The quiet hero who exposed the grooming gangs

Camilla Cavendish

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The last time I spoke to Andrew Norfolk, in 2024, he was still consumed with sorrow for the girls who had suffered vile abuse by the gangs he had exposed a decade before. There was no hint of glory in having exposed one of the biggest cover-ups in British history.

He would rather not have won the awards, if it could have saved those children. Andrew, who died on 8 May, was the most modest but dogged investigative reporter I ever met. I remember worrying, during what was our last conversation, that the knowledge of what happened to the victims had broken him.

In 2010, Andrew brought his suspicions to the Times that men of Pakistani heritage were grooming and abusing white girls in the north of England, where he was based. Seven years after Ann Cryer, MP for Keighley, had been ostracised by Labour for raising the issue, Andrew started to follow court cases in which groups of men were being convicted. He was stonewalled by police and local councils. But he talked to victims. In Andrew they found an adult they could trust, having been let down by every public authority that should have protected them.