The child sex abuse scandal in Rotherham is a toxic mix of race, class and misogyny. And this was not a handful of girls hidden in a cellar by a particular gang. This was hundreds of young women (and some young men), year on year, being victimised in plain sight. Anybody who took a cab late at night, bought a kebab or knew the families of either the victims or the perpetrators would have had an inkling as to what was going on. But something made them blind to it.

There are people who had no excuse not to know. Attention has centered on South Yorkshire’s police and crime commissioner, Shaun Wright, who was cabinet member for children and young people’s services at Rotherham council from 2005 to 2010, received three reports about widespread abuse but did nothing.

But another person who should have known is the current Rotherham deputy leader Paul Lakin. According to his website he is cabinet member for children, young people and families services, chair of the children, young people and families strategic partnership, member of the Rotherham Safeguarding Children’s board and member of the Health and Wellbeing board. And he is considered such a repository of wisdom on safeguarding children that, not only does he represents Rotherham on the Local Government Association children’s and young people’s board, but he is chair of the Yorkshire and Humber regional network for lead members of children’s services.

But this worthy gentleman, with all his official titles, was on the radio this morning claiming to have no idea about the extent of the abuse. Yet the independent inquiry published yesterday points out that that reports into the extent of child sexual exploitation in Rotherham were published by various bodies in 2002, 2003 and 2006. The inquiry says these studies “could not have been clearer”.

The inquiry also found that seminars were held for councillors and senior police officers in 2004 and 2005 which “presented the abuse in the most explicit terms” It is simply beyond belief that Councillor Lakin and his colleagues did not know the extent of the problem. Not unless, of course, they never actually read reports, but left it to their officers to actually run the council whilst they themselves enjoyed all the pomp and ceremony of being local dignitaries with impressive titles.

But there is more to the Rotherham scandal than local worthies who never bothered to get their head around the issue. There are issues around race. Although it is important to note that only a tiny minority of Muslim men are engaged in grooming and abusing girls, there are issues to be faced up to by the community. Writer Yasmin Alibhai Brown has set them out in her usual clear-eyed way.

And it is too simplistic to claim that it is just a matter of over sensitive policemen worried about offending the sensibilities of black and brown Rotherham residents. Black and Muslim boys, stopped and searched in disproportionate numbers all over the country, have not noticed this delicacy of approach. But, there may be something in the nature of the patriarchal political establishment in one-party towns like Rotherham where party bosses do deals with self-styled community leaders, which made key actors unwilling to disrupt arrangements and prepared to turn a blind eye.

The inquiry also points to a sexist, misogynistic and bullying culture at Rotherham council which “is likely to have impeded the council from providing an effective, corporate response to such a highly sensitive social problem as child sexual exploitation”

Above all one is struck by the class aspect of the scandal. A few of the girls were from middle class homes. But the majority were working class girls, often in care. And it is not just their abusers who thought they were worthless. It is hard not to draw the conclusion that the police, councillors and local worthies dismissed those girls as “rubbish” not worth bothering about.

In a world where many of the working class communities of the de-industrialised North have been left behind, these young girls were on the far edge of the marginalised. They were not worth reading reports about, not worth upsetting delicate (and vote-getting) relationships with “community leaders” about and not worth noticing hanging out late at night with older men who clearly meant them no good. When they went to the police they were ignored and when they tried to report abuse they could end up arrested themselves.

At the highest levels of the local establishment nobody cared. So the young people could be victimised and abused in plain sight. And now adults who were paid to know can claim (quite breathtakingly) that they had no idea.