London, Wednesday, April 4, 2018 -(TerraUS, mhUSA)-
For For too long we have ignored the race of these abusers and, worse, tried to cover it up No more. These people are predators and the common denominator is their ethnic heritage.

We have to have grown-up conversations, however unpalatable, or in six months ' time we will be having this same scenario all over again. The irony of all of this is that, by not dealing with the ethnicity of the abusers as a fact, political correctness has actually made the situation about race.

The perpetrators are criminals and we need to deal with them as such, not shy away from doing the right thing by fearing being called a racist. I ' m writing this as I don ' t know what else to do to try and protect our children from grooming and sexual abuse by gangs.

I became the Member of Parliament for Rotherham in November 2012 and, within a month, I heard the abbreviation CSE (child sexual exploitation) for the first time. Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council had been hauled in front of the Home Affairs Select Committee to justify their failure to protect young girls who were victims of this vile crime.

I sat stunned in the committee room, I couldn ' t believe what I was hearing. It was shocking. Mainly white pubescent girls were being sexually groomed and exploited by gangs of mainly British Pakistani men.

Working with the children ' s charity Barnardo ' s, I launched a cross-party parliamentary inquiry into child sexual exploitation. We found that the judges were not properly supporting the victims in court.

Police weren ' t always aware of the crime and the law needed changing so that police could act swiftly to prosecute on the first whiff of sexual grooming.

Most importantly, victims and survivors were not being believed or given the support they needed to rebuild their lives.

This had to change. Following my inquiry, judges and the police receive better training and are now more aware of the crime. I changed the law on grooming. However, victims did not - and still do not - get better support.

Jump to August 2014. Professor Alexis Jay releases her report into the failings in Rotherham. She conservatively estimates that there are 1,400 victims of child sexual exploitation in the town by British Pakistani men. There is international outrage and the Government commissions a report by Dame Louise Casey. She confirms Alexis Jay ' s report to be accurate.

By SARAH CHAMPION