UNITED KINGDOM
Yorkshire Post
CHRIS BURN, MULTIMEDIA REPORTER
Friday 26 May 2017
The woman who brought the scale of the horrifying Rotherham scandal to light is now urging other child abuse victims in Yorkshire to come forward.
Chris Burn reports. Professor Alexis Jay is not a woman to sugarcoat the truth in any aspect of her life. An unflinching inquiry by the softly-spoken Scotswoman revealed that 1,400 children in the Yorkshire town of Rotherham had been sexually exploited, largely by men of Pakistani heritage, and failed desperately by police and social services.
Almost three years on, she arrived back in Yorkshire on Thursday as the chair of national Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse in a bid to encourage victims and survivors from all walks of life to come forward and share their experiences with her and her team.
Meeting the Yorkshire Post before speaking to a conference in York on the aims of the Truth Project, Professor Jay gives a glimpse of her no-nonsense attitude as a cup of milky tea she is handed fails to meet with her approval.
“Baby tea,” she says with a grimace after a sip. “You are obviously not used to northern tea!” That straight-talking approach in even the most minor of matters gives an insight into what has made her an ideal choice as the chair of the independent abuse inquiry, providing it with new focus and impetus after a deeply-troubled beginning which saw the resignations of the three previous chairwomen.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.