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Rotherham child sex cases to get 62 more police staff South Yorkshire abuse cases to get more police staff
(about 7 hours later)
Sixty-two more police staff will be put to work on Rotherham child abuse investigations, South Yorkshire's police chief has said. A £2.3m police unit has been set up in South Yorkshire to investigate crime against vulnerable people, including child sexual exploitation.
South Yorkshire Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) Alan Billings said it would mean more prosecutions for child sex abuse. Sixty-two posts will be created to tackle child abuse, domestic abuse and online grooming, Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) Alan Billings said.
The Jay Report published in August estimated 1,400 children were sexually exploited in the town over 16 years. The restructure was prompted by a recent review of South Yorkshire Police's public protection units.
The money will come from the South Yorkshire PCC budget.
South Yorkshire Police will decide exactly how to use the funds, which will pay for 43 police officers and 19 support staff.
Speaking of the new unit, Dr Billings said: "It will provide additional investigators into all areas of public protection, including adding resilience to the central child exploitation team, increasing their capacity to deal with complex and serious investigations.
"This investment will strengthen the unit with specially trained staff and provide much needed funds to tackle the significant increase in reported crime in areas around violence towards vulnerable people in sexual assault, rape, stalking and harassment.
"It will also enhance and support the dedicated staff that South Yorkshire Police has working to protect the most vulnerable people in our communities."
Dr Billings became PCC in October after the resignation of Shaun Wright.Dr Billings became PCC in October after the resignation of Shaun Wright.
Dr Billings said the additional staff working on Rotherham child sex exploitation cases would not necessarily all be warranted officers and some may be civilians. Mr Wright stepped down in the wake of the Jay report, which estimated that 1,400 children had been sexually exploited in Rotherham over 16 years.
The report published by Professor Alexis Jay in August criticised how South Yorkshire Police and Rotherham Council dealt with complaints from teenage girls who said they had been raped and trafficked by gangs of mainly Asian men. It criticised how South Yorkshire Police and Rotherham Council dealt with complaints from teenage girls who said they had been raped and trafficked by gangs of mainly Asian men.
Delicate, difficult, sensitive Correction: This story has been amended to clarify that the new posts are not specifically for Rotherham but will work across South Yorkshire to tackle crimes against vulnerable people.
Dr Billings said all staff would be "very highly trained to work with a delicate, difficult and sensitive subject" to get to the bottom of the historic cases.
The 62 additional South Yorkshire Police staff are "in addition to numbers that have already been put in during the course of the last year".
Dr Billings said having 120 people working on child sex cases would not affect South Yorkshire Police operations in other areas and said "things will not be neglected".
He said it would be "immensely difficult" to piece the historic cases together and bring the perpetrators to court.
"Often the people who have been victims [of grooming] in the past wouldn't recognise that they were being groomed at the time, some of them don't recognise it now," he said.
"Some want prosecutions, some just want to go and live their lives and not have it all raked up, so it's very complicated and very difficult and requires a lot of sensitivity on the part of those officers who are investigating."
A new director of children's services started at Rotherham Council on Monday.
Ian Thomas came from children's services at Derbyshire County Council to replace Joyce Thacker, who resigned in September in the wake of the Jay Report.