Youth worker Jayne Senior who revealed how 1,400 children had been abused in Rotherham said: "We must all work together to ensure nothing like this ever happens again. We need more education and training […] to look for the signs."
Everyone in schools, she said, should receive more training "from teachers to dinner ladies".
Mrs Senior was speaking at the ͯÑÕÊÓƵ’s Falmer campus to students studying and working with children and young people as part of the Safeguarding and Promoting Welfare and Wellbeing module on the part-time Undergraduate Work-based Learning Programme.
As a youth worker with Rotherham's Risky Business programme she tried in vain to help child victims and passed on information to the authorities, hoping they would take action. But all that happened was that "they closed us down".
Mrs Senior, made an MBE in 2016 for services to child protection, said "no-one believed the children" until she revealed through the Times newspaper a pattern of exploitation that saw children and young people groomed, gang raped and tortured by groups of men in Rotherham.