Her abuser was a married father-of-two, who was 10 years her senior and who had just been released from prison when the young girl met him in the northern England town of Rotherham.

"He bought me chicken and chips from a place just up from the petrol station," Jessica wrote a short time after their first meeting, which then progressed to regular sexual liaisons between the pair.

Senior council officials and police in Rotherham strongly suspected the young teenager and the man were having sex. It became blatantly obvious when Jessica fell pregnant, and a GP named him as the father.

The authorities wrote reports on the case, but described the man as Jessica's "boyfriend", and said they could do nothing to stop their encounters.

Jessica is just one of the estimated 1400 children in the South Yorkshire town who were beaten, raped and trafficked over a 16-year period by multiple perpetrators, mainly from Britain's Pakistani community, a report released this week concluded. The shocking abuse was allowed to happen due to the "collective failures" of authorities in the town, the independent report found.

And Jessica is one of the heroines of the story, according to Andrew Norfolk, an investigative journalist with The Times in London whose series of ground-breaking reports over the years blew the lid on the shocking scale of abuse.

It was Jessica's story, published in August last year, that shamed Rotherham council into ordering the year-long independent inquiry which came to a conclusion this week.

In an article for The Times on Thursday, Norfolk recalled how he first noticed a pattern among the victims of abuse in Rotherham.

"The victims were always aged 12-15, the first contact was in a public place - a shopping mall, a town centre, a bus or train station - and a grooming process developed in which girls were initially flattered and excited by the attentions of young men a few years older than them who took an interest, offered the adult thrills of cigarettes, alcohol and rides in flashy cars, then wanted to become their boyfriends," Norfolk writes.

"A sexual relationship developed in which the girl was sooner or later asked to prove her love by sleeping with his best friend, then with more friends. In the worst cases, girls were being taken to 'parties' in house and flats, or put in cars and driven to locations across the country. Always for sex; often violent sex."

Jessica told her story to Norfolk last year in the hope that others would find the courage to speak out.

Her bleak story began with her introduction to her abuser in 1999.

"At my school I was one of the first to get involved with him. My friends warned me. They said to stay away from him because he was a nutcase, but it was exciting. He wasn't a boy. He was a man. He had a car," Jessica told The Times last year.

"It was like somebody put a spell on me. I became obsessed with him. I wanted to marry him, have kids and live happily ever after. I actually thought that's what would happen. He didn't tell me he was already married."

When she fell pregnant soon after, a concerned GP alerted social workers about the situation and named the 24-year-old father. But The Times wrote that social services decided to take "no further action" and a member of staff wrote: "She is happy with the relationship. There does not appear to be a role for social services at this time."

Soon after, Jessica ran away from home and the police found her in a house with her abuser. She was almost naked, lying under a bed.

"I was in bed upstairs with [him] when the police came into the house. He panicked and pulled on some trousers. I grabbed a pair of knickers and tried to hide under the bed. One of the police officers told me to come out. He could see my legs sticking out," she told The Times.

Soon, the troubled teenager was taken into the care of social services, where her abuser was allowed daily access to her. He even went on a weekend away with Jessica and her foster carer.

In a police report, Jessica was identified as being "at risk of sexual abuse", The Times reported. Her abuser was soon linked to a long list of young teenagers, more than a dozen identifying him as their boyfriend.

"It is evident that some police officers and social workers grew deeply concerned about Jessica's welfare," Norfolk wrote last year.

"However, their efforts to protect the child from [her abuser] foundered in a swamp of corporate incompetence, complacency and confusion, characterised by a lack of leadership and poor inter-agency communication."

Jessica said: "I didn't think of myself as being groomed, but now I realise it was an abusive relationship. What happened to me was wrong. When you're abused it doesn't only affect you for a few days. It can stay with you for the rest of your life."

Following this week's damning revelations in the report, compiled by Professor Alexis Jay, a former chief social work adviser to the Scottish government, Norfolk said Jessica and others had shown extraordinary resilience after years of abuse.

"They decided to trust The Times with their stories and they are the closest this tale will ever come to having heroes or heroines," he said.

*Not her real name

Fairfax Media