Police identified as many as 108 potential victims in Operation Shelter and 278 victims in the wider Operation Sanctuary. The NSPCC condemned the use of the man, saying it raised serious questions about the force’s approach to child sexual exploitation operations. Northumbria police’s outgoing chief constable, Steve Ashman, said the sexual exploitation of vulnerable people was “the challenge of our generation”. In a parliamentary report published in November 2014 into child sexual exploitation in Rotherham, MPs said they had reached “the alarming conclusion” that Rotherham was not an outlier and that there was a widespread problem of organised child sexual exploitation in England. A spokesperson for the child exploitation charity Pace said: “Sadly we know that child sexual exploitation has been widespread throughout the country and it can affect any child or family.

Source: The Guardian August 09, 2017 13:51 UTC