

Operation Stovewood, the NCA inquiry, is concentrating on the period between 1997 and 2013. Their work follows on from a report by Prof Alexis Jay, a former commissioner of social work, who had warned in 2014 that sex abuse could have affected as many as 1,400 children in the town, blaming failures of leadership amongst the police and local council.

It also reflects suspicion that child abuse was continuing in the town despite complaints to Rotherham police, that are now known to have been made, in the 1990s and the decade following by victims in the Rotherham trial.

Some of the 15 victims who were abused by the gang watched the verdicts from the public gallery overlooking the packed court, some holding hands with each other. Arshid Hussain, 40, who is in a wheelchair after being shot, appeared from his bed at home via video link and seemed to be asleep. Basharat Hussain, 39, was surrounded by prison officers in the dock and was taken away along with MacGregor and Davies. Judge Sarah Wright said all will be sentenced on Friday.

Martin Tait, the senior investigating officer, described the Hussains as “vile individuals” who exploited the girls because “in their eyes” the abuse would “enhance their lifestyle”.

Arshid Hussain managed to avoid immediate custody following the guilty verdicts after his wife called an ambulance for him for alleged emergency treatment. He was whisked away to hospital in Scunthorpe, but the prosecution said it was a “deliberate attempt” to “frustrate” the process of taking him into custody.

The IPCC inquiry represents the first of a series of upcoming tests for South Yorkshire police, which is bracing itself for yet more criticism over its handling of the Hillsborough disaster when an inquest jury is expected to return a verdict in the coming weeks into the 96 Liverpool fans who died at the Sheffield stadium.

“Knowing that these things were going on and people were aware of them and failed these young girls – it wasn’t a single officer, it was the entire force that has a case to answer,” said Alan Billings, the South Yorkshire police and crime commissioner whose job is to hold the force to account on the public’s behalf.

But he said the public needed answers. Some of the complaints about officers have been lying on file for two years, he said. “For South Yorkshire police to recover from this they have to to face the truth in its totality. They can’t afford to go into denial if confidence is going to be restored in them,” Billings said.



Arshid and Basharat Hussain were known criminals operating in the drug business with a string of convictions but none relating to grooming. One victim said they felt they would never be punished because she felt they “owned” Rotherham. They also operated in Sheffield, Blackpool and Tottenham in London, where girls were forced to have sex with other men.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Karen MacGregor lured two of the victims into her house before forcing them into sexual relations. Photograph: PA

Evidence through the three-month trial also exposed shortcomings at Rotherham council. Men were caught late at night in the bedroom of one victim in a children’s home. Another was allowed to be picked up from her foster home as long as her abuser dropped her home by 10pm.

David Greenwood, a Sheffield solicitor, acting for 65 victims is planning to sue Rotherham metropolitan borough council for alleged negligence with more victims expected to come forward following Wednesday’s verdicts.

Some of the victims fear the inquiries will not go far enough, and may brush police failures under the carpet. One of them, who spoke to the Guardian, said she made a complaint about an officer 14 years ago when her abuser, Arshid Hussain, held her by the throat and threatened to throw her over a balcony in Rotherham town market.

She had had a baby with Hussain and wanted nothing more to do with him. She said the police officer told her it was her fault. “He said ‘he’s got every right to [push you over the balcony], you stopped him seeing his son’.” Throughout the trial a succession of women gave evidence that they had reported the abuse to police but were not heeded.

Several officers were named in the case. One, PC Kenneth Dawes, was arrested last June on suspicion of misconduct in public office. He has denied any wrongdoing.

One of the victims in the trial said she told him of abuse she suffered at the age of 13 or 14 years of age but that he did nothing and his failure to act on her complaint meant she did not have any confidence to report continuing abuse.

Another officer named in court, PC Hussain Ali, died following a road accident the day he was put on restricted duties in relation to allegations of misconduct, neglect of duty, and corrupt practice. Among the complaints being investigated was an allegation that he asked one of the victims in the trial out on a date.

The same woman, known as Girl J, also accused him of being involved in a corrupt no-prosecution deal with Arshid Hussain.