The UK’s biggest investigation into child sexual exploitation needs 100 more officers to tackle the unprecedented scale of abuse in Rotherham, the head of the operation has told the Guardian.

The National Crime Agency (NCA), which is investigating past grooming offences in the town, has identified more than 1,500 potential victims and 110 suspects, and officers expect those figures to rise.

Paul Williamson, the senior investigating officer on Operation Stovewood. Photograph: NCA

Paul Williamson, the senior investigating officer on Operation Stovewood, said his team of officers had been able to contact only 17% of the 1,510 possible victims due to a shortage of specially trained detectives.

“It’s a really specialist area, engaging and interviewing vulnerable victims,” he said. “A lot of our victims were children when they were abused but they’re now adults and have associated problems as a result of that abuse, including suicidal tendencies, mental health issues, drug and alcohol addiction.

“It’s really complex. The progress will necessarily be influenced by the number of officers we’ve got on the team and we can see that.”

He added: “I’m conscious of demands across law enforcement in the UK at the moment but we have assessed that 200-250 [officers] is the optimum model to actually achieve the task.”

There are 144 officers on Operation Stovewood but an application was made to increase this to 200-250, which was supported by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services.

More than 34 investigations have sprung out of Stovewood since it was launched in 2015, two years after a report by Prof Alexis Jay sparked a national furore when it revealed that 1,400 children were believed to have been sexually exploited by men of mainly Pakistani heritage in Rotherham.



The operation, believed to have cost about £10m to date, has led to four men being convicted and jailed for a total of more than 30 years.

Thirty-eight suspects have been arrested, 18 charged, two cautioned, and six trials are due to take place later this year. The inquiry is 85% funded by the Home Office with the remaining 15% from South Yorkshire police’s budget.

Williamson said the operation was now at a crucial stage when officers were aiming to pursue Rotherham’s grooming gangs instead of lone individuals. But, he said, the pace of the inquiry was being slowed by the lack of resources.

An inspection by HMIC found Operation Stovewood had about 100 fewer officers than the optimum staffing level.

“Part of my desire is to engage the most harmed-against victims, where our information said 10 or 20 people might have offended against the victim, and target the most harmful offenders – the offenders that committed the most offences in that period,” Williamson said.

“It’s very, very simplistic but actually the outcome of that is that when we look at networked group offending, we need the resources now to tackle the problem because if my analysis and methodology is correct we should be looking at smaller investigations at the end of the operation.”

Williamson said the investigation was comparable in scale and complexity to Operation Resolve, the criminal investigation into the Hillsborough disaster, which he said had more than 200 officers.

He added: “I’m naturally impatient because there should rightly be a high degree of public expectation around the operation and we need to deliver on public expectation. We’re seeing that – we’ve got six trials coming through this year, it’s not insignificant – but we can do more and more quickly.”