LONDON: The UK’s biggest-ever probe into child abuse resulted in the heavy jail sentences for seven men who had sexually molested two girls two decades prior on Friday.
The men were found guilty in June of crimes committed in the early 2000s in the northern English town of Rotherham, and they were sentenced to seven to twenty-five years in jail.
The cases are related to Operation Stovewood, the longest-running investigation into child sexual abuse in UK history, which lasted ten years and involved the National Crime Agency (NCA).
It started in 2014 when the Jay Report was released, sending shockwaves across the nation.
It discovered that between 1997 and 2013, gangs of men, primarily of Pakistani descent, had at least 1,400 girls in Rotherham who were molested, trafficked, and groomed.
According to the study, social services and law enforcement did not intervene to halt the abuse.
As a consequence of the operation, some 36 persons have been found guilty thus far, according to the NCA, which looks into serious, organized, and international crime.
The most recent convictions were handed down at Sheffield Crown Court following a nine-week trial.
The trial heard how the victims—who were both under the supervision of social services and between the ages of 11 and 16 at the time of the offenses—were groomed and frequently given beer or cannabis before they were raped or attacked.
According to the NCA, their perpetrators would frequently pick them up from the houses where the kids were living at the time.
Senior investigating officer Stuart Cobb of the NCA stated, “These men were cruel and manipulative, grooming their victims and then exploiting them by subjecting them to the most harrowing abuse possible.”
Hundreds of people attacked a hotel housing asylum-seekers during this summer’s English riots, resulting in some of the worst anti-migrant violence ever witnessed in Rotherham, an industrial town that was once rich but has since endured years of economic deterioration.
