January 17, 2025 - 7:00am
There are clearly unanswered questions about the targeting of teenage girls by gangs of predatory men in British towns and cities. One of the most pressing is about institutional failure: the fact that so many people — social workers, police officers and councillors — failed to act on complaints from children and their families. Why they didn’t intervene, and whether they are still responsible for the safety of vulnerable young people, is something that urgently needs to be established.
Will the Government’s announcement yesterday of national funding for five local inquiries do the job? Like many initiatives from Labour ministers, it feels like a desperate attempt to get out of a fix, satisfying no one. They are leaving it up to individual local authorities to set up inquiries, which means councillors effectively have to commission investigations into their current or former employees — and even their own colleagues.
There may be places where local politicians would rather not have an inquiry, for fear of what it might uncover or because they want to avoid further reputational damage. There is a whole series of towns — including Rotherham, Oldham, and Rochdale — whose names have become synonymous with “grooming” and child sexual exploitation. There is a risk that girls who were repeatedly raped elsewhere, who want an inquiry into who knew what and failed to act, will be denied justice because the Government is leaving the decision up to council bosses.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has also announced a separate “national audit” to establish the current scale of “grooming”, focusing on the “cultural drivers” and ethnicity of gangs. It sounds promising, but how much work can it do if it is to be completed in three months? The audit is to be led by Baroness Casey, who already has a pretty full agenda after being asked to lead a separate commission on adult social care.
It seems beyond doubt that some towns and cities have a problem with child sexual exploitation that has yet to be exposed. London is the most puzzling omission, given the existence of precisely the kind of nighttime economy — fast-food joints and taxi companies — that provided a base for predatory men in places such as Rotherham. But the capital has a police force which is mired in scandal and treated with contempt by the public after some of its own officers have been convicted of the gravest sexual crimes.
Government ministers give the impression that they’re squirming, stubbornly resistant to setting up a full inquiry because they don’t like the individuals calling for it. It also looks as though they’re nervous about what it might uncover, given that so many “grooming” scandals happened in areas with Labour councils. That may be unfair, but you don’t have to be a fan of Elon Musk or Reform UK to believe that a culture of impunity existed — and may still exist in some towns and cities.
After only six months in office, Labour appears stubborn, defensive and inward-looking. Ministers don’t hide their impatience about being challenged, but when thousands of children have been so badly abused, the feelings of politicians don’t matter. How on earth did so many men get away for so long with rape and torture? It shames our country, and the very least we owe the girls who were let down is a national inquiry.
Joan Smith is a novelist and columnist. She was previously Chair of the Mayor of London’s Violence Against Women and Girls Board, and is on the advisory group for Sex Matters. Her book Unfortunately, She Was A Nymphomaniac: A New History of Rome’s Imperial Women was published in November 2024.
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SubscribeEven if there was another National Inquiry with legal compulsion to attend and testify it’d inevitably take some years. Those being compelled would be entitled to process in line with the law and legal representation. That isn’t quick. And by the time we get there we’d be c20years, maybe more, since the worst (Gang convictions started to happen from c2011). How many of the officials will be retired or no longer with us? And then there’s the question what would be deemed justice? Being incompetent and making woeful professional judgements can generate public embarrassment but is not a criminal offence. (The law is being changed so failure to report/disclose will be an offence). Nonetheless the desire for further redress is understandable.
Author doesn’t refer to the Whistleblower story yesterday from those who worked on the IPOC review of how the Police investigated the Rotherham ‘Grooming Gangs’. The IOPC had exonerated the Senior Officers with nothing malign concluded, albeit it had concluded mistakes were made. The Whistleblowers are saying the Reviewers were deliberately directed not to be more critical and that some details were suppressed. This seems yet another example of the Police self-investigating itself and hiding key details. Anything the Home Sec now does now should include a rapid review of these Whistleblower allegations.
Whilst some of the Bandwagon jumpers now, who’d been asleep when Jay reported, persist in their racial hustle and endeavour to find anything to land on Starmer, arguably the key justice issue is how the Police saw young women from troubled backgrounds as partly responsible, even complicit. In that regard they perhaps weren’t a million miles from that other doyen of anti-woke/Right wing thinking – Andrew Tate ‘…women should bear some responsibility’. Let’s be hearing the Yaxley Lennon supporters calling this sort of thing out for the dreadful attitude it is. Or are a significant number of them drunkard wife beaters themselves?
No mention of Pakistani rape gangs, no mention of Starmer’s role, no mention of Muslim votes, no mention of Musk’s specific accusations against Starmer. No mention of Tommy Robinson. No mention of a cover up. No mention of local authorities being afraid to tackle the rape gangs for fear of being labelled Racist. No mention of Jess Phillip’s role in refusing a national inquiry.
How can you write an article about this scandal and mention none of that?
Memo to contributors to Unherd – Do not criticise Starmer and Labour.
It’s all just to annoy you, obviously, because the editors think it’s a great idea for you to continually rant the same rant, article after article.
Even worse, you attack those with real courage in exposing the very issues you rant about. This author works continually in the real world whilst you ‘cut and paste’. Attacking her is cowardly.
But what if he’s right? It would make calm, non-rants, absolutely irrelevant.
Oh come on… what he’s doing is simply replicating what many of us have commented for some considerable time, whilst adding nothing new whatsoever. In other words, he’s reducing the debate rather than enhancing the cause.
He’s therefore doing the cause a disservice by using virtually every article (whether on topic or not) to attack the outlet (Unherd) and authors like Joan Smith – who, i repeat, works in the real world – to try to bring justice against the grooming gangs.
Further, he thinks he’s the only one who cares about any of this. It’d be laughable if it weren’t so serious.
I don’t agree. If the state is bad, if people in power are abusing that power, if UnHerd is collaborating by choice of essays, if commenters are calm and use words beautifully, if they have clever arguments which get upticks because they are clever…. worse than these things, if the politicians respond to these clever arguments using better words, professional words… then wordsmiths are collaborating in one big cover up by confusing the issues with thousands of words.
If something is bad, how about all collaborators and commenters having one word replies like bad, disgusting, criminal, insane.. In that way there can be no flowery coverups and UnHerd would get the message.
LL is sending some confusing messages.
Is it just me or has the functionality to respond directly to a Comment (accidentally) been removed ?
I’ve been on to admin about it.
I can ‘Reply’ in Newsroom articles (such as this one) but no Reply function in the main Home section. This happened when the login function went haywire a couple of days ago.
The “enqury” announced by the Home Office is meant to deflect and divert attention away from the much needed rape gangs enquiry. It’s not going to deliver justice. It’s going to buy Labour time and provide the appearance of “taking action” The worst kind of gesture politics.
What a ridiculous article. Avoiding every aspect of the scandal. A progressive liberal looking the other way. Just as has happened over the last thirty years.
I suspect the reason underpinning these failings is really quite simple. For those with professional responsibility in these areas to be considered racist is absolutely the worst possible thing that can happen to you.
Reply to Ian Barton. I can’t reply to others’ comments either.
JW finally admits, on the one hand, that public officials have not been properly held to account for their complicity in this abuse, whilst continuing to insult those who want a proper enquiry. Make up your mind.
JW won’t be able to make up ‘his” mind. It is a shared Labour account. Who knows how many people write on it.
True, true and true again! But an even more important focus should be on the cultural factors involved, whether racial, religious, moral etc. this isn’t just about one country of origin or one religion (albeit one is predominant). It is about our national moral ideals.
All is revealed!
Well, not all, but there’s enough here to suggest why so little had been revealed over the last 40 years:
https://youtu.be/6egrJ5Vi0o4
And this about one of those towns.
Unless the inquiry tackles ‘anti-white’ racism, it’s pointless. Anti-white racism is why all of this happened, be it the rapes themselves, or the instituational anti-white racism which treats white people differently from non-white people.
You don’t have to be very imaginative to guess what the the reaction would be if the victim offender roles were reversed. The zombie like hysteria would be insane. That planet sized, anti-white, double standard is the problem.
Yes, “Privileged” white girls being raped. A sort of reparations for colonialism in the eyes of the mind-numbed woke. Those wicked whites should not have interfered with traditional customs like suttee or the thuggees. Live and let live. Don’t be judgemental.
Watch the first Jordan Peterson interview with Tommy Robinson. Episode 462.
I don’t know why Unherd ignores this.
There are two explanations. They are supporting Starmer and Labour at all costs.
Or they are part of the cover up.
Just gangs of men, eh? Any other important details missed?
Ricky Little and HB – for some reason can’t reply hence further comment.
Your prob is that you’d not paid any real attention to the details of this events when the convictions first happened, or via a detailed read of the Jay Report. Pretty lazy. And now you seem oblivious to the fact a further Inquiry will zero in on Police culture and why the women were not believed. Not quite the target you prefer. Remember a review would be about why it took so long to start convicting the perpetrators. Over 60 have been and gainng further convictions a separate process of law.
Starmer, Andrew Norfolk the primary Investigating journalist who originally exposed all this, is actually v positive about Starmer’s role in changing the way the Cts and the Police had to act. I’m sure you’d be delighted in that factoid having more prominence.
Come on you need to admit neither of you ever been that bothered about the attitude of some dreadful men towards women. You are probably both Tate fanboys.
Message to Lancashire Lad. As you seem to know all about the inner workings of Unherd perhaps you can help me. How can I get rid of my trolls? I have five or six of them.
Oh, that’s very simple – stop trolling Unherd.
What you’re describing as being trolled is just pushback by those who value Unherd and have commented on the rape gangs issue for much longer. You seriously think you’re the only one who cares?
I’ve also repeatedly linked articles to you which demonstrate your claims against Unherd (about not publishing critical articles) are entirely false. That makes you a troll, nothing more.
Trolls who can’t even write properly. “It’d be laughable it it weren’t so serious.”
@J Watson, interesting points about the disadvantages of a full enquiry.
But I don’t think everyone making this case is on a racial hustle. That is a bit of a kneejerk liberal reaction I think. It’s clear this case is already harming ‘community relations’, regardless of the stats (which in my reading don’t seem to conclusively prove that Pakistanis aren’t over-represented). Not a good look, all those brown mugshots.
If the govt isn’t seen to be taking some action, this will continue to fester and end up being converted into more votes for Reform, or worse.
One of the small but shocking items in the Jay report was about Lambeth council.
“It is hard to comprehend the cruelty and sexual abuse inflicted on children in the care of Lambeth Council over many years, by staff, by foster carers and their families, and by ‘volunteers’ in residential settings.”
“With one or two exceptions, a succession of elected members and senior officials ought to have been held accountable for allowing the sexual abuse of children in their care to continue over decades. Lambeth Council was only able to identify one senior Council employee, over the course of 40 years, who was disciplined for their part in this catalogue of failures to address child sexual abuse.”
“The conclusion was therefore unavoidable that those who ran Lambeth Council for the most part simply did not care enough to prioritise the protection of children.”
Now our Home Secretary has decided that the local authorities should conduct their own investigations into child rape gangs. Really?
Laboir is transparently acting no differently from a guilty party covering up and suppressing the crimes of Britain’s apparent new rulers.
Labour and their media supporters are too polite and middle-class to tackle the dark institutional corruption within the South Asian Muslim networks of local councils, the care system and regional police forces & judiciaries. It is genuinely nightmarish – truly the horrors of the 3rd World imported to the UK and taking root over decades in a 2-tier society.
I can answer the London question.
The GLA has zero child safeguarding responsibilities, unlike local councils.
Also, considering the also constant crossing of LA boundaries (e.g. for education) means multiple authorities would have to collude.
London? They’re are hardly any white girls there to abuse, Victoria.
Question for J Watson? Can you not see that the anger and insults just make you all look more guilty?
Watson says we should be satisfied with 60 convictions. Why, when we know there are at least hundreds – and probably thousands – of perpetrators? Plus a great many public officials whose complicity has not even been investigated.
You have to ask why Labour people like this are so desperate to brush the whole thing back under the rug.
In ep. 462
“You can’t run from this problem.”
Tommy Robinson
And the Inquiry will have to include Lord Hermer’s role in prosecuting Robinson.
The Attorney General who defended Gerry Adams and is implicated in the decision to now allow Adams to receive compensation from the British state.
Starmer and Labour stink.
You won’t read about this in Unherd.
“We’ve bred a generation of cowards who only care about themselves.”
Tommy Robinson
Something which Peterson talks about a lot in his podcasts.
The council leaders are are the ones who let the kids down, turned a blind eye – or worse, tacitly endorsed the child rape and young girl rape –
Or worse still…..
The equivalent of letting Jimmy Savile investigate complaints from Stoke Mandaville children’s ward
Labour don’t care about the poor girls.
Like the Oldham councillor – They just want them to shut up for the sake of diversity
.
Diversity. A sick, sick joke
“In 2019/20, (one year) police across the UK recorded more than 73,518 sexual offences against children, and the Home Office states that only around one in 10 victims actually disclosed child sexual abuse to an official at the time.
So if the Home Office commissioned research is correct, that’s 735,180 victims in a single year in the UK alone.
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2020/dec/analysis-new-home-office-report-admits-grooming-gangs-are-not-muslim-problem
Child sexual abuse in the UK is far more widespread than that identified following the long overdue police action against “grooming gang” members, their guilty verdicts and their current and future imprisonment.
I have long admired the articles by Joan Smith here and in other publications but I feel on this occasion she has vastly underestimated the enormity of Child Sexual Abuse and Exploitation.
I did hear, I believe a senior police officer but I might be wrong, stating that over 50% of child sexual abuse is by other children.
As any fully consentual sexual act between underage children (for example two 15 year olds having a fumble) that is reported will be logged as child sexual abuse, I got the feeling that he was using a highly broad dataset to deflect from the very specific problems endemic in the Child Protection area.
With regard to a national inquiry and the time it would take:
Of the 69 inquiries launched between 1990 and 2017, the Hammond Inquiry into ministerial conduct relating to the Hinduja affair in 2001 was the shortest, taking just 45 days to report its findings; the Inquiry into Hyponatraemia-related Deaths in Northern Ireland was the longest, taking 13 years and three months.
Hyponatraemia is defined as a serum sodium concentration of less than 135 mmol/L.It is the most common electrolyte disorder encountered in clinical practice and is usually an incidental finding on routine blood tests.
It’s been suggested here that this matter of grooming gang child sexual abuse has been going on for ten years, probably longer, and as such will have existed and been reported to the police and others during both Labour and Conservative governments. It’s why a national inquiry is necessary.
The victims are young girls unprotected by their families in the first place. Mostly they are from abusive, unsupportive white families, who’ve left them open to abuse from more men. Social services & protection for vulnerable children should be the focus. Too many men, regardless of ethnicity will take advantage of un-cared for girls; we all know that
But in general they operate on their own and, if caught, are investigated and prosecuted.
This is totally different to whole gangs of Pakistani, and other, men targeting vulnerable white young girls on a wholesale basis and then being protected by their families, communities, police, social services and politicians at local and governmental levels.