It seems far too bizarre to be true: an entire town where on-going child molestation continued for years, despite the fact that the molestation was no secret. Children were doused in gasoline and told they’d be set on fire. They were sexually abused, trafficked to other countries, passed around from abuser to abuser. And on and on. For years. Somebody on the Rotherham Borough Council finally had the brains and guts enough to request an inquiry and report.

Council leader Roger Stone said he would step down with immediate effect.

Mr Stone, who has been the leader since 2003, said: “I believe it is only right that as leader I take responsibility for the historic failings described so clearly.”

The inquiry team noted fears among council staff of being labelled “racist” if they focused on victims’ descriptions of the majority of abusers as “Asian” men.

Really? “I don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings?” That’s your excuse? 16 years of torture for children, and you didn’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings? Dennis Prager says that some tried to help, and the support went not to victims, but to the “higher” call of multiculturalism:

In 2002, a Labour MP from nearby Keighley, Ann plained to the police about “young Asian lads” raping girls in her constituency. In her words, she “was shunned by elements of her party.” And note that, as is demanded by the Left in the UK, she didn’t even mention that the rapists were Pakistani, lest Muslims be blamed for this evil. They were “Asian lads.”

And, for the record, her attempts to get local imams to intervene with the men failed; she was called a racist.

National Review editor Rich Lowry reports that “in a BBC documentary, the author of a 2002 report to the Rotherham council on the scandal said her work was quashed. When she noted that the perpetrators were from the munity, a colleague told her ‘you must never refer to that again — you must never refer to Asian men.’ She was sent to diversity training and, by her account, nearly fired.”

I certainly hope that diversity training helped the children (excuse the sarcasm.)

There are two things here that stand out to me as unfathomable: how anyone of sound mind and soul could let this abuse continue for years, and how an entire town: political party, police department, school and parents, were lulled into thinking that one person’s color/culture/heritage/sexual proclivities outweighed one child’s safety. I don’t know if there is an answer to these, but for the sake of the children of Rotherham, I hope someone there figures it out soon. The abuse continues.