Professionals blamed Oxfordshire girls for their sexual abuse, report finds

Police and social workers in Oxfordshire had a tainted perception that girls as young as 11 consented to sex with men who raped and brutalised them, an independent report into the failure to stop their exploitation has said.

Throughout their interactions with six young girls in Oxford, professionals struggled with the law on consent, failing to understand that such was the power of the grooming process the children had no power to say no to gang rape, sexual torture and violence.

The serious case review, commissioned by Maggie Blyth, independent chair of the Oxfordshire safeguarding children board, said there were grounds for believing that 373 girls had been sexually exploited across Oxfordshire in the past 15 years.

One police officer recorded that a 13-year-old having sex with an older Asian man was in an “age-appropriate relationship”. Another sergeant described how a 14-year-old girl had initiated sexual intercourse with two men. Social workers, the report said, appeared to tolerate the underage sex the girls were having with much older men.

The report called on the government to examine whether its guidance on the age of consent fed attitudes that made it easier for perpetrators to abuse victims.

“The overall problem was not grasping the nature of the abuse – the grooming, the pull from home, the erosion of consent, the inability to escape and the sheer horror of what the girls were going through – but of seeing it as something done more voluntarily. Something that the girls did as opposed to something done to them,” the report said.

Instead, professionals blamed the girls, the report said; police and social services were gripped with the mindset that they were “very difficult” girls who had come to harm as a result of their own actions. Despite damning findings in the 114-page report, no one has been disciplined or sacked over the child protection failures.

The three senior managers who were responsible for social services in Oxfordshire at the time have all moved on; one emigrated and has since returned to the UK; another has a new job in the private sector; and the third has retired on health grounds, according to Jim Leivers, Oxfordshire’s director for children, education and families.

The report called on the government to research why the perpetrators of this type of child abuse – which has been seen in Rochdale, Rotherham, Derby, Bristol and Oxfordshire – were predominantly from a Pakistani and/or Muslim heritage.

Blyth said what the children were subjected to was “indescribably awful”.

“The child victims and their families feel very let down,” the report said. “Their accounts of how they perceived professional work are disturbing and chastening.”

The report said key failings by police and social workersincluded:

• A culture of denial.
• Blaming the girls for their precocious and difficult behaviour.
• Blaming the girls for putting themselves at risk of harm.
• Tolerance of underage sexual activity by the girls with older men.
• A failure to recognise the girls had been groomed and violently controlled.

Such was the nature of the sexual exploitation and abuse suffered by the girls, who all had backgrounds in care, that it was likened to torture. The abuse took place in Oxford, in a guest house or in parks and churchyards, and the girls were plied with drugs and subjected to gang rape and sexual atrocities for more than eight years between 2004 and 2012.

The report highlighted multiple missed opportunities by Thames Valley police and Oxfordshire social services to act rigorously.

These included a neighbourhood city council official who in February 2007 raised concerns with senior police officers and children’s social services manages about a 13-year-old girl. He reported “men going into the flat every night” and said he saw the child lying under a cover with an adult male. But he was reprimanded by city council officials after an intervention by the head of child social care in Oxfordshire county council – who was not named in the report. The then director of children’s services in the council – also not named in the report – was copied into the emails.

The report failed to hold any senior managers or directors accountable, saying there was no evidence of “wilful professional misconduct” and senior managers were not made aware of what was going on. Instead she blamed lack of knowledge and understanding and organisational failings.

Middle managers in social services, however, gave evidence that they were afraid to escalate concerns amid an “oppressive culture” within the council at the time.

The girls were reported missing 450 times between 2005 and 2010.

An internal review by Thames Valley police submitted to the inquiry highlighted a tolerance of underage sexual activity by police and social workers. “It was evident that investigators were repeatedly wrestling with the challenge of age,” the police internal review said. “Decisions being made throughout… were often tainted with the perception of these children having consented to the sexual activity. This was… shared amongst professionals.”

In a desperate email to senior officers, a police missing persons coordinator wrote in 2006: “The sad thing is that I’m not at all shocked or surprised at this lack of response as both girls appear to be labelled – repeat mispers [missing persons], streetwise too much trouble, not worth the effort..

“I don’t know what more can be done to ensure that these vulnerable mispers are treated as a priority enquiry until one of them is found dead.”

The report said from 2005 to 2010 there was sufficient knowledge about the girls, drugs and prostitution and their association with adult men to have generated a rigorous and strategic response from police and social workers. These included many “worrying” warning signs over a number of years involving more than one girl, multiple alleged perpetrators, who were usually Pakistani, and a very strong association with children in care.

The girls’ stories were shocking, the report said. There was “remorseless drama, chaos, violence, drink, hard drugs, violent and utterly unloving sex and of not being able to escape”.

One victim said: “Why would a 13-year-old make it up?” Another girl said: “They did not look at me as a child. In my head I was older, but really truly I wasn’t.” One described how she was treated as the criminal. “I was put in a secure unit because I kept going missing – I thought I was being punished.”

Police failed to use tactics available to them, including disruption, surveillance and rigorous intelligence-gathering. Instead, they relied solely on victims’ testimony, which was rarely forthcoming and not maintained.

Following the report’s publication, the education secretary, Nicky Morgan, told MPs in the Commons that the report made for “sickening” reading.

“[The report] is an indictment of the failure of frontline workers to protect extremely vulnerable young people over a number of years,” she said. “Reading the details of what happened to them has been truly sickening.

“The serious case review makes clear that numerous opportunities to intervene to protect these girls were missed as police and social workers failed to look beyond what they saw as troubled teenagers to the frightened child within.

“As a result they failed to act on clear evidence of sexual abuse, to protect girls or even to pass on concerns to a sufficiently senior level,” she said, adding that ministers rejected explanations that child sex abuse was not “widely recognised” at the time.

Labour MPs called for an independent inquiry to be set up into the Oxfordshire abuse to address the outstanding questions, including how there was a culture of denial that meant such serious incidents were never escalated to senior officers.

They also called for the introduction of compulsory sex education in primary schools but this was rejected by Morgan, saying the problem was not lack of knowledge by the victims but a failure to act by the police and social workers.

Thames Valley police said they had referred themselves to the IPCC. Ch Con Sara Thornton repeated her apology to the victims for failing to stop the abusers earlier.

In May 2013, after a groundbreaking police inquiry, seven men were convicted of 43 offences of rape, trafficking and violence and jailed for between seven and 20 years.