CHIEF constable Sara Thornton yesterday refused to say whether she had considered resigning over the failure of her police force to protect girls from a child sex gang.

But Ms Thornton told the Oxford Mail a serious case review would “get to the bottom” of any misconduct in Thames Valley Police and anyone responsible would be disciplined – including herself.

On Tuesday, seven men were convicted of grooming, raping, and selling vulnerable girls for sex in Oxford. The six victims were aged between 11 and 15 when they were abused between 2004 and 2012.

The 18-week trial heard two of victims had reported rapes and abuse by defendants to police as far back as 2006.

Asked about claims one victim was threatened with arrest for wasting their time after going missing so often, the Chief Constable said: “If that happened then it shouldn’t have and I am sorry.

“These sort of concerns will be reviewed as part of the serious case review, so we will get to the bottom of this.

“That’s probably where we will get to understand how those officers dealt with the teenagers.”

She added: “I don’t know how the officers treated these girls. If any misconduct from officers in this case emerges it will be dealt with seriously. I accept responsibility for what has happened since I have been chief. “I’m sorry we didn’t bring this case to court earlier.”

The Chief Constable would not say whether she had considered resigning.

But she said she wanted to look forward, adding: “My focus as Chief is on improving services to victims.”

Ms Thornton, chief constable since 2007, said she knew of nothing to suggest her officers had not treated the complaints seriously or the girls as victims.

She said officers had tried to bring charges but there had not been enough evidence to prosecute.

She said: “It’s not as if nobody listened to them.

“Clearly, with hindsight we did not do enough. “But the main reason for that was we did not see the scale and extent of the abuse.”

And she said the girls were often unwilling to give a statement or to go to court, adding: “They were in absolute fear of these men.

“There was some intelligence at that time but as you know if we are going to secure convictions we need to turn that intelligence into evidence and we didn’t at the time.”

But she added: “What we want to be doing is preventing this from happening in the first place.

“Like the rest of the country we had failed to understand the extent of organised sexual exploitation of young girls and I think Thames Valley was no different from other forces.

“We have been on a very steep learning curve over the last few years.”

When asked if she was confident abuse on this scale would not happen again in the region, she said: “We have learnt so much about this vile crime of sexual exploitation and we are so much better at dealing with it.

“If any victims out there are suffering at the moment please tell us. We will listen to you and support you.”

She said the force was dealing with 14 further child sex exploitation cases. It was not clear last night how many of these were in Oxfordshire.