One of the senior British bureaucrats who failed to prevent the systematic rape and physical abuse of children in the English town of Rotherham has relocated to Melbourne and been appointed a deputy secretary in Victoria's Education Department.



An independent inquiry into child sexual exploitation in Rotherham this week detailled the "collective failures" of political and officer leadership to prevent the abuse of a conservatively estimated 1400 children over a 16-year period. A report on the inquiry, released this week, found that children were raped by multiple perpetrators, kidnapped, trafficked to other towns and beaten between 1997 and 2013.

Dr Sonia Sharp, deputy secretary of Victoria's Early Childhood and School Education Group, was named in the report as the director of children's services at Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council between 2005 to 2008.

She admitted she was partly responsible for the abuse, telling Fairfax Media: "You can't be a Director of Children's Services and not take responsibility for what happens to children."

She said that tackling sexual exploitation was a "key priority" of a plan approved by council when she began in 2005.