As many as 373 children may have been targeted for sex by gangs of men in Oxfordshire in the last 16 years, a serious case review found. The investigation came after a sadistic sex gang of seven men were jailed in 2013 for abusing six girls in Oxford, between 2004 and 2012. Thames Valley Police and Oxfordshire County Council made ‘many errors’ in that case and could have acted sooner. A victim of the gang said the issue had been ‘swept under the carpet’. Of the 373 cases, the council said about 50 victims were boys. Speaking at a press conference, the chair of Oxfordshire Safeguarding Children Board (OSCB) Maggie Blyth said: ‘What happened to the victims is deeply disturbing. It is shocking that these children were subjected to such appalling sexual exploitation for so long.’