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September 20, 2024 - 7:00am
Grooming gangs have returned to the news in the last week, with the conviction of seven men, who committed a series of child sex abuse crimes in Rotherham, for a total of 106 years. Their victims were between 11-16 at the time of the abuse, and were plied with drugs and alcohol before being abused. They frequently came from children’s care homes — an all too familiar pattern.
Yet victims are still being failed. It was also reported this week that a judge ordered one Rotherham survivor, who was assaulted from the age of 11, to remove from her victim impact statement a demand for the perpetrators to be deported to Pakistan. Meanwhile, much of the national press has failed to give the story the coverage it deserved.
In 2022, a Rochdale grooming gang ringleader is reported to have avoided deportation to Pakistan by renouncing his Pakistani citizenship. The cost to the taxpayer of the accused defending themselves from deportation is claimed to be over £2 million in the Rochdale case. It must be questioned why these men have access to legal aid in the first place, when such huge sums could go a long way to helping victims rebuild their lives.
According to the landmark Jay Report into Rotherham published in 2014, 1400 girls were sexually exploited by men of predominantly Pakistani heritage in the town between 1997 and 2013. Alexis Jay recommended the National Crime Agency (NCA) set up Operation Stovewood, dedicated to investigating child sexual exploitation in Rotherham, and last week’s conviction in Sheffield Crown Court was a result of this very operation.
In court one survivor addressed her abusers,saying: “You ruined my life but I won’t let you ruin my future […] You stole my childhood; now I’m taking your freedom.” But while justice has to some extent been served in Sheffield, there are still many victims across the country who have not had the same experience. Operation Stovewood alone has “recorded 1367 crimes, arrested 209 individuals and nominated 1080 survivors”. There may be many more yet.
Meanwhile in Hull, two young women, who claim to have been raped by a grooming gang as teenagers, complained this week that Humberside Police removed resources set aside for investigating their case and redeployed them to tackle the summer riots. The original investigation into their claims was shelved in 2021, but was later reopened following media intervention. Now, these women serve as further examples of how grooming gang victims are being repeatedly let down.
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SubscribeThe viciousness of the establishment response to this issue continues to boggle my mind.
The establishment look down at the victims, they see them as “white trash”!
The BBC looks after its own …
Charlie Peters from GB news was the only person to cover this properly – you can find his various reports on youtube. It well worth hearing the full versions what the victims were allowed to say. That the judge censored the statement at all was a disgrace. One of the rapists the survivor wanted to be deported had only lived in UK for 20 years, but still needed to have the proceedings translated into Urdu because he has not bothered to learn English.
The judge was correct. Victim impact statements are about the impact on the victims. If they are allowed to suggest sentences and the judge appears to comply with those suggestions, this just gives the defence an avenue to appeal against sentence.
Why is it that Muslims are never worried about being thought racist?