The Children of the Mill

Language Matters by Elias Winter · Jun 2, 2026 · 54m

I. The Girls No One Wanted to See

Between the late 1990s and the early 2010s, a series of British towns exposed a pattern of group-based child sexual exploitation that had been missed, minimized, or mishandled for years.

The first thing to say is not that the men were Pakistani.

The first thing to say is that the victims were children.

In Rotherham, the independent inquiry chaired by Alexis Jay estimated that at least 1,400 children were sexually exploited between 1997 and 2013. The abuse included grooming, rape, trafficking, threats, abduction, violence, intimidation, and organized sexual…