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August 28, 2014

Andrew Norfolk on exposing street grooming: ‘I didn’t want the story to be true’

By Dominic Ponsford

Journalist Andrew Norfolk reveals in The Times today that when he first came across allegations that groups "Asian" men were targeting schoolgirls in Keighley, West Yorkshire, "I didn't want the story to be true because it made me deeply uncomfortable".

Norfolk's investigation for The Times, which began in January 2011, resulted in an independent report which yesterday damned the authories in Rotherham for ignoring the problem. It said that at least 1,400 children had been abused by men of largely Pakistani origin working in gangs over 15 years.

Norfolk explains in the paper today how be began to see a pattern of crimes emerging until he became convinced that street grooming of mainly white under-age girls by gangs of mainly Pakistani men was a phenomenon.

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