BBC News quotes the Chairman of the House of Commons Home
Affairs Select Committee, Keith Vaz MP, as saying that revelations about files
that can no longer be found gives rise to public suspicion of a deliberate
cover-up of the child sex abuse scandal in Rotherham.
A Home Office funded researcher, based in Rotherham between
2000 and 2002 and who suspected that there were serious failings in responding to child sexual exploitation in the town, has given evidence to the Committee saying that someone had entered her office (apparently using a security code) and removed her files.
It is chilling to think that something like that may have
happened. Nothing could be more damaging to the safe operation of services than
deliberately obfuscating serious failings. Hiding weaknesses increases the probability of more things going wrong at a later date.
If there has been a cover-up, it is not just the safety of
children in the past that has been compromised, but the safety of children and
young people now and in the future.
