To be horrified at how much worse the "grooming gangs" actually were than I thought

I read a broadsheet daily as well as several other sources and I had never seen these details. I was at university in 2013 and didn't, tbf.

I've seen a lot of headlines over the years about it being a moral panic though.

They turned a blind eye to abuse by Catholic priests and the Church of England too. Not many threads discussing that here for some reason.

What disgusts me the most is how people were aware but turned a blind eye due to racial sensitivity and the attitude of oh well it's a teenagers right for some of the older girls etc. Makes my blood boil.

He also killed someone and was convicted of dangerous driving.

Various support for terrorism.

And also allegedly used his position in the house of Lords to have sex with vulnerable women

He was a high profile man in Rotherham and served on the council and as a magistrate, questions need to be asked if he was involved in any alleged coverup.

Basically an all round piece of shit.

1. I think the Tories are divided on immigration and it cannot be resolved without a schism - I don't think Jenrick represents the party but is advocating for his preferred direction for the party at a point of crossroads for them. There are many in both the Tories and Reform who believe Jenrick should defect. This is what I mean by not party political.

2. My personal view is that we should significantly restrict immigration and we should be significantly more thoughtful about cultural similarity and assimilation potential when assessing any immigration we do keep. With the best will in the world, all the inquiries into safeguarding and reporting will be for naught if we continue with mass immigration from conservative, patriarchal societies, and grappling with that is key to addressing this long-term. In this respect I agree with Jenrick.

3. I don't believe it's fair for the Conservative party to attack Labour on this specific issue when Labour have only been in power for 6 months and individuals including Starmer and Phillips HAVE been earnestly trying to address this specific scandal over the years - and by his own standard, the Tories massively increased immigration from the same country he points out as problematic.

From personal experience, and speaking as an immigrant myself, I know that cultures are not all created equal. Anyone who has ever complained about gun laws in America or apartheid in South Africa cannot make this claim with any intellectual honesty. I like living in a country with strong protections for the rights of women and girls.

I'm writing this in good faith, not as an attack on anyone - I wanted to take the time to outline my personal position.

Where are the court transcripts please? I didn’t know any of this
I haven’t lived in the uk for 24 years now, since I was 23.
I lived in the North and had many very frightening experiences with asian men approaching my friends and I, one time I was driving with my friend (we were around 21) and some men were in a car calling to us, we ignored them as we had boyfriends and also felt very uncomfortable, they tried to violently run us off the road, it was petrifying. Whole gangs would rule certain areas, you couldn’t walk in certain places. Gangs used to get on the a bus route to Manchester and storm the bus being violent with passengers and robbing phones, jewellery and money
This has been known about for a long time and going on for a long time

You say its not party political [Tory/ Labour]. What do you think of Jendricks' comments today.

Meanwhile Lord Ahmed of Rotherham, although he no longer sits in the Lords after being convicted of attempting to rape a 4 YEAR OLD girl, with the only reason it wasn't just "rape" being that he physically couldn't insert his penis, still has his title because apparently it would be too much of a hassle to pass a 1-line bill in parliament.

He got 2 years in jail for this by the way. His older brothers claimed some mental illness excuse and got discharged despite the jury finding that they committed even more crimes.

Just another little anecdote for anyone who wants to say "what's the problem, the perpetrators were convicted".

Sentencing remarks: https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/R-v-Ahmed-sentencing-remarks-040222-1.pdf

The girls should have had a safety net so even if they had low self worth they were still safe.

Well yes. They are vulnerable to exploitation, aren't they? Stop with the right word policing. It is the whole cause of what happened here.

The girls were not responsible for their abuse and are not to blame for their abuse.

Straw man argument. No-one is saying they are responsible or to blame. No-one AT ALL. All you do with this rhetoric is shut down an admittedly deeply unpleasant conversation that nevertheless needs to be had. Stop bringing victim blaming into it where none has happened. It is just nonsense, same as claiming racial discrimination when there is in fact a racial/cultural element at play.

No.

In my post I agreed that many of the girls were targeted due to vulnerabilities they had e.g. being in care. What you said was that we need to raise the girls' self worth - I'm in favour of raising girls' self worth, of course - but you said 'so they don't succumb to exploitation' - that's victim blaming.

The girls self worth isn't the problem or the cause in itself, the fact that they were vulnerable and not safeguarded was the problem. The girls should have had a safety net so even if they had low self worth they were still safe. The girls who were targeted did not 'succumb', can't you see that places the blame on the victim? We can discuss the fact that they were more at risk without placing the responsibility for that on the girls.

None of the girls who were abused were to blame in any way for their abuse. The authorities acting as if they were, because they were adultified, or seen as part of the underclass, or out of control, or mouthy, or grubby little slappers, is partly how we got here.

The girls were not responsible for their abuse and are not to blame for their abuse.

Meanwhile Lord Ahmed of Rotherham, although he no longer sits in the Lords after being convicted of attempting to rape a 4 YEAR OLD girl, with the only reason it wasn't just "rape" being that he physically couldn't insert his penis, still has his title because apparently it would be too much of a hassle to pass a 1-line bill in parliament.

He got 2 years in jail for this by the way. His older brothers claimed some mental illness excuse and got discharged despite the jury finding that they committed even more crimes.

Just another little anecdote for anyone who wants to say "what's the problem, the perpetrators were convicted".

Sentencing remarks: https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/R-v-Ahmed-sentencing-remarks-040222-1.pdf

You miss the part where I acknowledge there are of course sick fucks of all different colours and creeds?
You seem desperate to deflect from the fact almost all the men in these rape gangs were from Pakistan.
Would you hop on a thread about George Floyd and start saying "there's white men that have been killed by black police men too"? No you wouldn't. In fact you'd probably be the first to call out anyone that did that

I am sorry but this is exactly the same mindset that allowed the ethnicity of the rapists to become a hindrance to their prosecution.

There ABSOLUTELY needs to be a discussion about why some sections of the population are more at risk of being targeted for rape, just as there needs to be a discussion about why some sections of the population are more likely to rape.

This is a perfect example of how easy it is to avoid asking the difficult questions because of wanting to be doing the Right Thing.

Keir Starmer has said that those vast numbers of us calling for a national enquiry into the rape and torture of children "are jumping on the bandwagon of the far right"

He needs to resign.

how we can support women and girls who are at the bottom of society and increase their self-worth and how we can fix a system that fails these women and girls to succumb to exploitation by men

Not sure if you meant it but that's victim blaming. They were not abused because of their lack of self worth or because they 'succumbed'. Many were targeted due to vulnerabilities of being in care or in non functioning families, but the blame all lies with the men who targeted them and the system which failed to safeguard them. This was not a fault with the girls who were abused.

Yup, also a scumbag child rapist, do you honestly think women who are upset and angry about the grooming gang cases are fine with white child rapists?

I note that he was sentenced to 17 years in jail, and I haven't seen anything about him being released. Rightly so.

"But Tommy Robinson!" has expired as a slanderous attack. I have nothing to do with him. Stop trying to create the association in people's minds that anyone who cares about the rape of four-year-old girls must be a criminal thug, muddying the waters and making people decide the issue is too toxic to look into.