Seven people convicted in the country’s largest investigation

Seven men who sexually abused two girls two decades ago were sentenced to long prison terms in Britain on Friday in the largest child abuse investigation in the country’s history.

The men were sentenced to prison terms ranging from seven to 25 years after being convicted in June for crimes committed in Rotherham, northern England, in the early 2000s.

The cases stem from the National Crime Agency’s (NCA) Operation Stovewood, a ten-year investigation into child sexual abuse that is the largest of its kind in British history.

It began in 2014 after the publication of the Jay Report, which sent shockwaves across the country.

According to the report, between 1997 and 2013, at least 1,400 girls in Rotherham were abused, trafficked and sexually abused by gangs whose members were predominantly of Pakistani descent.

The report found that police and social services failed to stop the abuse.

According to the NCA, which investigates serious, organised and international crime, around 36 people have been convicted so far as part of the operation.

The latest convictions came at the end of a nine-week trial at Sheffield Crown Court.

The trial examined how the victims, who were between 11 and 16 years old at the time of the crime and were both in the care of the youth welfare office, were manipulated and often given alcohol or cannabis before they were raped or attacked.

They were often picked up by their abusers from the children’s homes where they were living at the time, the NCA said.

“These men were cruel and manipulative. They groomed their victims and then exploited them, subjecting them to the most horrific abuse possible,” said Stuart Cobb, NCA lead investigator.

Rotherham, a once prosperous industrial town that has suffered years of economic decline, was the scene of serious anti-migrant riots during this summer’s unrest in England, when hundreds of people attacked a hotel housing asylum seekers.