Vulnerable teenagers are being sexually assaulted by gangs of men in towns and cities across the country, the child protection expert who exposed the scale of abuse in Rotherham told MPs today.

Professor Alexis Jay was in the Commons following her bombshell report in August which revealed around 1,400 children had been raped and abused by gangs of Asian men in the South Yorkshire town. She said the level of abuse went unreported for 16 years because staff feared they would be seen as racist.

But speaking today Professor Jay said the problem was not confined to Rotherham. Asked by MPs whether the abuse was happening in towns and cities elsewhere in the country, she said: ‘Yes I do believe that. I certainly don’t think Rotherham is unique.’

Professor Jay's report into the Rotherham abuse scandal revealed child protection staff did not speak out about Asian gangs raping young girls for fear of being labelled 'racist'

Children as young as 11 were trafficked, beaten, and raped by large numbers of men between 1997 and 2013 in Rotherham. More than a third of the cases were already know to agencies.

But Professor Jay said: 'Several staff described their nervousness about identifying the ethnic origins of perpetrators for fear of being thought racist'.

She condemned the 'blatant' collective failures by the council's leadership, concluding: 'It is hard to describe the appalling nature of the abuse that child victims suffered.'

The landmark report exposed widespread failures of the council, police and social services.

It revealed victims were doused in petrol and threatened with being set alight, terrorised with guns, made to witness brutally-violent rapes and told they would be the next if they spoke out.

The victims were raped by multiple abusers, trafficked to other towns and cities in the north of England, abducted, beaten and intimidated.

Despite the abuse, police 'regarded many child victims with contempt' and some fathers who tried to rescue their children from abuse were arrested themselves.

South Yorkshire Police and Crime Commissioner Shaun Wright resigned in the wake of Professor Jay's damning report

Prof Jay said the majority of the abusers were described as 'Asian men', and many were said to be of Pakistani origin.

One young person told the inquiry that 'gang rape' was a usual part of growing up in the area of Rotherham where she lived.

In two cases, fathers had tracked down their daughters and tried to remove them from houses where they were being abused - only to be arrested themselves when police were called to the scene.

And one child declined her initial offer to give a statement after allegedly receiving a text from a perpetrator threatening to harm her younger sister.

The failures happened despite three reports between 2002 and 2006 'which could not have been clearer in the description of the situation in Rotherham'.

Prof Jay said the first of these reports was 'effectively suppressed' because senior officers did not believe the data. The other two were ignored, the professor said.

Teachers reported seeing children as young as 11, 12 and 13 being picked up outside schools by cars and taxis, given presents and mobile phones and taken to meet large numbers of unknown men in Rotherham or other local towns and cities.

The majority of victims believed the perpetrators to be their boyfriend who gave them gifts, alcohol and drugs. Some of the victims still maintain they were not groomed or abused.

Analysing the case studies, Prof Jay said many of the children came from dysfunctional families, had parents with addictions, and had suffered domestic or sexual abuse as a child. Some had serious mental health problems.

The spotlight first fell on Rotherham in 2010 when five men, described by a judge as 'sexual predators', were jailed for grooming teenage girls for sex.

Mohsin Khan (left) and Umar Razaq (right) were two of five Asian men convicted of grooming of teenage girls in Rotherham in 2010

The five men - Umar Razaq, Adil Hussain, Razwan Razaq, Zafran Ramzan, and Mohsin Khan - preyed on their victims over several months and threatened them with violence if they refused their advances.

One of the men branded his victim a ‘white bitch’ when she resisted, while a second smirked: ‘I’ve used you and abused you.'