School governors told to ‘dismiss’ grooming gangs concerns

@BundleBoogie you explain the problem so well.

But it isn’t abundantly clear to her. I’m taking you both at face value here. You’ve concluded she’s doing it because she’s right wing and stirring, and she thinks you’re trying to suppress free discussion about something she has close personal experience of.

You may be unaware of how your posts come across but you end pretty much every one with an unfounded insinuation about racism on a topic where perpetrators are being shielded by unfounded accusations of racism.

This. Spot on.

I just don’t think that protecting the rapists is the poster’s intention, whether or not attitudes like hers have contributed and are still contributing to a stifling of discussion which benefits these men. And I agree that they have and are.

She is much more reasonable about the need to fully investigate the grooming gangs than others on this board, who do think no one should be able to discuss the race/culture aspects at all.

Your nasty accusation is unfounded.

I’m not sure why it has to be spelled out so many times.

We want the Pakistani Muslim men in grooming gangs to be subject to the same rules and laws as all other men and not be enabled and shielded by those in authority. Which seems to be happening even at government level right at the moment.

Those girls deserve justice, after so many years and being silenced by people crying ‘racist’.

Can I request that you read some of the survivors accounts before you consider whether that is too much to ask?

But if you want race to be the only part of the conversation, to the exclusion of other relevant factors, then that's when I start to question what your motives really are.

You keep repeating this insinuation which imo is unjustified as I haven’t seen anyone say that. Intentionally or not it serves to have a chilling effect as people start overthinking things and worrying about being called racist rather than being able to focus on the specifics of the problem which is that a large group of men targeted girls specifically because of their race and because of the men’s race and religion, the girls were silenced and their rapists are being enabled by those in power.

Your posts read a little bit like you think we have talked about this particular topic enough already and need to move onto wider issues. We haven’t.

I have been called a racist for THE most ridiculous things on these threads so I don’t care any more as I know I’m not and the people accusing are just high on their own self righteousness.

Sorry, I don’t want to appear argumentative but could you explain how someone wanting to control the narrative of a rape because they wish to protect the reason the rapes were allowed to happen so openly and so systematically isn’t protecting rapists?

Forced marriage is illegal but arranged marriage is not.

If the girl is too petrified to actually protest, her illegal forced marriage is simply a legal arranged marriage.

We need to protect Muslim women and girls more.

Tbh I’m very wary of anyone deciding what disinformation is for children. Pointing out that transwomen are men would have been treated as “disinformation” by public authorities a few years ago.

Safeguarding should really have clearly defined boundaries to the immediate wellbeing of children. So inoculating against on-line grooming, sharing of information and pictures.

It’s fucking Orwellian. I don’t trust anyone to decide what counts as disinformation or not, especially in light of the gingerbread twat and the handling of grooming gangs.

I didn't accuse her of anything or jump to any conclusions, but I did say that I would question her motives if she was going to try and shut down any discussion that didn't make the whole thing about race. I stand by that.

If she had actually engaged with the content of my posts, it would have been abundantly clear that I wasn't trying to "protect rapists" in any shape or form. But I don't believe she actually thought that was my intention, she simply said it as a way of trying to shut me down. We can only guess at her reasons for this, but I don't personally see it as a reasonable response from someone who is genuinely motivated by concerns about the safety of women and girls.

If she thought I had jumped to the wrong conclusions, then she could have come back and explained what exactly it was in my posts which made her believe I wanted to protect racists when I had so clearly stated the opposite. She didn't, because there wasn't ever any substance to it.

And if people make claims without any foundation to them, then others will inevitably question why they might be doing that.

Anyway, it’s 3.44 am here and 2.44 there, so will pick up later.

Because as I said, you’re insinuating “motives” on this thread just because you were offended that a poster, closer to the grooming gangs issue than you are, which is worthy of some acknowledgment of this, said you want to protect rapists (I don’t agree with this conclusion) because you’re whatabouting (I agree with this accusation) She’s jumped to conclusions, just like you have.

What makes you think I'm attributing it where it doesn't exist?

My own view is that a lot of people deny it where it is very clearly in evidence.

I’m not denying that actual racism is on the increase.

It’s not “people calling out racism”. I’m saying that you’re attributing racism where it doesn’t exist. And yes the alienation is driving the success of parties like Reform.

I have no reason to believe that the scenario wasn't put forward in good faith, but I obviously can't be sure of that. I do agree with you about that bit of the statement.

I wouldn't call anyone a racist simply because they disagree. But if I think they're pushing a racist agenda, I will say so.

And I'm afraid I don't agree that people calling out racism is what's driving the support for Reform - I think it is being driven by a very real increase in actual racism, which I have never seen to be so bad. And yes, I'm probably more sensitive to it than most because I have had to witness the impact on my DH of being repeatedly being abused and threatened with terms like "p*ki paedo" simply because he happens to have brown skin. It doesn't make the slightest difference that he isn't Pakistani, he isn't Muslim and he most definitely isn't a paedophile, they just don't like his skin colour. These people don't give a shit about the safety of women and girls, they're just using it as a vehicle to express their hate.

Always the case when one of our resident sealions joins the thread.

You appear to completely accept their explanation and think they suggested this scenario in good faith. That’s up to you. However, I take particular issue with this part of their statement:

We recognise that this question was not sufficiently clear. It should have made clear that senior leaders at the school knew the video was false because of their work with multi-agency safeguarding partners (including the police).

those “multi-agency safeguarding partners (including the police)” in many cases ignored and silenced victims, and those advocating for them, and in some cases participated in their abuse. So not exactly the arbiters of whether a rumour is “false” or not, and I acknowledge you felt that it was a false premise for the question to say they knew that it wasn’t true without an investigation.

I’ve been called a racist before on here just for wanting to talk about this issue in isolation because it is the specific topic under discussion. I repeat that I don’t think this abuse is the only abuse that matters or that sexual assaults committed by white men are less important. I’ve both been raped by a white man and involved in a scary racist incident because the man I was dating was Asian. Unless you have good reason to think someone is a racist, I would maybe refrain from speculating about it, rather than jumping to that conclusion just because people are frustrated or disagree. It’s not helpful and it is a large part of why right wing parties are gaining ground.

I think it was clumsily designed in a way that wasn't intended but had the potential for misinterpretation (and also deliberate misrepresentation).

I was not familiar with the Governor Hub training site as the school where I'm a Governor doesn't use it, but I had a look at their website and read the statement that they had put out in response to the telegraph article.

The scenario that was provided in the example was not given in the context of training governors on how to respond to allegations of sexual abuse or grooming or exploitation etc, which was covered in a completely separate section or perhaps in a different training session altogether. The focus of that section certainly didn't have anything to do with how schools or governors should respond to such concerns.

What it was intended to do was to help illustrate the difference between misinformation, disinformation and conspiracy theories, and participants were supposed to identify which of those three categories applied to a series of different scenarios. With regard to the question that has been scrutinised, the scenario stated that the teacher "knew" the rumours to be false but was aware that the children were circulating them to help keep each other safe. Participants were supposed to select "misinformation" because the information was known to be false but was not being circulated for malicious reasons.

The issue that I have with the choice of scenario is that I can't think of a situation in which a teacher could confidently know that a rumour is without foundation without this being properly investigated, and so I consider the premise of the question to be flawed. However, I don't think it's at all accurate to suggest that governors were being taught to treat alleged abuse by particular groups as disinformation, as that very clearly wasn't the case.

Of course, I'm well aware of that. But that doesn't mean I can't express my thoughts on the matter.

Some people, like you, are able to engage in a civilised conversation about the issues. I appreciate that. Others just try to shut the conversation down by trying to twist what I've said into something completely different. That is when I start to wonder if they have a different agenda.

Yes, I believe I would act the same if the races were reversed, because I see this first and foremost as a crime against women and girls rather than against white girls in particular. That's not to say that I'm denying the racial aspect at all, as the perpetrators very clearly used race to dehumanise their victims and the race of the perpetrators appears to have somehow made the authorities too frightened to address the issue. However, I believe that those evil men would have abused girls of any ethnicity who they felt that they could target.

Others might find it hard to understand my perspective, but I actually think that the failure of the authorities to take action in these cases is a symptom of institutionalised racism in which Pakistani perpetrators were treated differently from white perpetrators. If you are not racist, then you will not feel any fear or hesitation in holding black or brown people accountable for crimes that they may have committed, because you will perceive those people as criminal individuals (albeit, in this case, part of a gang) and not as representative of a whole ethnic group. We should absolutely be able to discuss these horrific crimes openly and honestly, and without treading on eggshells, but we should be able to do so without generalising about an entire subcontinent of people.

And you won’t control how the issue is talked about, because people aren’t accountable to you.