Rochdale grooming whistleblower Sara Rowbotham joins us to talk about the sexual abuse scandal and NHS Heroes Awards

SARA ROWBOTHAM TALKS ABOUT THE ROCHDALE GROOMING SCANDAL

Sara Rowbotham worked in the Rochdale Crisis Intervention Team for the NHS and was instrumental in uncovering the sex abuse ring.

Maxine Peake portrayed Sara in drama Three Girls which also starred our Lisa Riley and recently won a BAFTA. Sara became emotional when she revealed she lost her mum just before drama Three Girls aired.

Sara was recently awarded a 'Special Recognition Award' at the NHS Heroes Awards and Sara joined us to talk about her 10-year fight for justice. Nine men were convicted for various sex abuse crimes in 2012 and 10 more in 2015.

'I kind of think if it’s not happening in your town then you’re not looking hard enough. I think it is there in most of our cities and what I find unusual is that there’ve not been more court cases,' she said of grooming.

'Parents struggle with "do we talk to our children' and 'are we interrupting their innocence'" and they worry about all of that but maybe the way of looking at it is that they’re maintaining their ignorance.

'The emphasis should be about "what’s a positive relationship", "what does trust mean", "what does true love mean", 'how do you work out what a real friend is". But equally you have to balance that with saying 'if it doesn’t feel OK and there’s a bit of uncomfortableness, what do you do then?'"

The NHS Heroes Awards, ITV, Monday at 8.30pm.

Watch the video to see the full emotional chat with Sara.

We have helplines for survivors of any kind of sexual abuse here.