South Yorkshire Police chiefs questioned by councillors over Rotherham Child Sexual Exploitation probe findings

Councillors agreed during January’s full council meeting to regularly monitor South Yorkshire Police’s progress against 12 recommendations made in a report following an IOPC investigation.

Operation Linden was the name given to the investigation into a “significant number of complaints” relating to the police response to child sexual exploitation in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013.

The report of the findings, which was published in November 2021, made 12 recommendations, in a bid to tackle “systemic issues” identified during the operation, which encompassed 91 separate investigations.

The IOPC found eight police officers were found to have a case to answer for misconduct and six had a case to answer for gross misconduct, five faced sanctions from management, and one hearing is still outstanding.

Chief Superintendent Stephen Chapman told the meeting that the force currently has 37 active investigations around CSE.

Deputy Chief Constable Tim Forber explained to councillors the measures the force has taken to police CSE cases.

“When I look back at what happened, one of the things that manifestly did not happen was a trauma informed approach. Not just the police, but everyone involved didn’t understand the trauma, the impact that had,” DCC Forber told the meeting.

“We’ve developed our understanding of that over many years now, but we’re continuing to refine that to make sure that officers are in possession of the latest psychological evidence.

“We’ve got specialist detectives who are dealing with child sexual exploitation but what we want us to do is put some more focus training on our frontline staff.

“What we have here at Rotherham, certainly in my police service today is the most structured, embedded co-located approach to dealing with evidence and intelligence related to child sexual exploitation, that I’ve seen.

“We can track every single piece of information that comes in, and the procedures for doing that are as robust as I’ve seen anywhere in my quarter of a century of policing. “

Home Secretary Priti Patel announced last month that a new national inspection will assess current policing practice, to ensure all police forces are employing the most effective approaches in protecting victims from CSE.