Since 2001 the Home Office has known of compelling evidence of a national grooming grid operating out of Rotherham.

According to victims, the same grooming grid has created hundreds — possibly thousands — of victims of child sex exploitation over the past 15 years.

Yet successive governments failed to take steps to halt an expanding trade in the sexual exploitation of children.

Instead, research was commissioned and reports compiled, but policy never became practice.

Meanwhile, victims not just in Rotherham but across Britain are still being denied the recognition, help and support they need to rebuild their lives.

Last week the Casey Report branded Rotherham Council “unfit for purpose” over its handling of child sex exploitation. Louise Casey CB, who prepared the report, said: “Rotherham was repeatedly told by its own youth service (Risky Business) what was happening and it chose, not only to not act, but to close that service down. This is important because it points to how it has dealt with uncomfortable truths put before it.”

The NWG Network is an influential charitable organisation whose 2,500 members have driven national policy on how services should respond to child sexual exploitation.

The organisation was drafted in to help Professor Alexis Jay produce the shocking report that emerged last summer.

The Jay inquiry began its work in September 2013.

Victims were astonished when the NWG Network gave Rotherham a prestigious national award in March 2014.

WG Network CEO Sheila Taylor MBE said at the time that “the Rotherham team has worked tirelessly to improve services and is one of the best national examples of current practice.”

A victim said: “The NWG gave Rotherham an award but that was before the reports came out.

“I emailed and said: ‘Don’t you think it’s a bit premature?’ My phone went red hot with victims and families going crazy. I said I was absolutely disgusted. The NWG apologised to me but they have upset a lot of people. The NWG doesn’t look very good when they do things like this.”

WG chief executive Sheila Taylor said: “The award was given to a group of people who were trying really hard to correct previous errors in managing CSE (child sexual exploitation).

“They were doing that in a backlash of negativity and that backlash has continued. Some of it is right but we saw and have seen some good practice there. So we are not saying they have got it right. What we are saying is that they have improved and are still improving their work, the same as everywhere.”

Jay and Casey slammed current provision in Rotherham.

Casey said: “The dedicated CSE team is poorly directed, suffers from excessive caseloads and an inability to share information between agencies.

“Perpetrators are identified, but too little or no action is taken to stop or even disrupt their activities.”

Claire Edgar is team manager for Rotherham’s sexual exploitation team, and was a director of NWG from 2012-3.

A few days ago Taylor told the Morning Star: “We knew Rotherham had problems that they were trying to overcome,” but claimed that NWG “didn’t have an in-depth knowledge of what those problems were.”

A victim said: “Are they bothered about stopping this or are they worried about the funding? They knew what was happening. Agencies are funded by the Home Office. They say that reports of CSE have increased 10-fold but there are no exit strategies to get girls out.

“We have all these people working with CSE and making a lot of money and a lot of grants but there is no strategy to get girls out. The only way they get out is by getting pregnant or they get too old to be of use to them any more, or they go into on street prostitution.”

It’s not just Rotherham that is failing to tackle child sexual exploitation effectively.

Taylor had to admit that “what we would never say, and could never say is that everybody has got it right. Because there isn’t anywhere that has got dealing with this issue right.”

She explained: “In some respects, many cities and towns could be a Rotherham. We know where there are. There is such a focus on Rotherham, but there are other places which would find it equally difficult to manage if there was the same in-depth of review of them.”

A victim’s father said: “These people are supposed to be professionals — I’d like to know how many people have they successfully exited? When they do the funding proposals, they shouldn’t be asking how many they work with, but how many they exited.”

He claims he asked councillors, MPs and the home secretary for help in 2002-3. Eventually, after the gang threatened his daughter, wife and family with arson and death he realised that he had to “get our daughter out by leaving the country — to break the contact — but not everyone can do that.”

The really uncomfortable truth in Casey’s report is that it’s not just councillors who are to blame for the Rotherham sex scandal.

In December 2000 the Home Office awarded £850,000 to a research project as part of the £250 million Crime Reduction Programme (CRP) aimed at reducing the number of young people who were being sexually exploited.

In 2001, the Coalition for Removal of Pimping (Crop) received funding to take part in the CRP programme.

It employed a researcher who was seconded to Rotherham’s Risky Business project.

Her job was to collate data on perpetrators. Crop is now known as Parents Against Child Exploitation (Pace) and its chief executive officer, Gill Gibbons, is currently a director of the NWG Network.

The researcher uncovered a network stretching from Rotherham to Blackpool involving six men who coerced children into what amounted to sexual slavery.

They and their families were threatened with arson, beatings or death.

Hundreds of young girls were groomed, often forcibly drugged, and repeatedly raped, violated and abused while perpetrators profited from an illicit trade in “party houses” across the north of England.

When the researcher presented her findings to the police, council and Home Office staff, she was suspended.

Her data was removed and funding withdrawn. References to Rotherham were omitted from the study Tackling Prostitution: What Works? published by the project’s evaluation team under Margaret Melrose of the University of Luton (now Bedfordshire).

The CRP final report was published as Home Office Research Study 279 (2004).

Hilary Willmer, the former chair of trustees at Pace, told the Yorkshire Post that “from 2003 onwards briefing notes had been prepared for the then home secretary David Blunkett and the charity was told: ‘The home secretary is ready to read what Crop sends’.”

In 2004, David Blunkett released a consultation paper called Prostitution: Paying the Price, which he said: “Drew on the evaluation of the Crime Reduction Programme to determine the best way to provide support” to children involved in sexual exploitation.

In 2005, Crop wrote to Blunkett and said: “More parents are coming to Crop facing the same issues — and many suffering at the hands of criminal pimping rings that we have uncovered in the course of our work. We were pleased to be able to respond to Paying the Price and are only sorry that you are no longer at the Home Office to oversee the final report and to take action on it.”

On September 9 2014, the unfortunate Home Office researcher told the home affairs select committee that it was “a tragedy that Rotherham MBC (Metropolitan Borough Council) did not avail itself of the opportunity it had to explore the information and evidence that I was providing in 2002. Professor Jay’s report shows what the consequences of that has been.”

While the media called for the Home Office to answer questions on who knew what when about Rotherham, Pace contacted Blunkett on November 18 saying: “It was really good to talk to you the other day and to be able to confirm that we always quote you positively and have been grateful for your support.”

Blunkett has confirmed that “ministers did not meet or have any communication from (by letter, phone calls or contact through the advice surgeries) with any researcher on these crucial matters.”

He said: “I have incidentally (last June) indicated to the present home secretary that I would be keen for her to publish any documentation from the time I was home secretary.”