Grooming Gangs in the UK

From The Conservative Woman:

The police have arrested 110 men in Rotherham. Of these, 18 have been charged, two cautioned and four convicted and jailed. Thirty-four investigations are continuing under the Operation Stovewood umbrella, and six trials will take place later this year. Will the newly sanitised Rotherham Social Services be featuring in any of these? Across the UK only 317 people have been convicted in connection with organised grooming and sexual abuse crimes. Other towns and cities involved include Keighley, Blackpool, Oldham, Blackburn, Sheffield, Manchester, Skipton, Rochdale, Nelson, Preston, Derby, Telford, Bradford, Ipswich, Birmingham, Oxford, Barking and Peterborough.

The huge number of victims in Rotherham raises the question of how many there really are elsewhere, and how many more rapists continue to evade justice? In Rotherham, the National Crime Agency believes there are still ‘a handful’ of high-risk abusers at large. Operation Sanctuary in Newcastle is continuing to investigate grooming and sexual abuse against 700 girls, and a report by barrister David Spicer into the operation concludes that the grooming of girls for sexual exploitation is still rife in the UK today. How is this still happening? In Rotherham, as in Rochdale and the other towns, the evidence points to a disproportionate number offenders being of a Pakistani background. Such gangs may have been operating in the UK since the 1980s, according to Peter McLoughlin in his book Easy Meat: Inside Britain’s Grooming Gang Scandal.

The distinction between Pakistani grooming gangs, exploiting vulnerable white girls, and white paedophile rings (characterised by their longstanding sexual interest in children) has been established, for example, in a report by the Quilliam Foundation. Despite this, Britain’s top female police officer continues to obfuscate the problem by not acknowledging the racial aspect of these gangs.

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick was asked at a recent meeting of the London Assembly if she was concerned that the Met was sitting on a Rotherham-style grooming gang epidemic in the capital. She replied that she did not accept the characterisation that offenders were mainly Asian or Muslim men, but that this type of problem has been ‘going on for centuries’. Not like this. Not on this scale, and not without the willingness of authorities to tackle it. (Read more.)

The Daily Mail reports on the Telford scandal:

 A brutal sex gang raped as many as 1,000 young girls over 40 years in what may be Britain's 'worst ever' child abuse scandal. Girls in the town of Telford, Shropshire, were drugged, beaten and raped at the hands of a grooming gang active since the 1980s. Allegations are said to have been mishandled by authorities, with many perpetrators going unpunished, while it is claimed similar abuse continues in the area, reports the Sunday Mirror. 

Home Office figures show there were 15.1 child sex crimes reported per 10,000 residents in the year to September 2015. Telford's population is 155,000 – meaning a potential 225 victims. Telford's Conservative MP, Lucy Allan, has previously called for a Rotherham-style inquiry into the allegations and called the latest reports 'extremely serious and shocking'.

'There must now be an independent inquiry into child sexual exploitation in Telford so that our community can have absolute confidence in the authorities,' she told the paper. A mother and four teenage girls have been linked to the allegations of abuse. Lucy Lowe, 16, died alongside her mother and sister after the man who had been abusing her, 26-year-old Azhar Ali Mehmood, set fire to their house. (Read more.)

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