UNITED KINGDOM
The Guardian

Paul Vallely
The Guardian, Tuesday 26 August 2014

The detail disclosed by the Jay report into the sexual exploitation of children in Rotherham is so shocking it will grab the headlines with its accounts of children as young as 11 being doused in petrol and threatened with being set alight. But it is the scale of the abuse that ought to give most concern. The figure of 1,400 children subjected to a series of appalling ordeals is almost certainly a conservative one.

If we are still shocked we are, sadly, less surprised by yet another example of the way in which those in authority over decades disbelieved, suppressed or ignored evidence of abuse. That is not just true of the police and social workers. The warp runs through the weft of establishments from schools and children’s homes to the BBC and the Catholic church….