While literally hundreds of innocent white girls were being sexually exploited by Pakistani grooming gangs, they were, with the exception of one man, demeaned, traduced or ignored by social services, local politicians and even the police.
Nobody cared, except a fearless journalist called Andrew Norfolk. As you might expect it wasn’t easy to break through the barrier of lies that were created by the authorities in Rotherham and Rochdale.
It suited the locals - many of them Muslims - to spread stories that the girls were either liars, or due to their backgrounds, not worth spending time worrying about.
But Norfolk, the chief investigative reporter for The Times, was beyond diligent and determined as he pieced together the grooming scandal. And thank God he was.
After months and months of meticulous work, the first of his exposes exploded on the front page of The Times on January 5, 2011. He had to face down the cries of racist from the usual suspects. The word racist has been devalued by those that you it so often.
Norfolk defied the critics and stayed the course, writing for years about the vile sexual exploitation by the gangs and how nobody had ever spoken up for the girls.
Without his detailed reporting there would have been no Jay inquiry which revealed that 1,400 girls, some as young as 11, were abused between 1997 and 2013 in those two northern towns.
Further, it led to police, taking the abuse seriously for the first time, with a number of Pakistani men being charge and receiving long sentences.
Ignored by the powerful, only one man exposed the abuse of white girls from grooming gangs - Kelvin MacKenzie
Bethany Clarke/The Times
As the Times points out in its editorial column, Norfolk had succeeded in attaining for the children some measure of justice when so many of the powerful had ignored them.
The sad news is that Norfolk has died aged 60. He retired back in November after 24 years with The Times and had been in poor health.
Among the many tributes was one from Sir Keir Starmer, who was DPP when Norfolk exposed the abuse. Thanks to a meeting with Norfolk, Starmer changed the official guidelines, which had been hampering prosecutions.
They were fine and generous words from Starmer, but a greater Legacy for Norfolk’s work would be a national inquiry into these gangs, which have been such a stain on our nation.
Equally fitting would be that Starmer fired Lucy Powell, Leader of the Commons, who was forced to apologise recently for suggesting raising the grooming gang issue was tantamount to dog whistle racism.
I enjoyed the Times' salute saying Norfolk was a modest man and, unlike other journalists - Emily Maitlis comes to my mind - never succumbed to self-congratulation, which can take over journalists propelled into the limelight.
Norfolk was fearless. No other journalist has had such a profound effect on public life.
