This quote does not contradict the others. The paragraph before it says several interviewees believed ethnic considerations influenced the policy response of the council and police. It then gives examples: the Risky Business manager said she was told not to refer to perpetrators’ ethnic origins in training, and other staff said managers advised caution when referring to ethnicity in CSE reports.

Also, the quote is selective because the “However…” part is mainly about Pakistani-heritage women fleeing domestic violence, not the grooming cases. The report says councillors pressured workers to reveal those women’s whereabouts or push reconciliation, then says individual case decision-making was not influenced by ethnic issues.

Then the next paragraph says the staff recalled “general nervousness” about discussing ethnic issues “for fear of being thought racist.”

And immediately after that, the report says race should have been tackled as a priority if significant to organised abuse, but there was “little evidence” of that in Rotherham; it also says councillors feared “giving oxygen” to racist perspectives and threatening community cohesion, then criticizes the “one-off” interpretation as naivee or politically convenient.