Ive just been thinking about this again as I read something about the case this morning. It seems from the newspaper accounts and the statements from those investigating what happened that the victims were treated as 'little slags', that somehow they were complicit in what happened or even initiated it. One councillor is quoted as saying that the girls tricked the men into sleeping with them by wearing make-up and dressing to look older. The reason given for this is that the girls are white and from poor backgrounds.
There are people who committed rape on these girls still walking free - only half the accused came to trial in Rochdale and there are similar scandals in Rotherham and elsewhere too. One figure I read this morning suggests that there could be two thousand victims. This problem hasn't gone away.
The team behind this dramatisation also made Five Daughters, reminding people that the victims of Steve Wright were women, daughters, mothers, sisters, friends, not just 'prostitutes'. I think what this drama does is force people to face that these girls aren't somehow 'less' because of who they are and where they come from, as the authorities apparently believed and would have us believe. They are girls the same as girls everywhere, and they deserve better.