In 1991, Birmingham City Council commissioned a report into the rape of girls in its own care.

The researcher found the girls. She named them. She interviewed them. She documented the networks. She identified the private hire drivers. She put it all in writing. The council ordered the evidence removed, the ethnicity erased, and the copies destroyed.

Four years later a motion was tabled demanding a full inquiry into what had happened to that report. The council voted it down.

The man running Birmingham City Council when that vote was cast went on to be knighted, to lead a major government inquiry into local government finance, and to chair the BBC Trust.

He has never once been asked what he knew.

That is where this rabbit hole begins.