No charges will be brought against any senior figures at Rotherham borough council despite “various and substantial organisational failings” that left 1,400 children at risk of sexual abuse, a set of reports has concluded.

The decision, in six long-awaited reports published on Wednesday, was condemned by the Rotherham MP, Sarah Champion as a “complete wasted opportunity to allow the town to move forward”.

The reports concluded that no senior council managers from 1997 to 2013 should face any action despite the independent experts finding “there may have been errors of judgment or missed opportunities”.

Two social workers were singled out for potential disciplinary action for their failure to protect a girl known as Child E, who was raped twice by older children when in council care, having already suffered sexual abuse in her family setting. Child E went on to suffer from mental illness including at least one psychotic episode that led to her being sectioned under the Mental Health Act.

But Rotherham council has decided there is not enough evidence to take action against the pair after taking advice from an independent expert. It said Child E’s case was “indicative of the widespread systematic failure seen across the safeguarding and care system and as a result no one individual alone could be held culpable”.



The reports, which cost Rotherham taxpayers £440,000, were presented at a packed and highly charged meeting of the council, where several survivors in the public gallery expressed disappointment that no one was being held responsible.

“The point of this was to get answers,” complained one victim. “Kids were telling social workers that we were being raped multiple times and they did nothing. A system does not make a social worker deliberately ignore a child’s claims. And it wasn’t just one social worker, it was multiple.”

Sammy Woodhouse, who waived her anonymity to talk about being groomed and abused from the age of 14 by the ringleader of one Rotherham gang, described the reports as “a complete waste of time and public money”. She said: “They’ve just told us stuff we already knew. I don’t think we will ever get answers.”

Woodhouse was arrested in the bed of her abuser when she was 15, while he walked free. “The people who failed me are just going to get away with it. It feels like the professionals have all just received a little slap on the hand and they have received bigger payouts, in terms of their pensions, than us,” she said.

The reports found:

Widespread evidence of “extremely poor practice” in the case of 15 victims of child sexual abuse highlighted by Prof Alexis Jay’s report of 2014, which estimated that 1,400 children were abused in the town over a 16-year period, largely by men of Pakistani heritage.

“On the balance of probability” files belonging to a Home Office researcher investigating child sexual abuse in Rotherham were removed by someone with access to key-coded and locked security doors. Some files were also deliberately corrupted. The culprits have not been identified.

Senior council figures tried to cover up the theft of 21 laptops containing personal details about child abuse victims in 2011.

An internal audit found that council officials chose not to inform the information commissioner about the security breach, then falsely claimed no sensitive data was compromised.

Council managers who oversaw the taxi trade were not made aware of the “good deal of evidence” suggesting taxi drivers were “heavily involved” in child sexual exploitation.

The reports were commissioned to investigate the council’s handling of the grooming scandal after the Jay report was published.

Champion said: “I had hoped that today’s publication of the reports into Rotherham metropolitan borough council (RMBC) preventing child sexual exploitation would draw a line under the catalogue of errors that led to our children being let down so badly by those supposed to protect them.

“However, despite these huge failures, leading to at least 1,400 victims being let down, it appears that no individual at RMBC has yet been held to account for their role.”

The council leader, Chris Read, castigated his predecessor Roger Stone, along with other Labour party colleagues, for refusing to talk to investigators about their role in the scandal. “Our survivors deserve better than your miserable silence,” said Read. Stone led the council from 2003 until 2014.

Other key figures who declined to be interviewed included Paul Lakin, the former council cabinet member for children and young people’s services who was in the role between 2010 and 2014, and his predecessor Shaun Wright, who held the position from 2005 until 2010. Wright went on to become South Yorkshire’s police and crime commissioner but was forced to stand down after publication of the Jay report in 2014.

There were 27 “key” people whom the report authors could not interview because they did not respond or declined the invitation.

In an internal audit published on Wednesday, Rotherham council admitted staff tried to cover up the theft of 21 laptops containing sensitive data about child abusers and their victims by not reporting the security breach to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). In addition, they were “not completely open” with the ICO when the regulator launched an investigation after a Rotherham Advertiser story about the theft.

The audit said it was a “confirmation of the failures in corporate governance at the time” that it had been unable to trace the formal decision not to inform the ICO about the breach, but that it appeared to have been taken in an informal discussion before a senior leadership team meeting.

The report concluded: “Taken together, it is understandable that others have formed a view that the council has covered up the facts.”

A separate investigation found “there was a good deal of intelligence” to suggest that elements of Rotherham’s taxi trade were heavily involved in child sexual exploitation. However, it concluded that no current or former council staff should face disciplinary action.

While many of those criticised in the report have gone on to highly paid jobs in other local authorities, survivors complain that they are left unsupported. One woman revealed at the meeting on Wednesday that she was the victim referred to in one of the reports as Child A. She said she had given evidence against six paedophiles in a case at Sheffield crown court this year and had been unable to access support services since because she was now an adult.

The woman, known by the pseudonym Lisa, said: “I’ve made numerous, numerous complaints about it. A victim shouldn’t have to come forward, visually, to get something done. And that’s why this town doesn’t change … I convicted six people and I’m still here struggling.”