This independent Inquiry was commissioned by Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council in October 2013. Its remit, covering the periods of 1997- 2009 and 2009 – 2013, is appended. The Inquiry applied the definition of child sexual exploitation which is used in Government guidance and is set out in Appendix 4, paragraph 48 of this report. The methodology included reading a wide range of minutes, reports and case files. Over a hundred people were interviewed, either individually or in groups. The cut-off point for file reading was September 2013, but any evidence available up till June 2014 was included in the report. Excerpt from the executive summary: The conservative estimate is that approximately 1400 children were sexually exploited over the full Inquiry period, from 1997 to 2013. Over the first twelve years covered by this Inquiry, the collective failures of political and officer leadership were blatant. From the beginning, there was growing evidence that child sexual exploitation was a serious problem in Rotherham. This came from those working in residential care and from youth workers who knew the young people well. Within social care, the scale and seriousness of the problem was underplayed by senior managers. At an operational level, the Police gave no priority to CSE, regarding many child victims with contempt and failing to act on their abuse as a crime. Further stark evidence came in 2002, 2003 and 2006 with three reports known to the Police and the Council, which could not have been clearer in their description of the situation in Rotherham. The first of these reports was effectively suppressed because some senior officers disbelieved the data it contained. This had led to suggestions of cover-up. The other two reports set out the links between child sexual exploitation and drugs, guns and criminality in the Borough. These reports were ignored and no action was taken to deal with the issues that were identified in them. By far the majority of perpetrators were described as ‘Asian’ by victims, yet throughout the entire period, councillors did not engage directly with the Pakistani-heritage community to discuss how best they could jointly address the issue. Some councillors seemed to think it was a one-off problem, which they hoped would go away. Several staff described their nervousness about identifying the ethnic origins of perpetrators for fear of being thought racist; others remembered clear direction from their managers not to do so.