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Truly appalling. This is a story that has implications way beyond just Rochdale.
The way those girls were treated by the police, social workers and others who should have protected them. The utter and abject failure of the child protection agencies. The whole thing was a terrible mess.
What those men did to the girls was shameful. That they were facilitated in that by authorities who could have saved them and brought justice but who chose to do nothing is a national disgrace.
They were children. Vulnerable children and the police basically considered them prostitutes complicit or even responsible for their own abuse. They were looked down on. the people who abused them were allowed to continue unchecked because of misguided notions of cultural sensitivity and an unwillingness to see the girls as the vulnerable victims that they were.
Added to the wave of revelations about abuse and cover ups in some of our key institutions (the BBC, care homes, hospitals and seemingly even members of parliament) it is clear that we have been failing children for a long time.
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