Five victims of grooming gangs in Rotherham have claimed that police officers also sexually abused them when they were children. One alleged that a serving South Yorkshire Police (SYP) officer raped her in a marked police car when she was 12, threatening to give her back to the gang if she resisted. She told the BBC: “In a world where you were being abused so much, being raped once [each time] was a lot easier than multiple rapes and I think he knew that.”

The outlet saw the womens’ written accounts, as well as testimonies from grooming gang victims who said corrupt police officers worked alongside them or failed to take child sexual exploitation seriously. Three of the witness accounts, collected by child abuse legal firm Switalskis Solicitors, reportedly describe being beaten up by officers when they were children, one of which allegedly happened in a police cell.

Another woman said she, as a child, overheard a police officer having sex with girls in exchange for drugs and money. Drugs were also allegedly supplied to a grooming gang by police.

A further anonymous woman said two police officers sexually abused her over three years, one of which woulde track her down in a police car and threatened her if she refused to engage.

She told the outlet: “He knew where we used to hang out, he would request either oral sex or rape us in the back of the police car.

“I would rather be raped once, or give one man oral sex, than to be taken somewhere where I know it’d be 15… 20 guys one after another. That was just easier.”

The woman said she was then pressured into having an illegal abortion by the grooming gang. After a youth worker contacted social services and the police regarding her story, she agreed to do an interview.

However, she was left “destroyed” when one of the officers she said had been abusing her showed up to the interview. The same officer then ripped up her statement and threw it in the bin, leading to no further action, she said.

In 2014, the Jay Report concluded that at least 1,400 girls in Rotherham were abused by gangs between 1997 and 2013.

SYP’s major crimes unit, under the direction of the police watchdog, has now launched a new criminal investigation into the invovlement of police officers in the scandal.

Switalskis Solicitors is also bringing a separate civil claim against SYP to get compensation for the alleged victims.

Hayley Barnett, SYP assistant chief constable, said: “We know how hard it must be for a victim or survivor, who has been so badly let down in the past, to put their faith into the South Yorkshire Police of today.”

South Yorkshire Police told the BBC that none of the former officers forming part of the force’s current inquiries “had an allegation of rape against them at the time of their retirement”.