Abuse of hundreds of girls as young as ten covered up by police and social services

[edam]

today's Times - sadly behind a paywall but you can see the first par here - has a major investigation into appalling, widespread organised rape and abuse of girls in South Yorkshire.

Not only did police and social services fail to help the girls, let alone prosecute the offenders, they actually charged victims and their parents - one girl was charged with using drugs, while the men in the room with her went free, while one father who tried to get his daughter back was charged with racial harassment, ffs. AND his poor daughter, who had been drugged, was charged with assault. Another parent was charged with breach of the peace, another girl - only 13 - was arrested for a public order offence and convicted, while the men went free.

It beggars belief. The Times has seen more than 200 confidential documents from Rotherham detailing the crimes which were often not investigated - even though police and social services knew full well who the perpetrators were. But they were more concerned with hushing up the heritage of the offenders - Pakistani, Kurdish, Iranian and Kosovan gangs and families - than investigating hideous crimes.

In one case, police in Bristol rescued two girls who had been kidnapped but South Yorkshire police (where they lived) didn't even question them.

Neither the police nor the council apologised, btw. Oh no, the council just says ofsted think they are great and 'some work with individuals did not lead to court cases for a variety of reasons'. S Yorks Police say now they have eight officers looking into child sexual exploitation and they are 'a leading force in safeguarding vulnerable children'.

[edam]

one girl was even offered lessons in urdu and punjabi, ffs. She'd been abused from the age of 12. And they wanted her to be able to communicate in her attackers' preferred languages!

[edam]

Mail has followed up times story here

[MrsGuyOfGisbourne]

edam - I read the paper copy this morning, it is unbearable to read - totally shocking and terrifying - especially those instances as you have said where the victims were arrested! Hw can those chidlren ever believe in any kind od justice?So much for this respect we are supposed to have for the police - even Andrew Mitchell wouldnt have words enough for the police involved in this.

[beancurd]

I don't think this is a surprise to anyone who works in these fields. It is very disingenuous of ss and the police to pretend they were unaware of abusive predators. Historically it was impossible to get them to do much/anything for girls of 13 plus being abused by older males or for them to prosecute the men involved.

This links to why so many of the most vulnerable care leavers have been 'working' as prostitutes whilst within the system and then mainly carry on doing so...

Thank god the mood has changed and the institutions have realised they need to be accountable.

[edam]

bean - yes, the 200 papers seen by the Times document the huge scale of offending quite extensively. The authorities knew hundreds of girls were being raped, abused, kidnapped and drugged.

Good grief, I wonder how on earth those poor kids could ever recover from this. What help have they had - presumably none?

[Rubirosa]

This is almost beyond belief, isn't it? This particularly stood out: "After neighbours heard screaming, a 13-year-old girl was found at 3am in a house with a large group of men who had given her vodka. Police arrested the child for being drunk and disorderly but did not question the men."

I remember the murder of Laura Wilson being reported at the time, and the tone then was much more of it being a family/honour dispute - she was described as a "girlfriend" etc. Shocking that actually she was vulnerable and abused for so long before her murder.

[strandednomore]

It's awful awful awful but at least something finally seems to be getting done about it. There are more cases we haven't yet seen in court, I believe.

As an aside, I notice in that Daily Mail article a link to the story about the Fijian soldier who gave birth in Afghanistan - saying her father thinks she brings shame on the family. FFS.

[edam]

Oh Lord the Laura Wilson case is so horrific - targetted from the age of 11 and killed when she dared to protest? And even when she was murdered, poor woman, the authorities still tried to cover up what had really happened?

[beancurd]

Yeah I am sadly not at all surprised. I had a yp I was involved with placed for work experience at 15 instead of ss sorting the education this very bright child should have been having.

The yp was placed in a work place managed by a paedophile with a long history of abusive, violent relationships.

Whilst being abused and battered by this man and still 15 ss moved her into a flat 'semi independent living' which meant a visit once a week from a youth worker. The flats were partly boarded up shit holes.

Ss and the police were useless, utterly useless.

[SkippyYourFriendEverTrue]

The sick thing is that they were more concerned about prosecuting Nick Griffin (who admittedly is a twat, but that's not illegal), for saying:

www.scotsman.com/news/uk/bnp-chief-slated-multiracial-hellhole-1-688652

'Griffin concentrated on allegations of paedophile drug rapes by Asian Muslims in Keighley, Yorkshire, during his speech at the town's Reservoir Tavern on 19 January, 2004.

After making a series of claims about Muslim gangs grooming and raping children, Griffin said: "The bastards that are in that gang, they are in prison, so the public think it's all over. Well it's not. Because there's more of them. The police force and elected governors haven't done a damn thing about it.

"Their good book [the Koran] tells them that that's acceptable. If you doubt it, go and buy a copy and you will find verse after verse, and you can take any woman you want as long as it's not Muslim women."

Mr Jameson said Griffin's speech turned to allegations of violence by Asian Muslims against whites. Griffin said: "These 18-, 19- and 25-year-old Asian Muslims are seducing and raping white girls in this town right now." '

So they were busy trying to jail people for saying what was going on, and are still even now coming out with ridiculous statements like this:

"Sexual predators do come from different sections of the community and are criminals who need to be brought to justice regardless of their background."

having previously taken efforts to suppress the most salient point:

'Great care will be taken in drafting...this report to ensure that its findings embrace Rotherham's qualities of diversity. It is imperative that suggestions of a wider cultural phenomenon are avoided.'

Anyone who has spent time in a country like Pakistan will understand that attitudes to women and girls are fundamentally different, and in areas where there are tens of thousands of Pakistanis living at arms-length from British culture and society, there will be problems.

[SkippyYourFriendEverTrue]

sorry link to Griffin's trial www.scotsman.com/news/uk/bnp-chief-slated-multiracial-hellhole-1-688652

[edam]

I hold no brief for Nick Griffin but they spent time and money prosecuting him while leaving serious, serial sex offenders not only free to prey on hundreds of girls but actively encouraged?! In one case the police refused to remove a girl when her parents gave them the address, saying she was 'safe'. Outrageous.

Diversity does not mean allowing sex offenders to act with impunity. It does not mean refusing to prosecute someone because they are of Pakistani origin and their victim is white (or black). It means treating people of different backgrounds equally and with respect. Which means known criminals of Pakistani heritage, or Iraqi, or Kurdish, or Anglo-ruddy-Saxon should all be investigated, charged and prosecuted.

I wonder whether this might have been a fatal - literally fatal in the case of Laura Wilson and no doubt others - mix of sexism, snobbery and inverse racism. There are suggestions that the police saw the girls as 'slags', responsible for their own premature sexualisation.

[edam]

South Yorkshire police now denying there is any reluctance to investigate. So why does The Times have documents going back over a decade that show girls were left with their abusers, their families were charged instead of the abusers, that when girls provided interviews they were not followed up, that when the kidnapped girls were rescued by police in Bristol they were not even interviewed by S Yorks?

[EyesNEars]

Absolutely disgusting! I only hope the police and the SS involved can live with themselves!

The girls were CHILDREN!

[beancurd]

I think the race issue is what finally brought this issue to light, actually the problem has been that these girls have been targeted by pimps and abusers who have represented all races. I think there was evidence that the Asian men were more likely to be part of a bigger group and that the white men were more likely to be individuals or pairs.

The attitudes of the police were just as disturbing as the attitudes of the men involved.

[edam]

No, the race issue was what encouraged some wrong-headed individuals to ignore their duties under the law. Anne Cryer, an MP in West Yorkshire, tried to raise this for years and kept being howled down by people who claimed it was 'racist' to suggest there might be a problem. Because the perpetrators were Asian gangs.

[edam]

Anne Cryer MP

[edam]

Clearly sex offenders come from all kinds of backgrounds, but to refuse to investigate where the perpetrators are Pakistani, or Kurdish, or Kosovan is outrageous.

[SkippyYourFriendEverTrue]

Sex offenders come from every background, but issues of 'honour', perceptions of white women as promiscuous/inferior, etc. are an issue specific to certain backgrounds, i.e. Pakistani.

Policing should specifically address the issues and attitudes causing these crimes, not ignore the specific cultural issues and say 'sexual predators come from different sections of the community', or, worse, say 'sexual predators come from different sections of the community', and then refuse to investigate specific 'sections of the community' for spurious racism reasons.

[Treats]

The issue isn't really race. These offences happen across all cultures and backgrounds - although racial background does tend to impact the pattern of offending. The much bigger issue is the attitude of the police and social services.

As edam said - the problem is that they don't see the girls as victims. They don't see that they've been raped - they see 'slags' who were 'asking for it'. As far as they're concerned, it's normal for men to want to sleep with schoolgirls, and if the girls 'allow' it, then they've only themselves to blame.

[SweetGrapes]

Why isn't this in the news? I read it in the times at lunch and was totally shocked.
The poor little girl who got arrested for being drunk and disorderly ... the mind boggles.
Why aren't more people angry?

[bigkidsdidit]

I was wondering that. I went on the guardian to read about it and couldn't see it anywhere

And why do people on here keep saying 'it's not really about race' - don'tthe memos show that that is exactly what it's about?

[Treats]

I've read the whole article now - c&p'ing from TimesOnline:

Alleged crimes for which no one was prosecuted include:
Fifty-four Rotherham children were linked to sexual exploitation by three brothers from one British Pakistani family, 18 identifying one brother as their ?boyfriend? and several allegedly made pregnant by him;

A 14-year-old girl from a loving, supportive family was allegedly held in a flat and forced to perform sex acts on five men, four of them Pakistani, plus a 32-year-old Iraqi Kurd asylum seeker. She gave a filmed police interview and identified her abusers;

One girl, 15, spent days in hospital after a broken bottle was allegedly forced inside her by two young British Pakistani men in a park, causing her to bleed extensively;

A 13-year-old girl was found at 3am with disrupted clothing in a house with a large group of Asian men who had fed her vodka. A neighbour reported the girl?s screams. Police arrested the child for being drunk and disorderly but did not question the men;

A specialist project?s intelligence report for police identified 61 girls ? 59 white, two Asian ? linked to sexual exploitation by three brothers from another British Pakistani family. It named 41 associates of the brothers who allegedly used girls for sex.


I feel ill thinking about it. How could the police not have prosecuted in the broken bottle incident? What possible excuse could there be????

[beancurd]

But long before the asian gangs there were other men exploiting the same girls. I have known the entire female contingent of a care home being coerced into 'working' for the local pimp and his friends. In fact the same men have exploited cohort after cohort from the same homes and widened their care home circle to include the residences these girls got moved to. The girls vulnerable to this on the predominantly white estates are coerced by groups of white men, increasingly girls at school are coerced by groups of older teenage boys. Group abuse has increased generally, social media porn? Who knows.

Historically it wasn't an Asian gang issue, the abusers just reflect the changing profile of the localities. Ss and the police were ignoring their duties under law because the prevailing attitudes towards teenage girls are so conflicted and ignorant.

I think the real story is the level of abuse, the collusion from police and ss, the historic and systematic nature of the victimisation of these girls and the attitudes that allowed their abuse to continue. From my perspective they didn't investigate the Asian gangs because they had never investigated any of the men raping the vulnerable girls targeted. I don't want this to become a story of how Asian gangs with their culturally conditioned lack of respect for young white girls created a programme of abuse. This only happened because our society had no respect or care for these girls, we have a poor record of dealing with abusers full stop. Their have been many Asian victims too, these men are abusers and the myth that they don't target their own community needs to be busted as well.