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Why has there been no reckoning over Rotherham?

The number of victims in Rotherham alone dwarfs the number of victims abused by Jimmy Savile. Credit: Getty

January 4, 2023 - 10:00am

GB News broke a remarkable story this week as part of their ongoing investigation into UK grooming gangs — an issue that may not be occupying the headlines as much as it once did, but which has certainly not gone away. 

Mahroof Hussain is a former Labour Party politician who was forced to resign from his cabinet position at Rotherham Council in 2015 after the Casey Report named him as one of the figures who had “suppressed discussion” of grooming gangs operating in the town. 

And yet, despite his disgrace, it is reported that Hussein has succeeded in reinventing himself as an anti-Islamophobia activist, working with groups including Tell MAMA and Faith Matters. And, in an extraordinary example of failing upwards, in October 2020 Hussain was appointed as the NHS Health Education England Regional Diversity & Inclusion Manager for the Midlands. In September 2022, he was promoted to become the national lead.

This follows further reporting last month which revealed that Dominic Beck had been selected as Labour’s parliamentary candidate for Rother Valley, despite the fact that he also served on the Rotherham Council cabinet, alongside Hussain, and was also forced to resign following the Casey Report. Beck stood down following the investigation.

These two men were both implicated in the cover-up of the largest sex abuse scandal of this century, and possibly also of the last century. The number of victims in Rotherham alone dwarfs the number of victims abused by Jimmy Savile, and it is believed that across the UK it is “highly likely that the number of victims stretches into the tens of thousands.” The scale of this scandal is almost certainly far larger than we know, given how little investigation there has been, and how few consequences have been visited upon those involved.

I suspect that future historians will be puzzled by these last few decades, during which the widespread prostitution of children by organised criminal gangs — sometimes escalating to murder — was met with embarrassed silence in much of the media and among most feminists. This was even while far less serious incidents (say, Jeremy Clarkson’s comments about Meghan Markle) were met with outrage. Why would feminists jump to the defence of a princess, but raise barely a peep in response to the raped 11-year-old branded with the initial of her rapist? 

One reason, among several, was a fear of appearing racist. As former Greater Manchester Police constable turned whistleblower Maggie Oliver writes bluntly of the scandal in Rochdale, “the people at the top perceived the ethnicity of the offenders and the low status of poor white girls as a toxic mix.” As this scandal has unfolded over the last twenty years, most of those in positions of power (including many feminists) have cared far too little about the victims and far too much about their own reputations.

Which is why there is yet to be a true reckoning. Of the dozens of towns and cities targeted by these gangs, in only one — Rotherham — has an investigation been carried out by the National Crime Agency (NCA), the body best suited to independent investigations of this magnitude. While the Casey Report concluded in 2015 that, at a “conservative estimate”, 1,400 girls were sexually exploited between 1997 and 2013 in Rotherham, the NCA’s subsequent investigation revised the number of victims during this period up to 1,510. As part of the NCA’s Operation Stovewood, 209 people have so far been arrested, with 20 convicted. 

During his leadership tilt last summer, Rishi Sunak promised that as Prime Minister he would “hunt down grooming gangs.” As his campaign website detailed:  

Rishi will set up a new emergency taskforce working at the heart of the National Crime Agency to launch an investigation into any town or city where significant grooming gang activity has been found and root it out.
- Ready for Rishi

The examples of Mahroof Hussain and Dominic Beck show us that the time is now for the Prime Minister to act on this promise.


Louise Perry is a freelance writer and campaigner against sexual violence.

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Paddy Taylor
Paddy Taylor
1 year ago

Because, even now, the left liberal media runs shy of accurately reporting the problem – for fear of being being accused of racism or, even worse in their eyes, islamophobia.
The problem of “Asian grooming gangs” was discussed when the story broke and could no longer be ignored – but why “Asian”? These girls were not raped and abused by Japanese, Chinese or Korean men, nor Indians. The perpetrators were predominantly men of Pakistani Muslim heritage, yet the press and even the Civil Service seemed terrified of actually stating that fact.
The Guardian ran a headline –

Most child sexual abuse gangs made up of white men, Home Office report says.”

“Study of England, Scotland and Wales dispels myth of ‘Asian grooming gangs’ popularised by far right”

The Home Office research, which lumped together all child sex offenders, seemed desparate to avoid noticing that with the specific problem of large scale, organised “grooming gangs” the overrepresentation of British Pakistani Muslim men was obvious – yet troubling enough that the Home Office sat on the report for 2 years before Priti Patel’s insistence, and an FOI request, led to it being given to the press. The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Command noted that, of the 306 offenders identified, over three quarters were of South Asian Muslim heritage, despite that community making up approximately 2% of the male UK population.
The above-mentioned Guardian article was published at the same time that the paper was filled with #MeToo stories. Some of which were genuinely awful, some of which were so trivial as to beggar belief. The Defence Secretary saw his political career ended over the unwanted touch of a knee – despite the fact that the knee in question belonged to Julia Hartley-Brewer, who said she’d dealt with the matter herself (by threatening to punch the MP) and it really didn’t need to be a scandal, and that she certainly wasn’t a “victim”.
So, at a moment when the bien pensant press were so finely tuned to #MeToo atrocities that an unwanted touch of a knee or even a suggestive remark was being treated as serious sexual assault, where were they on the actual, systematised rape, drugging and torture of white, working class girls in UK cities? They were deflecting, obfuscating and seemingly ducking for cover.
Why the uncomfortable silence? Well, at a guess, because they found both the perpetrators and victims inconvenient. They didn’t fit the narrative.
It was this inability to recognise, report and tackle the problem honestly that led to the police and local authorities being so paralysed by fear of being labelled islamophobic.
Not being free to even notice, let alone discuss, the cultural element to this is a serious problem and only provides cover in which such hideous crimes can go on in our midst, unchallenged.

Last edited 1 year ago by Paddy Taylor
Walter Marvell
Walter Marvell
1 year ago
Reply to  Paddy Taylor

Long before the Times (note not the Three Monkey BBC which had local ‘journalists’ embedded in ALL of the tens of towns afflicted by this plague) courageously broke the story, Channel Four tried to make a documentary. Result? The local police hounded THEM, fearful that the truth would incite civil unrest (and no doubt their sorry incompetence). The BBC actively suppressed the story, working with State Children Commissioner to suggest there was no ethic marker. They must have known it was a lie. So too Labour who screeched the same way. Then later – quite shamelessly – they make a drama series on it!!!. But look it up. They declared they were interested only in the female victims of men …and not the specifc perpetrators. The record of the BBC on this horror should see the Charter removed but no one will do the audit. It dwarfes the likes of scandals like Savile and their extra judicial witch hunting of gay MPs, Cliff, Generals and more. Shame.

Ethniciodo Rodenydo
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
1 year ago
Reply to  Paddy Taylor

Well it is not just this issue is it.
Every time crime is reported the MSM are careful to ignore the ethnicity of the perpetrators unless the happen to be white.
So we have a local man stabbed to death by one of a group of youths from south Birmingham visiting a satellite town on a robbery expedition. We have police issuing a reasonably detailed description of suspects wanted for questioning in relation to a fatal assault that omits the perpetrators ethnicity.

Jeremy Bray
Jeremy Bray
1 year ago

The University educated police and journalists have been taught that their fellow citizens and the working class population in particular are so thick that they can’t accept the idea that because there are criminals of a non-white ethnicity not all members of that ethnicity are not criminals. The problem is police and journalistic bigotry regarding the intelligence of the white working class. There may well be a few idiots who can’t make the distinction but most can.

Andrew Dalton
Andrew Dalton
1 year ago
Reply to  Jeremy Bray

I don’t know whether this reflects badly upon me, but I feel a greater ire for the bureaucrat class that allowed this to happen than the perpetrators.
My reasoning, to the extent that an emotional reaction may be reasoned, is that the failure to address the issue at source not only allowed a greater number of offences to occur but it actually would have exacerbated the issue you point out.
A failure to follow due process is the very thing that causes the metoo movement, the Epstein or Stephen Lawrence scandals. The modern identitarian religious belief in some form of cosmic, temporal justice where we change the principles of due process to correct historic imbalance and prevent future inequity is the very thing that results in such tragic ineptitude as what we see here.

Andrew Dalton
Andrew Dalton
1 year ago
Reply to  Jeremy Bray

I don’t know whether this reflects badly upon me, but I feel a greater ire for the bureaucrat class that allowed this to happen than the perpetrators.
My reasoning, to the extent that an emotional reaction may be reasoned, is that the failure to address the issue at source not only allowed a greater number of offences to occur but it actually would have exacerbated the issue you point out.
A failure to follow due process is the very thing that causes the metoo movement, the Epstein or Stephen Lawrence scandals. The modern identitarian religious belief in some form of cosmic, temporal justice where we change the principles of due process to correct historic imbalance and prevent future inequity is the very thing that results in such tragic ineptitude as what we see here.

S Wilkinson
S Wilkinson
1 year ago

We have the same issue with ‘trans rights’. Police issued an appeal for information about a ‘woman’ who committed a sexual assault at a train station. It was, of course, a man but facts and justice can’t be allowed to get in the way of EDI tick boxes.

Last edited 1 year ago by S Wilkinson
Jeremy Bray
Jeremy Bray
1 year ago

The University educated police and journalists have been taught that their fellow citizens and the working class population in particular are so thick that they can’t accept the idea that because there are criminals of a non-white ethnicity not all members of that ethnicity are not criminals. The problem is police and journalistic bigotry regarding the intelligence of the white working class. There may well be a few idiots who can’t make the distinction but most can.

S Wilkinson
S Wilkinson
1 year ago

We have the same issue with ‘trans rights’. Police issued an appeal for information about a ‘woman’ who committed a sexual assault at a train station. It was, of course, a man but facts and justice can’t be allowed to get in the way of EDI tick boxes.

Last edited 1 year ago by S Wilkinson
Walter Marvell
Walter Marvell
1 year ago
Reply to  Paddy Taylor

Long before the Times (note not the Three Monkey BBC which had local ‘journalists’ embedded in ALL of the tens of towns afflicted by this plague) courageously broke the story, Channel Four tried to make a documentary. Result? The local police hounded THEM, fearful that the truth would incite civil unrest (and no doubt their sorry incompetence). The BBC actively suppressed the story, working with State Children Commissioner to suggest there was no ethic marker. They must have known it was a lie. So too Labour who screeched the same way. Then later – quite shamelessly – they make a drama series on it!!!. But look it up. They declared they were interested only in the female victims of men …and not the specifc perpetrators. The record of the BBC on this horror should see the Charter removed but no one will do the audit. It dwarfes the likes of scandals like Savile and their extra judicial witch hunting of gay MPs, Cliff, Generals and more. Shame.

Ethniciodo Rodenydo
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
1 year ago
Reply to  Paddy Taylor

Well it is not just this issue is it.
Every time crime is reported the MSM are careful to ignore the ethnicity of the perpetrators unless the happen to be white.
So we have a local man stabbed to death by one of a group of youths from south Birmingham visiting a satellite town on a robbery expedition. We have police issuing a reasonably detailed description of suspects wanted for questioning in relation to a fatal assault that omits the perpetrators ethnicity.

Paddy Taylor
Paddy Taylor
1 year ago

Because, even now, the left liberal media runs shy of accurately reporting the problem – for fear of being being accused of racism or, even worse in their eyes, islamophobia.
The problem of “Asian grooming gangs” was discussed when the story broke and could no longer be ignored – but why “Asian”? These girls were not raped and abused by Japanese, Chinese or Korean men, nor Indians. The perpetrators were predominantly men of Pakistani Muslim heritage, yet the press and even the Civil Service seemed terrified of actually stating that fact.
The Guardian ran a headline –

Most child sexual abuse gangs made up of white men, Home Office report says.”

“Study of England, Scotland and Wales dispels myth of ‘Asian grooming gangs’ popularised by far right”

The Home Office research, which lumped together all child sex offenders, seemed desparate to avoid noticing that with the specific problem of large scale, organised “grooming gangs” the overrepresentation of British Pakistani Muslim men was obvious – yet troubling enough that the Home Office sat on the report for 2 years before Priti Patel’s insistence, and an FOI request, led to it being given to the press. The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Command noted that, of the 306 offenders identified, over three quarters were of South Asian Muslim heritage, despite that community making up approximately 2% of the male UK population.
The above-mentioned Guardian article was published at the same time that the paper was filled with #MeToo stories. Some of which were genuinely awful, some of which were so trivial as to beggar belief. The Defence Secretary saw his political career ended over the unwanted touch of a knee – despite the fact that the knee in question belonged to Julia Hartley-Brewer, who said she’d dealt with the matter herself (by threatening to punch the MP) and it really didn’t need to be a scandal, and that she certainly wasn’t a “victim”.
So, at a moment when the bien pensant press were so finely tuned to #MeToo atrocities that an unwanted touch of a knee or even a suggestive remark was being treated as serious sexual assault, where were they on the actual, systematised rape, drugging and torture of white, working class girls in UK cities? They were deflecting, obfuscating and seemingly ducking for cover.
Why the uncomfortable silence? Well, at a guess, because they found both the perpetrators and victims inconvenient. They didn’t fit the narrative.
It was this inability to recognise, report and tackle the problem honestly that led to the police and local authorities being so paralysed by fear of being labelled islamophobic.
Not being free to even notice, let alone discuss, the cultural element to this is a serious problem and only provides cover in which such hideous crimes can go on in our midst, unchallenged.

Last edited 1 year ago by Paddy Taylor
Walter Marvell
Walter Marvell
1 year ago

The simple answer to the question why there has been no reckoning for the perpetrators and facilitators of one of the gravest crimes ever committed on these shores is one we actually all know; we inhabit an avowedly multicultural state whose warped equality laws make it impossible for our allegedly ‘structurally racist’ white society to name and shame and pursue perpetrators who are from the nine victim groups who have been granted hiher privileged status in law A pyschological terror of discrimination and groupthink mania similar to that in China 1968 has taken hold of the British State and public sector – law, police media all. The BBC no longer uses the words Muslim or Islam in connection with terror cases like David Ames and blathers instead about hate speak on social media. This pathological cowardice sees fear of alleged racism trump the protection of young workimg class teen white girls and society. The meek police try and make us believe that a few far right nutters pose a greater threat than Islamists. A base pathetic propagandist knee bend. We can do the math. Our State and media has been utterly corrupted by this equality derangement. And the worst of it is; we all know it. We know there will never be a reckoning. Shame on them all.

Paul Devlin
Paul Devlin
1 year ago
Reply to  Walter Marvell

Absolutely spot on, Walter. The vast complex of supposed equality and anti-racist legislation since the Race Relations Act in the 60s was designed to extinguish independent or collective action by native people against the unending tide of immigration. To stand up to it is now literally unthinkable for most people, even at the cost of the industrial scale slavery and rape of our children. This is how debased we have become

Kat L
Kat L
1 year ago
Reply to  Walter Marvell

disagree on the reckoning part. at some point there will be a reckoning…

Paul Devlin
Paul Devlin
1 year ago
Reply to  Walter Marvell

Absolutely spot on, Walter. The vast complex of supposed equality and anti-racist legislation since the Race Relations Act in the 60s was designed to extinguish independent or collective action by native people against the unending tide of immigration. To stand up to it is now literally unthinkable for most people, even at the cost of the industrial scale slavery and rape of our children. This is how debased we have become

Kat L
Kat L
1 year ago
Reply to  Walter Marvell

disagree on the reckoning part. at some point there will be a reckoning…

Walter Marvell
Walter Marvell
1 year ago

The simple answer to the question why there has been no reckoning for the perpetrators and facilitators of one of the gravest crimes ever committed on these shores is one we actually all know; we inhabit an avowedly multicultural state whose warped equality laws make it impossible for our allegedly ‘structurally racist’ white society to name and shame and pursue perpetrators who are from the nine victim groups who have been granted hiher privileged status in law A pyschological terror of discrimination and groupthink mania similar to that in China 1968 has taken hold of the British State and public sector – law, police media all. The BBC no longer uses the words Muslim or Islam in connection with terror cases like David Ames and blathers instead about hate speak on social media. This pathological cowardice sees fear of alleged racism trump the protection of young workimg class teen white girls and society. The meek police try and make us believe that a few far right nutters pose a greater threat than Islamists. A base pathetic propagandist knee bend. We can do the math. Our State and media has been utterly corrupted by this equality derangement. And the worst of it is; we all know it. We know there will never be a reckoning. Shame on them all.

hayden eastwood
hayden eastwood
1 year ago

Well said, Louise Perry! It’s about time these supine cowards were sacked. Shame on the Tories for caving in to the PC mob on this

hayden eastwood
hayden eastwood
1 year ago

Well said, Louise Perry! It’s about time these supine cowards were sacked. Shame on the Tories for caving in to the PC mob on this

Jeremy Bray
Jeremy Bray
1 year ago

“the Casey Report named him as one of the figures who had “suppressed discussion” of grooming gangs operating in the town.”

So an ideal candidate for “suppressing discussion” of the real problems of the NHS which is certainly not an excess of Islamaphobia or a lack of minority inclusion. It just shows how captured the NHS is by the leftist woke class at the administrative level that this creature has been provided this no doubt well paying sinecure.

No doubt he thought his co-religionists should be entitled to a bit more inclusion and diversity in their sexual lives.

Jacqueline Burns
Jacqueline Burns
1 year ago
Reply to  Jeremy Bray

And if you are talking about the person I was reading about last night, I will not mention his name, but he has been proven to be a supporter of Islamic terrorist groups and their actions as well as being very antisemitic!

Jacqueline Burns
Jacqueline Burns
1 year ago
Reply to  Jeremy Bray

And if you are talking about the person I was reading about last night, I will not mention his name, but he has been proven to be a supporter of Islamic terrorist groups and their actions as well as being very antisemitic!

Jeremy Bray
Jeremy Bray
1 year ago

“the Casey Report named him as one of the figures who had “suppressed discussion” of grooming gangs operating in the town.”

So an ideal candidate for “suppressing discussion” of the real problems of the NHS which is certainly not an excess of Islamaphobia or a lack of minority inclusion. It just shows how captured the NHS is by the leftist woke class at the administrative level that this creature has been provided this no doubt well paying sinecure.

No doubt he thought his co-religionists should be entitled to a bit more inclusion and diversity in their sexual lives.

Wendy Barton
Wendy Barton
1 year ago

You’re absolutely right Louise Perry. The menace of Pakistani heritage grooming gangs is still stalking many northern cities and towns. It’s child abuse in plain sight.
Though I was still astonished that Mahroof Hussain had been recruited and then promoted by the NHS. Didn’t the NHS recruitment panel think to ask why he had left his previous job? This should have ruled him out as unsuitable.

Last edited 1 year ago by Wendy Barton
Wendy Barton
Wendy Barton
1 year ago

You’re absolutely right Louise Perry. The menace of Pakistani heritage grooming gangs is still stalking many northern cities and towns. It’s child abuse in plain sight.
Though I was still astonished that Mahroof Hussain had been recruited and then promoted by the NHS. Didn’t the NHS recruitment panel think to ask why he had left his previous job? This should have ruled him out as unsuitable.

Last edited 1 year ago by Wendy Barton
Steve Murray
Steve Murray
1 year ago

This problem is endemic. It’s not just those who tried to cover up the grooming gangs scandal, but those who were actually part of the gangs.
Grooming gang ringleader was employed by Oldham Council as welfare officer, major report reveals | UK News | Sky News

Welfare officer!!!!

Last edited 1 year ago by Steve Murray
Steve Murray
Steve Murray
1 year ago

This problem is endemic. It’s not just those who tried to cover up the grooming gangs scandal, but those who were actually part of the gangs.
Grooming gang ringleader was employed by Oldham Council as welfare officer, major report reveals | UK News | Sky News

Welfare officer!!!!

Last edited 1 year ago by Steve Murray
Christopher Barclay
Christopher Barclay
1 year ago

The reason that the abuse continued in Rotherham for so long is that Muslims predominantly vote for Labour and Labour therefore will do anything to cover up the abuse in order to keep this electoral base.

Christopher Barclay
Christopher Barclay
1 year ago

The reason that the abuse continued in Rotherham for so long is that Muslims predominantly vote for Labour and Labour therefore will do anything to cover up the abuse in order to keep this electoral base.

Alan Hawkes
Alan Hawkes
1 year ago

That the assaulted girls were abandoned to their fate demonstrates that the political left in Rotherham etc were more motivated by a hatred of the rich and established than a concern for the poor, whom they regard with contempt.

jane baker
jane baker
1 year ago
Reply to  Alan Hawkes

From: In The Summertime by Mungo Jerry. (the lads anthem)
” If her daddys rich take her out for a meal,if her daddys poor just do what you will”…..always been true,is true,always will be true”….sadly

jane baker
jane baker
1 year ago
Reply to  Alan Hawkes

From: In The Summertime by Mungo Jerry. (the lads anthem)
” If her daddys rich take her out for a meal,if her daddys poor just do what you will”…..always been true,is true,always will be true”….sadly

Alan Hawkes
Alan Hawkes
1 year ago

That the assaulted girls were abandoned to their fate demonstrates that the political left in Rotherham etc were more motivated by a hatred of the rich and established than a concern for the poor, whom they regard with contempt.

Nicky Samengo-Turner
Nicky Samengo-Turner
1 year ago

Who needs an article to explain? Britain is petrified of the ever more powerful Islamic forces at work along with the global warming and LGBT media internet terrorists: as they close down free speech, Britons become as cowardly as those who betrayed the Jewish peoples of Germany, just to keep their own gutless, cowardly, morally destitute low profile…

Nicky Samengo-Turner
Nicky Samengo-Turner
1 year ago

Who needs an article to explain? Britain is petrified of the ever more powerful Islamic forces at work along with the global warming and LGBT media internet terrorists: as they close down free speech, Britons become as cowardly as those who betrayed the Jewish peoples of Germany, just to keep their own gutless, cowardly, morally destitute low profile…

Paul Walsh
Paul Walsh
1 year ago

I hadn’t realised that most of the towns have not had a proper independent investigation. Is this because the local police forces or politicians have to instigate this?

Jeanie K
Jeanie K
1 year ago
Reply to  Paul Walsh

They have all been told not to even mention it, let alone investigate.
It was all hushed up originally when the Director of Public Prosecutions, responsible for who is or is not prosecuted in the UK, decided not to follow up any form of investigation or prosecutions.
Now, who was the DPP at that time and did he become a politician and even leader of a big political party whose deputy leader has a ginger growler.

Jeanie K
Jeanie K
1 year ago
Reply to  Paul Walsh

They have all been told not to even mention it, let alone investigate.
It was all hushed up originally when the Director of Public Prosecutions, responsible for who is or is not prosecuted in the UK, decided not to follow up any form of investigation or prosecutions.
Now, who was the DPP at that time and did he become a politician and even leader of a big political party whose deputy leader has a ginger growler.

Paul Walsh
Paul Walsh
1 year ago

I hadn’t realised that most of the towns have not had a proper independent investigation. Is this because the local police forces or politicians have to instigate this?

Aw Zk
Aw Zk
1 year ago

The reason why there hasn’t been a reckoning over Rotherham and all the other “grooming gang” scandals is because the UK’s media, political and judicial class are, with a few honourable exceptions, dominated by self-centred, self-serving, self-obsessed cowards who have been too lazy, incompetent and weak to deal with or even talk about what a child welfare expert told The Times in 2012 was “the biggest child protection scandal of our time”.

Andrew Norfolk and The Times uncovered the scandal but it could have been uncovered earlier because other journalists at another newspaper were told about it in the mid-2000s and the same newspaper passed up a chance to uncover it in 2001. Since Andrew Norfolk and The Times uncovered the scandal journalists (primarily working for local newspapers but also for Sky News and now GB News) have done some excellent work in reporting trials and investigating allegations made by victims and their relatives and campaigners working with victims. There is a lot of information in the public domain about what has been happened but no-one has gathered it together, analysed it in the right way and asked the right questions about the right people and institutions.

What has been missed is that is a national scandal. The same things were happening in different places at the same time. This was not a coincidence. This was the consequence of corruption: corruption of child protection, policing, journalism and politics, up to the level of Prime Minister. If you don’t believe that here is a quote from a report from the Huddersfield Examiner on one trial from 2018:

“Leeds Crown Court heard how one of the victim’s mums was so failed by social services that she resorted to writing to the then-Prime Minister.”

jane baker
jane baker
1 year ago
Reply to  Aw Zk

The Muslim men were exploiting and capitalising on the situation created in the 1960s that I’ve outlined (at length) in my own post.

jane baker
jane baker
1 year ago
Reply to  Aw Zk

The Muslim men were exploiting and capitalising on the situation created in the 1960s that I’ve outlined (at length) in my own post.

Aw Zk
Aw Zk
1 year ago

The reason why there hasn’t been a reckoning over Rotherham and all the other “grooming gang” scandals is because the UK’s media, political and judicial class are, with a few honourable exceptions, dominated by self-centred, self-serving, self-obsessed cowards who have been too lazy, incompetent and weak to deal with or even talk about what a child welfare expert told The Times in 2012 was “the biggest child protection scandal of our time”.

Andrew Norfolk and The Times uncovered the scandal but it could have been uncovered earlier because other journalists at another newspaper were told about it in the mid-2000s and the same newspaper passed up a chance to uncover it in 2001. Since Andrew Norfolk and The Times uncovered the scandal journalists (primarily working for local newspapers but also for Sky News and now GB News) have done some excellent work in reporting trials and investigating allegations made by victims and their relatives and campaigners working with victims. There is a lot of information in the public domain about what has been happened but no-one has gathered it together, analysed it in the right way and asked the right questions about the right people and institutions.

What has been missed is that is a national scandal. The same things were happening in different places at the same time. This was not a coincidence. This was the consequence of corruption: corruption of child protection, policing, journalism and politics, up to the level of Prime Minister. If you don’t believe that here is a quote from a report from the Huddersfield Examiner on one trial from 2018:

“Leeds Crown Court heard how one of the victim’s mums was so failed by social services that she resorted to writing to the then-Prime Minister.”

Aphrodite Rises
Aphrodite Rises
1 year ago

Professional feminists have been far too busy making wolf-whistling illegal, because it makes them feel unsafe, to bother about the kind of female they would avoid encountering except on a professional basis when absolutely necessary. Professional feminists seek to enhance their own environment in the way they see fit and are so detached from the concerns of the targets of groomers and abusers, they imagine themselves to be representative of and to be helping women in general.

Aphrodite Rises
Aphrodite Rises
1 year ago

Professional feminists have been far too busy making wolf-whistling illegal, because it makes them feel unsafe, to bother about the kind of female they would avoid encountering except on a professional basis when absolutely necessary. Professional feminists seek to enhance their own environment in the way they see fit and are so detached from the concerns of the targets of groomers and abusers, they imagine themselves to be representative of and to be helping women in general.

Andrew Dalton
Andrew Dalton
1 year ago

I can’t add a great deal to Paddy’s excellent post beyond the simple and trite observation that we no longer live in a society where accountability exists. Not for competence at least.

Andrew Dalton
Andrew Dalton
1 year ago

I can’t add a great deal to Paddy’s excellent post beyond the simple and trite observation that we no longer live in a society where accountability exists. Not for competence at least.

Ian Stewart
Ian Stewart
1 year ago

Why hasn’t this attracted more media attention?

Simple – because Kier Starmer ran the CPS in the period in which the police repeatedly submitted evidence of the grooming gangs for prosecution, and they chose not to prosecute.

Aw Zk
Aw Zk
1 year ago
Reply to  Ian Stewart

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again because the same thing keeps coming up here and elsewhere. The argument that Keir Starmer was part of the grooming gangs cover-up is not true.

Keir Starmer was Director of Public Prosecutions from November 2008 to November 2013 and during that time the CPS prosecuted some grooming gangs. It brought the first Rotherham gang trial arising from South Yorkshire Police’s Operation Central (five men convicted in November 2011), a trial in Derby arising from Operation Retriever (nine men convicted in November 2010) and the first Rochdale gang trial arising from Greater Manchester Police’s Operation Span (nine men convicted in May 2012) and trials of men from Keighley (two men convicted in March 2013) and Telford (two men convicted in November 2012).

The main reason why there weren’t many prosecutions before then was because victims were going to the police but the police weren’t investigating properly, if at all. The first major Oxford trial in 2013 concerned abuse going back to 2004 which the police knew about, a 2016 Rotherham trial was told that a victim went to the police on two occasions in 2003 and a Huddersfield trial in 2021 was told that an offence was “reported to police at the time so the prosecution has been able to say it happened on November 25, 1997”.

The police knew, social services knew, some local politicians knew and some Westminster politicians knew but little or nothing was done because investigating and prosecuting the gangs would have meant that the victims could tell their stories in court. No-one in authority wanted that because the public would have found out that “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime” was a lie. The scandal predates Keir Starmer’s time at the CPS.

Christian Moon
Christian Moon
1 year ago
Reply to  Aw Zk

Very helpful, thank you.

Ian Stewart
Ian Stewart
1 year ago
Reply to  Aw Zk

Not according to a fairly objective tv documentary on the matter which quoted police whistleblowers – the CPS were handed evidence of child abuse and chose not to prosecute.
Link below explains the unreasonable delay in prosecuting Rochdale.
https://medium.com/@lucynevitt/starmers-shambolic-cps-affabd38bb6d

Last edited 1 year ago by Ian Stewart
Aw Zk
Aw Zk
1 year ago
Reply to  Ian Stewart

I haven’t seen the documentary and can’t watch much video online due to my circumstances. There was a delay in prosecuting the Rochdale gang but the CPS changed its decision and prosecuted thanks to Nazir Afzal and that helped raise public awareness of the issue. The CPS did miss a chance to prosecute a gang in Rotherham in the early 2000s in a case that was treated by the police, an MP and newspapers at the time as part of the teenage pregnancy moral panic but they also missed it because the victim couldn’t identify the father at the time and he was only identified much later.

However, the police were the main problem, particularly in West Yorkshire, Greater Manchester and South Yorkshire. There was a half-hearted investigation called Operation Parsonage into a gang in Keighley which was carried out because Labour MP Ann Cryer went public about the issue but it was closed down with more than 50 named suspects still at large and West Yorkshire Police spent nearly a decade afterwards ignoring the problem as they had done for nearly a decade before. Greater Manchester Police shut down Operation Augusta for no good reason. South Yorkshire Police lost evidence and tried to silence and fob off victims and some of their own officers have been accused of being abusers.

There are a lot of questions which need to be asked and there are a lot of people who need to take their share of the blame but I’d put the CPS at the end of the line behind the police, social services, politicians, education, the NHS, the media and the feminist movement. Again, this and other child abuse scandals predate Keir Starmer’s time at the CPS. I know of a scandal from the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s that was reported when it came to court in the late 2010s and a man who abused his position of trust in a large local authority was jailed but how he got away with it and who allowed him to get away with it wasn’t investigated enough in the media.

Aw Zk
Aw Zk
1 year ago
Reply to  Ian Stewart

I haven’t seen the documentary and can’t watch much video online due to my circumstances. There was a delay in prosecuting the Rochdale gang but the CPS changed its decision and prosecuted thanks to Nazir Afzal and that helped raise public awareness of the issue. The CPS did miss a chance to prosecute a gang in Rotherham in the early 2000s in a case that was treated by the police, an MP and newspapers at the time as part of the teenage pregnancy moral panic but they also missed it because the victim couldn’t identify the father at the time and he was only identified much later.

However, the police were the main problem, particularly in West Yorkshire, Greater Manchester and South Yorkshire. There was a half-hearted investigation called Operation Parsonage into a gang in Keighley which was carried out because Labour MP Ann Cryer went public about the issue but it was closed down with more than 50 named suspects still at large and West Yorkshire Police spent nearly a decade afterwards ignoring the problem as they had done for nearly a decade before. Greater Manchester Police shut down Operation Augusta for no good reason. South Yorkshire Police lost evidence and tried to silence and fob off victims and some of their own officers have been accused of being abusers.

There are a lot of questions which need to be asked and there are a lot of people who need to take their share of the blame but I’d put the CPS at the end of the line behind the police, social services, politicians, education, the NHS, the media and the feminist movement. Again, this and other child abuse scandals predate Keir Starmer’s time at the CPS. I know of a scandal from the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s that was reported when it came to court in the late 2010s and a man who abused his position of trust in a large local authority was jailed but how he got away with it and who allowed him to get away with it wasn’t investigated enough in the media.

Christian Moon
Christian Moon
1 year ago
Reply to  Aw Zk

Very helpful, thank you.

Ian Stewart
Ian Stewart
1 year ago
Reply to  Aw Zk

Not according to a fairly objective tv documentary on the matter which quoted police whistleblowers – the CPS were handed evidence of child abuse and chose not to prosecute.
Link below explains the unreasonable delay in prosecuting Rochdale.
https://medium.com/@lucynevitt/starmers-shambolic-cps-affabd38bb6d

Last edited 1 year ago by Ian Stewart
Aw Zk
Aw Zk
1 year ago
Reply to  Ian Stewart

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again because the same thing keeps coming up here and elsewhere. The argument that Keir Starmer was part of the grooming gangs cover-up is not true.

Keir Starmer was Director of Public Prosecutions from November 2008 to November 2013 and during that time the CPS prosecuted some grooming gangs. It brought the first Rotherham gang trial arising from South Yorkshire Police’s Operation Central (five men convicted in November 2011), a trial in Derby arising from Operation Retriever (nine men convicted in November 2010) and the first Rochdale gang trial arising from Greater Manchester Police’s Operation Span (nine men convicted in May 2012) and trials of men from Keighley (two men convicted in March 2013) and Telford (two men convicted in November 2012).

The main reason why there weren’t many prosecutions before then was because victims were going to the police but the police weren’t investigating properly, if at all. The first major Oxford trial in 2013 concerned abuse going back to 2004 which the police knew about, a 2016 Rotherham trial was told that a victim went to the police on two occasions in 2003 and a Huddersfield trial in 2021 was told that an offence was “reported to police at the time so the prosecution has been able to say it happened on November 25, 1997”.

The police knew, social services knew, some local politicians knew and some Westminster politicians knew but little or nothing was done because investigating and prosecuting the gangs would have meant that the victims could tell their stories in court. No-one in authority wanted that because the public would have found out that “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime” was a lie. The scandal predates Keir Starmer’s time at the CPS.

Ian Stewart
Ian Stewart
1 year ago

Why hasn’t this attracted more media attention?

Simple – because Kier Starmer ran the CPS in the period in which the police repeatedly submitted evidence of the grooming gangs for prosecution, and they chose not to prosecute.

Madeleine Jones
Madeleine Jones
1 year ago

There is no reckoning because the British media and politicans don’t care. It is a political inconvience to them at most, not a full blown scandal concerning evil and child r@pe.
That said, many in Britain clearly do care about these girls and women. I encourage Louise Perry and GB News to keep discussing this until it stops and justice is served.

jane baker
jane baker
1 year ago

Feminisim or whatever is for smart university educated professional level women in careers. Its not for or about …………me!

jane baker
jane baker
1 year ago

Feminisim or whatever is for smart university educated professional level women in careers. Its not for or about …………me!

Madeleine Jones
Madeleine Jones
1 year ago

There is no reckoning because the British media and politicans don’t care. It is a political inconvience to them at most, not a full blown scandal concerning evil and child r@pe.
That said, many in Britain clearly do care about these girls and women. I encourage Louise Perry and GB News to keep discussing this until it stops and justice is served.

jane baker
jane baker
1 year ago

Is anyone else as old as me and remembers the1960s. Maybe I remember because being a child then,an observant child,I wasn’t “participating” in the sex,drugs and rock and roll of the era. In fact I can say truly,in my provincial locality we didn’t get the Swinging Sixties until the late 1970s/early 1980s. There is an episode of Porridge in which Fletcher gets a visit from his daughter Ingrid played by Patricia Brake and she is not wearing a bra. Fletcher tells her off to which she responds by telling him the world has changed and manners and mores are different now. To which he replys in a brilliant bit of observation by Clement and La Frenais that the place where mores have changed is privileged areas of London but out in the provinces,he names towns all over the country,it’s still the 1950s to all intents and purposes. It’s a brilliant insight and true. In the 1960s,you had to be there to believe this,every cultural influence was telling girls like me,you are full of raging hormones,you are driven by a relentless urge to seek out sexual intercourse as being the only thing that will assuage this fire of desire that controls your whole body. Further having sex will confirm your status as a self determining adult even if you are 14.
Having sex for the first time confirms your identity as an adult and being sexually active means you are an independent self determining adult even if you live in the parental home and don’t yet have a job. If you knew you weren’t full of raging hormones and insatiable desire you guessed you were ‘rigor mortis’ from that Doctor in the House film and a Mary Whitehouse clone to boot. One of the most vocal advocates of the ” ditch the age of consent so children can express themselves sexually without stigma” was Germaine Greer. Mouth Almighty as she was. Luckily for suffering girlies there were men about willing to assuage their pain by having sex with them,men like Jimmy…..it’s no wonder the gangs got away with it for so long because the authorities had learned to accept this new mantra so they had been taught to accept that these were not children but had a “right” to self determination,an idea s lot of these poor girls had internalized. The MP Ann Clwyd spoke out about this ten years before and got rebuked and savaged and called racist for her trouble. If anyone reading this is thinking…”what is she on?…well in the sixties,you had to be there

jane baker
jane baker
1 year ago

Is anyone else as old as me and remembers the1960s. Maybe I remember because being a child then,an observant child,I wasn’t “participating” in the sex,drugs and rock and roll of the era. In fact I can say truly,in my provincial locality we didn’t get the Swinging Sixties until the late 1970s/early 1980s. There is an episode of Porridge in which Fletcher gets a visit from his daughter Ingrid played by Patricia Brake and she is not wearing a bra. Fletcher tells her off to which she responds by telling him the world has changed and manners and mores are different now. To which he replys in a brilliant bit of observation by Clement and La Frenais that the place where mores have changed is privileged areas of London but out in the provinces,he names towns all over the country,it’s still the 1950s to all intents and purposes. It’s a brilliant insight and true. In the 1960s,you had to be there to believe this,every cultural influence was telling girls like me,you are full of raging hormones,you are driven by a relentless urge to seek out sexual intercourse as being the only thing that will assuage this fire of desire that controls your whole body. Further having sex will confirm your status as a self determining adult even if you are 14.
Having sex for the first time confirms your identity as an adult and being sexually active means you are an independent self determining adult even if you live in the parental home and don’t yet have a job. If you knew you weren’t full of raging hormones and insatiable desire you guessed you were ‘rigor mortis’ from that Doctor in the House film and a Mary Whitehouse clone to boot. One of the most vocal advocates of the ” ditch the age of consent so children can express themselves sexually without stigma” was Germaine Greer. Mouth Almighty as she was. Luckily for suffering girlies there were men about willing to assuage their pain by having sex with them,men like Jimmy…..it’s no wonder the gangs got away with it for so long because the authorities had learned to accept this new mantra so they had been taught to accept that these were not children but had a “right” to self determination,an idea s lot of these poor girls had internalized. The MP Ann Clwyd spoke out about this ten years before and got rebuked and savaged and called racist for her trouble. If anyone reading this is thinking…”what is she on?…well in the sixties,you had to be there

Perry de Havilland
Perry de Havilland
1 year ago

“the time is now for the Prime Minister to act on this promise.”
LOL, like that’s going to happen.

Perry de Havilland
Perry de Havilland
1 year ago

“the time is now for the Prime Minister to act on this promise.”
LOL, like that’s going to happen.