School governors told to ‘dismiss’ grooming gangs concerns

pretending that this kind of abuse is perpetrated predominantly by one section of the community

Except that nobody is doing that. All we are asking for is the Pakistani Muslim rape gangs and their enablers at all levels (including government) to be subject to the same rule of law as everyone else.

Currently they are not.

It’s really not that deep.

That sounds much more appropriate - escalate to DSL, rather than assume disinformation, as in the OP. Maybe the case in the OP is the outlier, and someone should be in for a carpeting.

You have absolutely fabricated stuff, not least by accusing me of wanting to protect rapists. Frankly, that's offensive, and there is fuck all in any of my posts to support such an allegation. You're reading stuff into it that isn't there.

If you actually bother to read my posts properly, you will see that I am not in any way suggesting that the investigation should be diluted. Quite the contrary. But you don't want to acknowledge that because it clearly doesn't fit with your agenda.

If you are going to criticise what you think I'm saying instead of engaging in good faith with what I'm actually saying, then I can't be arsed to continue the discussion to be honest.

I don't recall anything coming up in our safeguarding training about disinformation in relation to sexual exploitation. We talked about online safety and the dangers of kids being radicalised online etc. And we talked about grooming etc.

The overarching message was that all concerns and allegations should be taken seriously, that it wasn't our role as governors to investigate or make judgements about any specific allegations and that we should instead record any details that had been disclosed and escalate to the DSL/LADO as appropriate.

Because when you dilute the investigation, when you widen the scope away from their crimes, you’re protecting them.

I’m sorry you’re unable to recognise that. Or that you refuse to.

I have fabricated nothing. I haven’t even told you the worst stuff.

I'm not sure how you've got the idea from my posts that I'm "protecting rapists". That is very clearly not what I'm doing and you know it, you're just attempting to shut me down because I'm not complying with your particular narrative. Whatever, there is no point in engaging with someone who is just fabricating stuff.

I grew up in Rotherham, near the town centre.
Many of the girls in my year were raped by these men. They were picked up in taxis from our school gates. They were threatened into silence by police, social workers, councillors.
I sat next to children who were products of their mums being targeted in the 80’s.
One girl in another school was impregnated after being raped BY AN ENTIRE TAXI RANK. There were zero arrests at the time. Just mutterings of “what did she expect going off with them?”
The problem is endemic and your bleating about “racism” does absolutely nothing.

If you wish to protect rapists by diverting people’s attention, then so be it. But don’t fool yourself that it makes you a morally superior person. You’re just another coward. And they’re ten a penny.

I changed my mind completely over the course of the thread.

I started on 'this was a clumsy attempt to encourage critical thinking about potentially dodgy online information',

then switched to 'this was a clumsy attempt to encourage a specific interpretation of a particular piece of potentially dodgy online information' (albeit maybe with a benign NAMALT motive, where M doesn't stand for men),

and eventually concluded the whole exercise is crazy, because it requires the creator of the training to decide in advance what is or isn't disinformation (thanks @Joeninety ). This is just as bad in principle for flat-earthism or lizard people as it is for grooming gangs.

I was about to disappear in a puff of logic when I remembered that @KateBAnd3 and @MrsBennetsPoorNervesAreBack have recently done similar training. So would like to ask if they had to answer questions about how to handle potentially dodgy online information, and, if so, what the examples, and the questions, were?

Agreed. I thought the OP was very clear that this is about disinformation.

But certain comments on here showcase perfectly how certain people diminish, derail and obfuscate discussions about safeguarding children in order to push their own particular political agenda.

It's very depressing to see safeguarding being used in this way - especially on Mumsnet.

Really? I thought it was a thread about some badly-designed training material that encouraged school governors to minimise and disregard safeguarding disclosures.

The wider problem of male violence? Everyone knows that. What you are doing, whether you admit it or not, is trying to control how people talk about this issue. The issue here is that in the grand scheme of things that hasn’t worked out very well for society, and that’s why genuine racists can weaponise it.

To be fair.. it's because they do. Most threads like this are made to hate Pakistanis/Muslims. There's a clear agenda so people want to point out that these crimes can be committed by anyone

You have conflated the following three different things:

1. Criminologists analysing modes of offending, including being able to express their findings when they don't paint people of a particular demographic in a flattering light.
2. A child being able to safely say to a teacher, "Tessa told me that there's asian takeaway delivery men picking lasses up from the care home where she lives and one of them wants to be her boyfriend".
3. Teachers and parents telling kids to watch out for the scary brown men because they are brown.

We need (1) and (2) to keep kids safe. The training material undermined (2) and that is what this thread is about. (3) would be racist and ZERO people on this thread have suggested it.

I've already acknowledged that the training was clearly wrong.

The people who get upset when you suggest that the grooming gangs are part of a wider problem.

I think its a legal requirement that every time the grooming gangs are mentioned, someone had to say the white men do it too, regardless of context.

Barely believable. The word 'Disinformation' pops up. This word has been used by virtually all despotic regimes throughout history. Absolutely disgusting.

I don’t see anyone here denying that white men either alone or collectively abuse children, or that that abuse is often not punished and victims are silenced and go unsupported, with awful consequences. This thread isn’t about that abuse though.

I just don't think it's helpful for people to push the narrative that the grooming gangs are the only example of abuse and exploitation

In the post-Rotherham context, the training material was pushing that narrative, in the same way that saying "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" focuses Dorothy's attention on the man behind the curtain.

Because they can say that it's terrible for any adult to act sexually with a child. Or explain how grooming works WITHOUT mentioning colour or taxi drivers or south asian men ect. It is racist to mention the latter.

That was slowly dawning on me, yes.

Who on this thread is “pushing the narrative that the grooming gangs are the only example of abuse and exploitation having been allowed to continue in plain sight”? It’s your straw man.

No one is saying that grooming gangs don't exist. We're saying thst reform are using it to fuel racism and islamophobia. Theres just as many white grooming gangs. Terrible regardless of race

When people are saying "shame on you" for even suggesting that there is a wider context that needs to be looked at, then I will absolutely question their motives because they're clearly trying to shut down the conversation.

I have no issue with the grooming gangs being investigated as a discrete phenomenon, and I think it's absolutely right that there should be a public enquiry which focuses specifically on those matters in order to get to the bottom of them.

I just don't think it's helpful for people to push the narrative that the grooming gangs are the only example of abuse and exploitation having been allowed to continue in plain sight, because I don't believe that's a fair reflection of reality.

Yes, this.

It's absolutely legitimate to look at different sexual offending patterns and modes in different demographics where clear evidence of those patterns exists, and it is necessary to do so to effectively tackle sexual offending.

So:

• The rich and famous using private jets, private islands, and payoffs to groom and abuse children. Not all rich men sexually offend, but those who do use their wealth to facilitate it.
• Pakistani Muslims using family ties to form grooming gangs, as seen in Rotherham, and selecting white and Roma kids and preying on kids in care. Not all Pakistani Muslim men sexually offend, but those who do use their family ties to facilitate it.
• White men in their twenties and thirties having school-aged "girlfriends" who they can wow with cars and cash. Not all white men in their twenties and thirties... You get the picture.
• The specific offending patterns found in certain professions, e.g. taxi driving (think of Worboys), the police, care work, and teaching.
• Trans-identified males using “I'm a woman" to bypass the safeguards of female-only spaces. The jail population figures support this assertion.
• The "pillar of the community" types, like Catholic priests and the perps in the Scout leader scandals, use their trusted status and reputation to facilitate offending. They use their knowledge of the community to identify kids from troubled families as being easier targets.
• Anyone with access to children will use that access to facilitate offending.
• etc etc

This kind of analysis is how we can decide that people in some roles (e.g. teacher, youth worker) need to be DBS checked and other people (e.g. shelf stacker, electrician) don't. It's how we can protect children by teaching them and their parents not to be blinded to risk by wealth, fame, status, and reputation. It's how we can identify the most likely victims to keep them safe. And it's how we can justify saying to a child "just because he has brought his brother/uncle/mate, doesn't mean you are safe with him".