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.
One of the Hull victims still bumps into the men who abused her when she goes to the local supermarket. This is horrifying, but far from exceptional; one Rotherham survivor told me that “while our lives are destroyed, [the abusers] just carry on.”
During a recent House of Lords debate focusing on anti-Muslim hate, Lord Singh of Wimbledon made a plea to the Government for equal treatment for all faiths and none. In response, a heckler from the gallery shouted: “Tell that to Rotherham.” It’s an important point. The Jay inquiry mentioned council staff in Rotherham referring to the “fear of being thought racist” and “ignoring a politically inconvenient truth” when faced with the overrepresentation of Pakistani-heritage perpetrators in cases.
A decade on, this reluctance to discuss ethnicity — which resulted in child sexual exploitation being ignored and emboldened offenders — continues. In some areas, the abuse lasted for generations. Yet too many Britons are refusing to listen when survivors tell their stories.
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SubscribeThe BBC looks after its own …
The 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”!
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.
Deportation is not within the judges gift so your argument falls flat on its face.
Would the law have been less of an ass if the victim had strategized her language and asked for the perpetrator to be deported to “the country from which he emigrated”? Probably not. Sadly. Or disgracefully.
Why is it that Muslims are never worried about being thought racist?
The conquerors don’t worry about luxury beliefs…
They genuinely are a special breed.
To give an idea just how much – the parts of pre 1947 India where they were in a majority, they invariably formed for a muslim state (Pakistan – land of the “pure”) where other religions were savagely oppressed and genocided.
The parts of India where they were in a minority – they still voted for Pakistan. But because they were in a minority – they still stayed on and today demand special treatment and privileges as a religious “minority” (including special religion based laws).
Most people have some level of empathy , honesty and standards – except for psychos.
Just like people, certain belief systems are like psychos.
Yes, aided and abetted by selfish Opposition politicians who are now in synch with them calling for separate electorates.
Like Western society India too suffers from an unholy alliance of venal politicians who cultivate this lot and give in to every demand of theirs from Sharia to electoral concessions to using affirmative action ” quotas”in public jobs.
I don’t think people in the West realise, but India has already tried all this stuff – social justice for the “oppressed”, diversity quotas, socialism, protecting islam, etc…and the results are not pretty.
You’re correct in my case at least, I didn’t know that. Perhaps it would be useful to have an article explaining it?
The protection given to the criminals and the abuse memred out to the victims and to the early brace souls who tried to stop it is outrageous.
The rot of Islamisation of British institutions runs deep. Facing it is the first step that needs to be taken.
By whom? This is one of the key drivers behind the summer riots, and look at the response.
It’s not remotely racist to call out the anti-democratic changes which islamification seeks to bring about, aided and abetted by the British establishment.
Our forebears toiled and died for our freedoms. To not protest would be to betray them.
Ssshhh! You’ll be accused of racism.
I’m interested to see that the Home Secretary is horrified at figures showing 14year old girls being the largest age group reporting rape. She boldly declares (as politicians love to do) the cause being the porn watched by boys, though the report in The Times does not mention any evidence provided that might substantiate the claim. I wonder whether she has considered looking at a full range of evidence, including that which is politically uncomfortable.
This article seems mainly to be agitating without making sensible points.
So we should be bending the rules if the crime is bad enough or we don’t like the criminal much?
So what exactly is the suggestion here? Should we start debating about criminal tendencies across races and religions? Is that really a well-thought idea? If police were to do their job (stop criminals), would they really need to have a public debate about the criminals’ religion in the first place?
Will this scandal ever end?