The ethnicity of people involved in grooming gangs has been “shied away from” by authorities, according to a new report by Baroness Louise Casey.
The finding comes after the peer was tasked with producing an audit on the nature and scale of group-based child sexual abuse in England and Wales.
[…] Home Secretary Yvette Cooper apologised to victims as she presented the findings to MPs and announced a new national inquiry into grooming gangs.
On the question of ethnicity, the report said: “We found that the ethnicity of perpetrators is shied away from and is still not recorded for two-thirds of perpetrators, so we are unable to provide any accurate assessment from the nationally collected data.”
[…] Cooper said: “Ignoring the issues, not examining and exposing them to the light, allows the criminality and depravity of a minority of men to be used to marginalise whole communities.”
[…] The report concluded that ignorance and a fear of being seen as racist meant organisations tasked with protecting children turned a blind eye to abuse.
“We found many examples of organisations avoiding the topic altogether for fear of appearing racist, raising community tensions or causing community cohesion problems,” the report said.
Read that again. Remember: we’re not talking about letting someone perform a haka in the middle of the road for fear of being seen to be racist. We’re talking about letting a particular ethnicity get away with heinous crimes.
But, wait, it gets worse.
[…] Speaking on BBC Newsnight later on Monday, Baroness Casey said: “I’m raging, actually, on behalf of the victims.”
[…] Cooper said: “To the victims and survivors of sexual exploitation and grooming gangs, on behalf of this and past governments, and the many public authorities who let you down, I want to reiterate an unequivocal apology for the unimaginable pain and suffering that you have suffered, and the failure of our country's institutions through decades to prevent that harm and keep you safe.”
She added: “Baroness Casey’s first recommendation is we must see children as children. She concludes too many grooming cases have been dropped or downgraded from rape to lesser charges because a 13- to 15-year-old is perceived to have been in love with or had consented to sex with the perpetrator.”
The report is focused on “group-based child exploitation” by grooming gangs, a crime which is defined as involving “multiple perpetrators coercing, manipulating and deceiving children into sex, to create an illusion of consent”.
The “grooming gangs model” of abuse is outlined in Casey’s audit, which typically involves “a man targeting a vulnerable adolescent child – often those in care, or children with learning or physical disabilities” and “grooming them into thinking they are their ‘boyfriend’.
“Subsequently, they pass them to other men for sex, using drugs and alcohol to make children compliant, often turning to violence and coercion to control them,” the report said.”
Imagine being told by the police that they can’t arrest the guy who has been raping your daughter since she was 13 for rape because she ‘consented’. But, hey, we can charge him with some lesser charge if that helps.
[…] Fiona Goddard, a survivor of a grooming gang that operated in the Bradford area, told BBC News the “vast majority” of those who abused her “were Pakistani men”.
She said: “I do not believe it was just a misunderstanding and not understanding the crime or the victims.
“I think that the crime was allowed to happen, one, because of the race of the perpetrators, and two, because of who the victims were.”
Angry? I think we all are. This has the potential to bring down the whole British Government. Who allowed organisations to ignore the fact that the vast majority of the perpetrators were from Pakistan? Surely recording ethnicity was a requirement. And let’s go a level above that. Was it a general directive? Was there a decision made up top and passed down that not raising ‘community tensions’ was to take priority over everything else?
One thing is for sure. If this had happened in the US, Trump would have immediately banned all immigration from Pakistan and every one of the perpetrators would be sent to prison for a very long time.
Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clynyyqdnrdo
Kevin is a Libertarian and pragmatic anarchist. His favourite saying: “There but for the grace of God go I.” This article was first published HERE
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