Rotherham’s council leader has been slammed by a prominent survivor from the town after he stood by a group of councillors who “knew and stayed silent” about the child sexual exploitation scandal.
Labour’s Christopher Read was responding to a question about a GB News investigation into four councillors who attended a seminar on the town’s scandal in 2005 but failed to speak out.
GB News named councillors Sue Ellis, Ken Wyatt, Rose McNeeley and Alan Atkin as having attended the meeting and failing to speak out. Atkin told this broadcaster that the police told them to keep quiet and that he did not chase for more details in the years that followed when no arrests were made as he “was getting on with the rest of my life. I was just getting on with things.”
However, McNeeley told GB News that she did not “recall the police saying anything to us.”
McNeeley also denied that the seminar covered any specific cases, but GB News saw notes delivered at the meeting that included the case study of a survivor who was being exploited by the gangs.
Wyatt did not respond to this broadcaster’s request for comment. Ellis told this broadcaster: “I have said all that I am willing to say on this issue. I explained myself at the time. I am not really prepared to add anything extra.”
Neither Wyatt nor Ellis have apologised on the record for their silence when details of the seminar were first revealed in 2005. McNeeley also did not apologise when questioned by GB News.
Labour’s Christopher Read
POOL
Atkin did, however, tell this broadcaster “I regret and I apologise for not speaking up after 2005 when I knew.”
Read told a meeting at the council chamber on Monday afternoon that the four councillors would not resign after the fresh revelations.
Read was questioned by Tory Cllr. Lewis Mills, who asked the leader, “How do you expect the survivors to trust the council and councillors who failed to speak out?”
He added: “Have these councillors got no shame? Will these councillors be apologising for their actions, which in this case were none, and will they be made to resign so survivors can finally start to trust this council properly?”
Read responded that the councillors “came through an intense period of scrutiny” by the Labour party after the incompetent response to the town’s child sexual exploitation scandal was exposed by independent reports.
He added: “I don’t foresee that they will be standing down, that’s their choice but they’ve been elected twice to stay here.
“I think all of them have over the course of that period of time apologised for the failings of the whole council, the whole system to take the necessary steps.”
Read went on to claim that the four councillors “have also been at the heart of putting things right within the council subsequently, all of those people have stepped up, have worked hard over that period of time to make sure that we’re in a much better place now.”
Read’s comments come after Rother Valley MP Alex Stafford told GB News’ Tom Harwood that it was an “abhorrent situation where these sitting councillors are still serving despite attending the various briefings warning them about CSE.”
Prominent survivor and activist from the town, Elizabeth (Not her real name).
GB News
He added that it was “deeply concerning that the people who presided over the failure of the council, a council that did cover up CSE, who did not acknowledge that it was happening, are still in positions of power and authority.
“If we don’t change the people involved, how can we ever have proper change to protect our girls going forward?”
This broadcaster spoke to a prominent survivor and activist from the town. Elizabeth, not her real name, told GB News that “It is disgusting that these councillors are still failing to fully acknowledge their silence and incompetence from this scandal.”
She added: “They are showing total disrespect to me and thousands of other survivors by shamelessly remaining in power after they failed to speak up. They are receiving thousands of pounds in public money and expenses, but I still have to live with the painful consequences of the abuse that happened while they failed to speak up.”
“It is disgusting that Read is supporting these councillors, who can’t get their story straight about the police supposedly silencing them and who have failed to apologise for their silence. I will never trust the council nor its leader as long as these people remain in power.”
Read did not respond to this broadcaster’s request for comment.