Alan Billings, the South Yorkshire police and crime commissioner, has made the remarkable statement that the local force did not act on repeated reports of the sexual abuse and exploitation of young girls because it did not understand what sexual grooming was or considered the problem to be one of willing participation in child prostitution (Report, 6 May). In addition there is the claim that the police were prioritising burglary and car theft. If it really was the case that in 2003 senior police officers did not know what sexual grooming was or that the sexual exploitation of children was a criminal offence meriting action, it is indicative of a police force that had lost all sense of its priorities. “That was then” explanations are nothing more than untenable excuses and cannot be the starting point for a thorough investigation into the institutionalised inaction of South Yorkshire police.
Professor Eugene McLaughlin
Department of sociology, City University London
• In what hellhole of a world is child prostitution less dreadful a fate than child abuse?
Fiona Allen
Edinburgh
