Rotherham whistleblower's horror at police treatment of CSE allegations

Former Det Sgt David Walker denies all the misconduct allegations outlined against him

A key child sexual abuse (CSE) whistleblower was told by police she was "rocking the multicultural boat" when passing on intelligence of CSE in Rotherham, a misconduct hearing heard.

Jayne Senior described her "frustration and horror" when much of her information was not taken any further.

She was giving evidence at a hearing into the conduct of ex-Det Sgt David Walker, then of South Yorkshire Police.

Mr Walker denies all the misconduct allegations outlined against him.

The misconduct panel had previously heard that the former police officer failed to record and investigate allegations of CSE in Rotherham.

Ms Senior, who ran the Risky Business youth project between 1999 and 2011, helped to reveal a pattern in the town that saw children groomed, raped and tortured by groups of men for more than a decade.

Speaking at the misconduct hearing, held in Sheffield, Ms Senior explained how she had passed on thousands of pieces of information, adding: "I was given lots of reasons to stop passing intelligence."

In 2016, Jayne Senior was made an MBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours list for services to child protection in Rotherham

At one meeting, she said she was told: "I was going against perpetrators' human rights, I was rocking the multicultural boat, I was being racist."

Ms Senior agreed that this was not said to her by Mr Walker, who is accused of allegations including failing to investigate information that teenage sisters were having sex with workers from a car wash and failing to record concerns made in a series of emails from Ms Senior.

The former youth worker agreed that some of the information was too vague to be of any use in itself, but told the panel: "It was a jigsaw. We may have one bit of information and another organisation might have another or another. We put that jigsaw together, as we did on a number of occasions."

Ms Senior said: "We were constantly being told by the next new face that something would be done, somebody would listen, somebody would help this horror to be stopped."

She told the hearing she had made complaints against more than 30 officers in relation to the Rotherham scandal.

At the hearing into Mr Walker's conduct, she agreed, under questioning from Jason Pitter QC, for Mr Walker, that the former detective was a key investigator in Operation Central, which led to five men being jailed in 2010.

Mr Walker denies misconduct or gross misconduct while working as part of a specialist unit in Maltby, Rotherham, looking at CSE in the town.

He is one of 47 officers and former officers who were investigated by the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) in the wake of the Jay Report, in 2014, which described how at least 1,400 children in the town had been subjected to grooming and abuse by gangs of men between 1997 and 2013.

A full report on the findings of the IOPC's investigation is expected to be published following the conclusion of the hearing.