A Reflection – Diversity is a great richness Voices of Despair Voices of Hope - Sunday 15 February 2015 During January there were real signs of hope that at long last, significant steps were being taken within Rotherham to deal with both: the legacy of and the reality of CSE, in order to ensure a better future. Chrissy Meleady and I had arranged two meetings: one in Rotherham on Wednesday 4th and one in Derby on Thursday 5th February. We hoped to then send “Voices of Despair, Voices of Hope” to our printer on Friday 6th February. The Inspection Report by Louise Casey was made public on Wednesday 4 February. The follow-up to the Inspection has been dramatic and unprecedented. The future has become very uncertain. In many places the Inspection Report quotes comments from victims, survivors, their family members and others adversely and directly affected by Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE). There is an almost uncanny similarity at times to what is said in places in this publication. I believe that at this time the good people of Rotherham have four urgent needs: • Purposeful and urgent action on CSE; • A proactive process that genuinely listens to the victims, survivors, their family members and others adversely and directly affected by CSE; • A proactive listening to everyone in Rotherham about their concerns about the future; • Clear and transparent communication – perhaps beginning with a weekly or fortnightly bulletin that tracks progress across the first three needs. In Rotherham the evil (not a word I like to use) of Child Sexual Exploitation has been combined with the evil of Racism to create a highly poisonous and dangerous mixture. Some have used CSE to try to divide and damage the people of Rotherham. In my view, those of us who genuinely want what is best for Rotherham, need to stand up and purposefully walk a straight path out of the current quagmire. Paths are made by those who walk on them. And the beginning is always Now. I hope this initial publication of “Voices of Despair, Voices of Hope” will go some way towards achieving the aim of: putting the victims, survivors, their family members and others adversely and directly affected by CSE at the beginning of the path to a better future. I believe that only when the evil of CSE is properly confronted, can the evil of Racism be also properly confronted. I am minded of the words of Max Warren: “Our first task in approaching another people, another culture, another religion is to take off our shoes, for the place we are approaching is holy. Else we may find ourselves treading on men’s dreams … We have to try to sit where they sit, to enter sympathetically into the pains and grieves and joys of their history and see how those pains and griefs and joys have determined the premises of their argument. We have, in a word, to be ‘present’ with them.” In my view, racism, like its close relative sectarianism, is a sense of belonging gone wrong. Everyone needs a sense of belonging. Belonging is a fundamental human need. But any belonging that creates a “them and us” and a belief that “we” are better than “them” is fundamentally flawed and destroys a part of all of us. I believe that one of the best ways to eliminate racism is to promote friendship, real and genuine friendship, with those who are different from us. Diversity is a great richness.