Rotherham Abuse Scandal - New Interview in Today's Guardian

Meant to finish -this has been going on for decades by now.

An old friend of mine was a teenage runaway, spent a year or so living in squats in London in the late 80s. She told me about gangs of men of Asian heritage who would target young girls sleeping rough or newly arrived at the bus and train stations, and groom them for sexual exploitation. Same tactics as the cases that have come to light -the girls being plied with booze, drugs, affection at first, believing the guys were their boyfriends, before it turned nasty. The police didn't give a shit she said.

April Skies 44 said -
"and its not just rotherham. just watch"

Terfenator said -
*April
I agree, that's why I linked to the Oxford case too.
In working-class areas, there's huge potential for this kind of abuse. I'm from a poor Northern town where this kind of thing happens often, just not on the same scale as Rotherham.

A while ago I tried to find out how many cases in how may towns there had been Asian/Pakistani grooming /rape gangs operating.
Eventually I found a list but it was not easy as nearly all MSM, including the BBC surprisingly haven't collated this information.
You have to wonder why.
It is irritating whenever this subject is brought up that they only ever refer to Rotherham where admittedly it was the worse case, but never seem to acknowledge that it is the tip of a massive and ongoing iceberg.

Colchester
Coventry
Yeovil
Bristol
Rotherham
Rochdale
Dewsbury
Manchester
Bradford
Oxford
Halifax
Littlehampton
Keighley
Oldham
Leeds
Aylesbury
Banbury
Slough
Sheffield
Chesham
Newcastle
Burton
Peterborough
Blackburn
London
Leicester
Barking
Telford
Accrington
Derby
Preston
Nelson
Skipton.
Many of these towns and cities have had multiple cases.

Not a victim. But I can categorically tell you - the children's home I lived in let older men sign the visitors book and called them our boyfriends

Social workers checked us in to places that have been in the media

In my eyes having been so close, the men did do evil things, but I feel like girls were served up for them by the state of social services and I find it very hard to let go of that anger

To me that's the biggest evil. If I had been an actual victim of these men I would likely feel differently. But it was fairly common to trust them more than your social worker or family!

I also do believe the majority of what's in the book.

I saw it from a different side to the media back then though - in my time the girls thought they were in control and using men, at least initially. It's hard to be a child when you've already been told your not repeatedly, we were just troublemakers.

One day I hope to see the faces of people who were working in the system plastered over the news too, acknowledging how THEY made it possible for quite a few girls

April my friend worked in the police force (Met) for about 15 years and left last year. His unit employed 12 staff, 9 were made redundant and he was essentially doing all their work as well. He had a heart attack and was off for some time, went back to the same thing so had to leave - the job was kiling him. Cuts to policing are wrong and shouldn't be happening.

Some families may be dysfunctional. but the amount of women/young girls I've spoken to who were desparate to get protection and prosecutions to court and were treated appallingly - some even prosecuted themselves, is scandalous. Not all officers are like that I know, just like not all parents are unable to look after their children. I think it's outrageous that SS removed children from their parents for reasons like they couldn't protect their children, and those kids were put in care homes where staff knew their abusers were picking them up/waiting for them and let them go with them. They were put in charge of some of the most vulnerable kids there are and they didn't protect them either.

Having reported to the police myself I have first hand experience of the lazy, half arsed 'investigation' that followed which resulted in no charges. Can't go into too much detail because I don't want to waive my anonymity. But complaining to the IPCC was a waste of time because when I got my police records via the subject access request and saw the lies that had been written, contesting them was a joke - the IPCC sided with them on nearly everything and when some of my complaints were proven and upheld only 2 officers got management advice.

I have a friend who is a serving officer and is passionate about getting rapists to court. Unfortunately a lot of her colleagues dont' feel the same and still use rape myths and victim blaming to NFA cases. We need accountability before much else changes.

Oh God....vague memories of the press referring to "child prostitutes...."

I suppose it's progress of sorts that we no longer use this term.

I can imagine that such young vulnerable girls become emotionally dependent on their rapers and abusers leading to them not seeing themselves as victims also the abuse becomes normalised and the trauma delayed.
Devastating that they are seen to be sluts :( , it is a terrible reflection on the responsibility our society takes to support vulnerable young people.

Why are the laws so weak where underage sex is concerned? I thought the parents could press charges and prosecution would be certain.

Some quotes from the linked article:

"They always saw me as his equal,” she says. “I was never treated as a victim. I was [seen as] part of his gang, his mistress.” A few days after she turned 15, the police raided his house while they were in bed. “He was pulling up his trousers and looked petrified. I think he thought, ‘I’ve had it’,” she says. But it was Woodhouse they arrested – they found a baton-style weapon that he had given her, which she had hidden in her handbag.

It was as if they couldn’t see what was in front of them – or didn’t see anything wrong with it. It was strange, she says, because the police were always looking for a reason to get this well-known criminal. They would often pull him over and check his car, looking for drugs or weapons, but failed to see the underage girl in the passenger seat.

“People say they didn’t know what grooming was back then. But if a police officer didn’t know it’s wrong for a 14- and a 24-year-old to be involved, then they were in the wrong occupation. I think there were a few different reasons. I think because they were Pakistani Muslims, the police were scared to be called racist.” Could it also be simple misogyny? That Woodhouse, and the other girls like her, were just seen by the police as complicit in their abuse? “Yes,” she says. “We were ‘slags’ and ‘little criminals’. To this day, some people look at us like that.”

It is very upsetting reading. Do you remember with Jimmy Saville, people would say 'why didn't the girls say anything at the time?' And it turned out many had said something, but were ignored and shut down.

The conviction rates are probably so low, it's practically impossible to prove, which is such a shame.

Sorry meant to say workers in care homes knew not girls.

April i dont disbelieve you. But i have also worked with girls and parents who were desperatly trying to get help and the police were appalling. And please dont go down the road of blanket blaming the girls parents. Gold help you if you have kids that arent teenagers yet. And rotherham, rochdale, oxford etc have proven that the girls in foster homes and care homes knew girls were being raped - their rapists were picking them up in full view - but many of the SW's did nothing while it was the girls parents who were begging for help and got nothing.

Police are judged on 'clear up rates' these case are a nightmare to get prosecutions so the police avoid them. Like when schools are judged on A-C kids on an F are ignored.

League tables don't help.

Sorry for my 3rd reply! The answer is not putting vulnerable young girls in secure accommodation - locking them.up is not the answer. The 1st thing is to stop calling this child abuse or child sexual exploitation. Its child rape. The 2nd is for the police and cps to take it seriously and be held accountable when they dont investigate properly.

And april the fact the CPS wouldnt test that underwear shows how little value they placed on catching rhe men that were raping some of the most vulnerable girls in society. Agree its not just Rotherham.

prawn i agree with you and april many young girls did report to the police and were told to go away or they would be prosecuted for WPT. Some of the girls were prosecuted for drunk & disorderly/criminal damage/public order offences while their rapists went free. There is currently an investigation into about 16 South Yorkshire officers and it would appear that some of them were tipping the rapists off. Maybe some girls didnt realise they were being groomed but many more did and tried to get justice and were ignored.

AprilSkies44 well done for trying. It really can be soul destroying. These girls are victims but they can be very difficult to work with. As pp have mentioned they do not see themselves as victims and can reject help 'forcibly and volubly'. Many people in support services find the level of abuse directed at them difficult to take and so reject the victims.
Complex and unpleasant situations but inroads are being made.

I read a book purporting to be written by, 'Child A'. I forget which one of the child abuse scandals it relates to.

There's enough detail to let the reader believe it was written from the inside out. However, some details have been changed i.e. locations, names etc

I have a few questions from reading the book which makes me sceptical that it was written by, 'child A'. However, just how these gangs operate i.e. nicknames/codenames, the almost to easy way they groom their victims is shocking.

At the end of the book, they author remarks that these victims don't come from the better off or even average areas of any town. They come from the arse end of towns. Sink estates. Family breakdown.

Kids aged 8 to 15 who will be flattered by the attention of an adult being nice to them, buying them treats like subway or macdonalds or eating curry in the empty-but-for-a-matress stockroom over a take away.

I remember the girls at school who would be targeted by older teenagers and men. They didn't have much and sometimes had families who were unable or didn't care for them. Low self esteem was one reason.
And no one ever said much. But they were not considered victims. Just sluts.
Awful. And this was nothing like on the scale of Rotherham.

The issue is partly due to the fact that sexually exploited underage girls are considered sluts and considered of low value by nearly all the services that should be helping them. I remember getting a press release from a charity that was describing children as prostitutes when the correct term would be rape victims. I felt quite sick.