VICE
In 2014, a series of often seemingly intertwining child sex abuse stories have engulfed the UK in what has become the biggest scandal of modern times. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that the whole country feels duped, dirtied, and, worse, connected in some way. Culprits and alleged culprits have included celebrities, the social services and police (whose systemic failures resulted in an estimated 1,400 children being sexually exploited in the town of Rotherham between 1997 and 2013), politicians (the evidence of a pedophile ring operating within the corridors of Westminster during the 1980s is now incontrovertible after London´s Metropolitan Police described allegations from an anonymous survivor as "credible and true" this month), and even employees of the Royal Family (British tabloid the Sunday People recently revealed that the House of Windsor was also implicated in abuses centered around accusations from a 16-year-old boy).
The town of Rochdale lies at the center of two of these recent child sex scandals. In 2012, nine Pakistani men were convicted of running a "grooming" operation that targeted young girls there, and it was also home of the late Liberal Member of Parliament (MP) Cyril Smith, a 400-pound giant of a man who reportedly terrorized the local Knowl View Residential School.
Though Smith's penchant for the abuse and rape of young boys had been gossiped about for decades (at least two regional newspaper editors had D notices slapped on them, meaning that no story could be published about Smith's behavior), the politician wasn't publicly accused of child abuse until 2012, when the police admitted that they should have pursued charges against him. Simon Danczuk, the current Labour MP for Rochdale, is responsible for exposing Smith in Parliament, and has since co-written a book detailing his predecessor's alleged misdeeds.
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