Smithsonian To Post Sign At Exhibition Featuring Bill Cosby-Owned Art, Alexis Jay on child sex abuse: ‘Politicians wanted to keep a lid on it’, Rotherham victims
July 15, 2015 Comments Off on Smithsonian To Post Sign At Exhibition Featuring Bill Cosby-Owned Art, Alexis Jay on child sex abuse: ‘Politicians wanted to keep a lid on it’, Rotherham victims
Smithsonian To Post Sign At Exhibition Featuring Bill Cosby-Owned Art
July 14, 2015 Krishnadev Calamur
The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art in Washington will post a sign Wednesday telling visitors an exhibition that includes art owned by Bill Cosby and his wife, Camille, is “fundamentally about the artworks and the artists who created them, not Mr. Cosby,” representatives for the Smithsonian Institution say.
The sign, which will be posted at 10 a.m., comes amid allegations of sexual misconduct directed against Cosby by more than two dozen women. Some of them say he drugged and raped them. Cosby has not been charged in any of the alleged assaults.
Last week it emerged that the comedian testified in 2005 he obtained the sedative Quaalude with the intent of giving the drug to women with whom he wanted to have sex, and he acknowledged giving it to at least one woman. The Los Angeles Police Department says it is conducting at least one current criminal investigation into allegations of sexual assault against Cosby….
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/07/14/423001343/smithsonian-to-post-sign-at-exhibition-featuring-bill-cosby-owned-art
Alexis Jay on child sex abuse: ‘Politicians wanted to keep a lid on it’
Her devastating Rotherham report blew open the national debate on child sex abuse. Now the ‘retired’ social worker is investigating historic claims on an unprecedented scale, taking on Westminster, the BBC and NHS
Helen Pidd Monday 13 July 2015
Alexis Jay officially retired two years ago – not that you’d notice. In 2013 she stepped down from her role as Scotland’s chief social work adviser, shortly after being awarded an OBE. But rather than tending to her garden she ended up digging up horrific claims of child sexual exploitation in Rotherham. That job done, the scalps of many officials taken, she moved on to sort out Northern Ireland’s safeguarding children boards.
But last week the 66-year-old began her biggest task yet, when she joined the panel of what has been described as Britain’s most complicated and wide-reaching statutory inquiry ever. The independent inquiry into child sex abuse (IICSA) is expected to take five years investigating claims of abuse in faith and religious organisations, the criminal justice system, local authorities and national institutions such as the BBC, NHS and Ministry of Defence….
“By victims we are not talking about children who were at risk of sexual exploitation, who were friendly with victims or who moved in the same circle,” she told the journalists. “The 1,400 victims are those who had actually experienced sexual exploitation.” Determined that no one could bat away her findings, she had produced a 153-page report that spelled out in plain language the appalling abuse suffered by children aged 10-16 in the South Yorkshire town (Rotherham) between 1997 and 2013….
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/jul/13/alexis-jay-politicians-rotherham-report-child-sex-abuse-social-worker-claims-westminster-bbc-nhs
Rotherham Child Sex Abuse Investigation Uncovers Several Hundred Suspects And Several Thousand Leads
June 26, 2015 Comments Off on Rotherham Child Sex Abuse Investigation Uncovers Several Hundred Suspects And Several Thousand Leads
Rotherham Child Sex Abuse Investigation Uncovers Several Hundred Suspects And Several Thousand Leads
The Huffington Post UK By Steven Hopkins 24/06/2015
Hundreds of potential suspects have been identified in an investigation into child sex abuse in Rotherham, along with several thousand new lines of enquiry, police have said.
The National Crime Agency began an investigation in December last year following the Alexis Jay report that revealed there were 1400 victims of abuse in the town between 1997 and 2013. Police and other authorities knew about the abuse, but failed to act.
Police said Wednesday that “stage one” of their investigation had uncovered “a significant number of potential offenders. The current figure is in the low hundreds”….
Steve Baldwin, who is a Senior Investigating Officer involved in the operation, said police now had more than 3,300 lines of enquiry.
He said the abuse was “horrific” and the evidence police had gathered “details some very disturbing events”.
Police believe the 1,400 victims identified in the Alexis Jay report remains a “very good assessment” of the numbers of children abused during the time period….
Last month two new reports revealed that authorities in Rotherham had been warned about child sexual exploitation in 2003 – and given a list of the suspected main offenders – and told three years later that the problem was established and very serious, but had failed to investigate.
Dr Angie Heal provided a list of potential abusers as part of a report on the links between grooming and drug dealing in 2003 to police and council officials. That report and another from 2006 were released under the Freedom of Information Act to The Sheffield Star….
Last year, an inquiry found 1,400 children were abused by gangs of men, mainly of Pakistani origin, in South Yorkshire between 1997 and 2013.
The inquiry concluded: “It is hard to describe the appalling nature of the abuse that child victims suffered.”….
Prof Jay said: “They were raped by multiple perpetrators, trafficked to other towns and cities in the north of England, abducted, beaten and intimidated.”….
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/06/24/rotherham-child-sex-inquiry-hundreds-of-suspects_n_7652706.html
Abuse Cases in British City Long Ignored, Report Says 1,400 Children in Rotherham, England, Were Sexually Abused, Report Says
August 28, 2014 Comments Off on Abuse Cases in British City Long Ignored, Report Says 1,400 Children in Rotherham, England, Were Sexually Abused, Report Says
Abuse Cases in British City Long Ignored, Report Says 1,400 Children in Rotherham, England, Were Sexually Abused, Report Says
By KATRIN BENNHOLD AUG. 26, 2014
LONDON — A report released on Tuesday on accusations of widespread sexual abuse in the northern England city of Rotherham found that about 1,400 minors — some as young as 11 years old — were beaten, raped and trafficked from 1997 to 2013 as the local authorities ignored a series of red flags.
Some children were doused in gasoline and threatened with being set on fire if they reported their abusers, the report said, and others were forced to watch rapes and threatened with the same fate. In more than a third of the cases, the victims appear to have been known to child protection agencies, but the police and local government officials failed to act….
Alexis Jay, the author of the report and a former chief inspector of social work, said that vulnerable girls as young as 11 and largely from disadvantaged backgrounds had been brutalized by groups of men.
“They were raped by multiple perpetrators, trafficked to other towns and cities in the north of England, abducted, beaten and intimidated,” she wrote.
The report described the failures of the political and police leadership as blatant. Even as social workers reported that the sexual exploitation of children was becoming a serious problem in Rotherham, senior managers in the local authority and South Yorkshire police ignored them. When victims came forward, Ms. Jay said, the police often regarded them “with contempt.”
Three earlier reports, published from 2002 to 2006, detailed the abuse, and according to Ms. Jay, “could not have been clearer in the description of the situation in Rotherham.” But the first one was “effectively suppressed” and the other two “ignored,” she said….
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/27/world/europe/children-in-rotherham-england-were-sexually-abused-report-says.html
Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Exploitation in Rotherham (1997 – 2013)
Independent inquiry CSE in Rotherham
Information relating to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Exploitation in Rotherham
http://www.rotherham.gov.uk/downloads/file/1407/independent_inquiry_cse_in_rotherham
27 August 2014
Rotherham child abuse: Calls for police commissioner to quit
….Rotherham abuse
1,400 children were abused, 1997-2013
+ 30% of victims were already known to social services
157 reports concerning child sexual exploitation made to police in 2013
9 prosecutions were made
Source: Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Exploitation in Rotherham
Key findings of the report
Children as young as 11 were raped by multiple attackers, trafficked to other towns and cities in the north of England, abducted, beaten and intimidated.
The “collective failures” of political, police and social care leadership were “blatant” over the first 12 years covered by the inquiry.
Police were said to have given child sex exploitation no priority, regarding many child victims “with contempt” and failing to act on their abuse as a crime.
The majority of those behind the abuse were described as Asian, while the majority of the reported victims were young white girls. The inquiry team noted fears among council staff of being labelled “racist” if they focused on victims’ descriptions of the majority of abusers as “Asian” men.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-28947707