15-05-2025
Andrew Norfolk obituary: Times reporter who exposed grooming gangs
Andrew Norfolk had given everything. Four years of obsessive and searing investigative journalism had exposed a scandal of negligence by police and social services, leading to many hundreds, if not thousands, of vulnerable young girls being raped by a ring of grooming gangs of Pakistani heritage.
Emotionally battered and physically spent he may have been, but his investigation from 2011 made the most eloquent case for the importance of his profession: his reports in The Times led to several inquiries, a national action plan on child sexual exploitation, enhanced funding and training to tackle the issue, and new guidelines from the Crown Prosecution Service that led to a big increase in convictions.
When Ann Cryer, MP for Keighley, first raised concerns in 2003 about girls
