UK investigative journalist, Andrew Norfolk, has died at the age of 60 after a period of ill health.
Norfolk’s investigative work was integral to the exposure of the decades long campaign of the grooming and rape of white children in the UK, perpetrated by predominantly Pakistani origan gangs.
Norfolk received journalism’s most prestigious awards for his reporting of the grooming scandal in Rotherham and Rochdale. After exposing the abuse he faced severe backlash including accusations of racism.
He had been suffering from ill health, and retired from his 24 year career with The Times newspaper last November, before collapsing on the 8th of May and passing away.
Sammy Woodhouse, a grooming gangs rape survivor said, “I say goodbye not just to one of the UK’s greatest investigative journalists, but to a dear friend, a trusted ally, and a man who helped change history.I first contacted Andrew Norfolk in 2013. Together, we exposed the Rotherham child abuse scandal — a truth buried for far too long. That moment changed our lives forever and reshaped how the UK tackles child sexual exploitation.”
Woodhouse, who was groomed from the age of 14 by an adult male, said “Andrew wasn’t just a journalist; he was a man of integrity and compassion who supported me through the darkest moments of my life. We went on to expose many government agencies together — including in 2018, when Rotherham Council and the family courts invited my rapist to apply for custody of my son. Andrew was the only person I trusted to share my son’s story with — and to expose the government for allowing it to happen. This was happening to women across the UK, and he helped me shine a light on it.”
“We stood side by side through many investigations, challenging the systems that failed the most vulnerable. Andrew didn’t just report — he gave survivors a voice and forced institutions to face the truth.
It was an honour to work with him — and an even greater honour to call him my friend.” she said.
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer expressed his sympathies at Norfolk’s passing, saying “I am deeply sorry to hear of Andrew’s death. He wasn’t just an incredibly talented reporter, at The Times and elsewhere, he was driven by the desire to call our attention to injustice and protect the most vulnerable.
“I was privileged enough to meet Andrew first-hand when I was director of public prosecutions after he broke the news of the grooming gangs scandal. His passion for supporting the victims of grooming gangs shone through, and he was absolutely integral to making sure we could change the rules to increase convictions of the vile perpetrators.
“My thoughts are with Andrew’s family, loved ones and friends. I hope their memories of him and the knowledge of the difference he made to people’s lives are a comfort to them at this time.”
Starmer has come under fire for his failure to pursue those involved in the grooming and rape of often vulnerable children by the gangs when he was the director of public prosecutions.
More recently he came under fire again for accusing those calling for political action as “jumping on a far-right bandwagon”.
GB News reporter, Charlie Peters, who has continued the efforts to expose the extent of what has been referred to as “the rape of Britian” wrote of the late journalist for the Spectator “When Norfolk heard these reports he later admitted that he first dismissed the issue as a far-right fantasy. He wrote up one story on Pakistani abuse gangs and then moved on. But years later, he noticed ongoing reports that matched this pattern. Norfolk described the moment he overcame his liberal angst while on a drive up to Edinburgh for a long weekend in 2010. He heard a news bulletin about a gang being convicted in Manchester, researched the case and found that all of the men in the dock were Pakistani. Researching court records, he found dozens of other gang-based offenders with an overrepresentation of Pakistanis.”
The editor of The Times said of Norfolk, “Andrew was, without doubt, one of the greatest investigative reporters of our or any age. His tireless work exposing the evils of the predominantly Asian grooming gangs in and around towns in the north of England led to long overdue acknowledgement of the crimes, after the people who had been in a position to put a stop to it for years chose to look the other way.
“In Rotherham and Rochdale, in particular, the victims of those crimes, teenage girls at the time, knew they had found a reporter they could trust to tell their story — of the men who had abused them and of the institutions which had let them down. Andrew lived up to his promise, and went on to expose more cover-ups of sexual abuse against children despite the incomprehensibly difficult nature of reporting them.
“We at The Times are shattered to learn of our friend and colleague’s death just six months after the start of what should have been a long and happy retirement, earned many times over.”