School governors told to ‘dismiss’ grooming gangs concerns

I have rarely seen a clearer example than this thread of people saying the same thing while vehemently disagreeing that they are doing so.

To be fair, I've done loads of safeguarding training as a governor over the years, and while I'm not denying that the training featured in the Telegraph was clearly out there, it absolutely doesn't reflect any of the training which I have received over the years, which has consistently emphasised the importance of taking all reported concerns very seriously.

I think your insinuations about people’s motives here, on the feminist board, are inappropriate. Thinking that this issue should be investigated as a discrete phenomenon and that it shouldn’t be diluted doesn’t mean you are a racist.

If the training material used 'football coach' or 'scout leader', the problem would be seen clearly. The assumption should never be that its false. It could be true, or it might not be. No one should assume its falsely targetting a particular group. Scout leaders shouldnt be a sacred group who should never be questioned.

Using these gangs has lead some people to believe that training is still attempting to give grooming gangs a protected status, others are saying the paper wouldnt be talking about it if it was about football coaches

But, if all the examples the training material used, they picked groaming gangs? Good grief.

This is a horrendous safeguarding failure in itself. It's undermining of what is supposed to be the correct safeguarding culture i.e. every concern is taken seriously and investigated, people feel supported in reporting no matter who the allegation may be against. Victims can report using their own language and should be listened to.

It's an anti-safeguarding culture in schools these days as far as I can tell.

It's suppression of the ability to report any concerns. If children (or adults) can't feel free to raise concerns in their own language (in case it may be interpreted as racist / bigoted) then it's a safeguarding failure because they will be silenced and we will KEEP having paedophiles exploit those loopholes and 'taboo' subjects. HOW ON EARTH did this happen?

Oh, I agree that the training, as it has been reported, was obviously wildly inappropriate. Perhaps I should have said that, but I took it to be self evident.

All allegations of abuse or exploitation should be taken seriously. It's shocking if we haven't yet learnt that.

I have stated very clearly that the specific issues relating to the grooming gangs need to be properly investigated and confronted. I'm not suggesting that we should dilute anything at all, or that anything should be brushed under the carpet. I'm merely acknowledging that there is a wider context, and that we should look at that as well - not instead of, but as well. Because whether you want to acknowledge it or not, there is a wider pattern of society turning a blind eye to the exploitation and abuse of vulnerable young girls, and it isn't purely about race, even though that was obviously a part of the picture in these particular examples. I would argue that class was also a significant factor.

And yes, the issue of children being abused in children's homes absolutely needs to be looked at in its own right, but also within the wider context of institutions which have failed to protect vulnerable children in other similar circumstances. Why on earth wouldn't you look at the bigger picture as well to get a broader and deeper understanding of where there may be parallels and where there may be differences etc.

I really don't see what is shameful or even remotely controversial about wanting to look at the bigger picture as well as the detail of individual cases. You can try to paint it as me trying to deflect away from the race issue if you like, but you'd be wrong. Race absolutely needs to be a part of the conversation. 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 have to be able to name the issue.

“Stop, that’s really racist/bigoted/old fashioned- you shouldn’t talk like that” obfuscated what is happening.

Preventing victims from describing their experiences obfuscates what’s happening.

So anyone policing other people’s words can fuck off.

Imagine there’s a serial killer on the loose.
Would the police look at the patterns of those specific crimes to find the perpetrator or would they look at evidence in all murders to find him?

If you dilute the issue, you’re diluting the chance of justice for the victims who experienced a very specific crime.

You are correct. At the same time, in the context of this thread, where the initial posting was horror at poorly-worded training material that looked like a left-wing racist dogwhistle, what you say is beyond the scope of the thread.

we have to confront the difficult questions about the role which ethnicity and race may have played in those cases

We don't do that by portraying rumours of grooming gangs in the local area as being prima facie "false", to use the exact word of the training question. Rumours are often the only way that victims have to warn others. To be clear, we don't portray rumours as prima facie true either, we consider them "unsupported" (as a PP put it) and refer to designated safeguarding lead.

What is happening with these specific grooming gangs has a very specific motivation, victimology and way of evading justice.
By attempting to dilute the target, you dilute the power to actually do anything.

Consider children who are abused in children’s homes by the workers there. Would it be helpful to broaden that out to all adults who abuse children or better to focus in and really get to the root of the issue?

Please elaborate.

Shame on you.

I'm not whatabouting about anything. I just don't think it's helpful to focus on Pakistani grooming gangs to the exclusion of all others. Yes, it was dreadful that nobody did anything, but it wasn't unique. We have problems with our society turning a blind eye to abuse in general, and not only when the perpetrators happen to be Pakistani. Think of the open secret that was Jimmy Saville.

I'm not sure why you're asking about threads on MN deflecting from the rapes of Epstein and his cronies. I didn't make reference to any such threads. What I did say was that our society has allowed such behaviour to go under the radar, and even now, there seems to be very little accountability or transparency for the perpetrators.

It absolutely isn't about minimising what happened in Rotherham and elsewhere - we have to face up to the truth of what happened to those poor girls and we have to confront the difficult questions about the role which ethnicity and race may have played in those cases. These issues have been covered up for far too long, and of course, we need to understand exactly what happened and what went wrong. But at the same time, it would be stupid not to acknowledge that the failure to act in Rotherham is part of a much wider problem that we need to tackle as a society.

It’s such a nonsense argument…

“Don’t bother trying to stop those rapes (which I feel uncomfortable talking about) unless you can stop these rapes (which I’m more than happy to talk about)”

Not only that, we have to dismantle grooming gangs to eradicate rape.

PS

We don’t have to eradicate all rapes before we dare or are allowed to proactively dismantle the Pakistani Muslim grooming gangs.

If you could please direct me to the threads where there are people trying to deflect from the rapes if Epstein et al, I’d be happy to scrutinise them.

Why are you whatabouting about the industrialised rape of thousands of girls?

But let's not kid ourselves that Pakistani men are the only ones who collaborate to abuse and exploit vulnerable women and girls, and let's not pretend that we don't turn a blind eye to white men engaging in that kind of behaviour either. The Epstein scandal is a good example of this, but it isn't the only one. Where is the scrutiny and accountability for those men who took advantage of the young girls that were trafficked by Epstein? A bit of public humiliation for a couple of them, perhaps, but no real consequences under the law.

good job that no one has done that then isn't it!

I cant help feeling that if the scenario was about members of the royal family, or powerful political leaders, no one would say the headline was sensationalism.

I do agree with you, on all of your points - it does matter.

But the headline is pure sensationalism, given the actual wording and intention of the question.

I just don't think this sort of journalism helps anything - certainly not the wider issues being discussed.

What happened in Rotherham and a number of other locations was horrific, and it is utterly shameful that the authorities turned a blind eye towards it for fear of being accused of racism. We have to face up to the fact that this happened. And indeed, may still be happening in some cases.

But let's not kid ourselves that Pakistani men are the only ones who collaborate to abuse and exploit vulnerable women and girls, and let's not pretend that we don't turn a blind eye to white men engaging in that kind of behaviour either. The Epstein scandal is a good example of this, but it isn't the only one. Where is the scrutiny and accountability for those men who took advantage of the young girls that were trafficked by Epstein? A bit of public humiliation for a couple of them, perhaps, but no real consequences under the law.

We need to create a society in which nobody is untouchable, and in which girls and women can be adequately protected from harm. That absolutely means that we need to face up to the realities of where things have gone wrong, but pretending that this kind of abuse is perpetrated predominantly by one section of the community doesn't really help us to address the problem.

But that matters. Safeguarding children must be free from political ideologies and this issue has been so extensively publicly debated that the writers of the package MUST have known they were "taking a side"

Governors get one safeguarding training session a year and it matters that it's ethical and accurate. Training providers are paid a lot of £££ to get this right and "badly worded hypothetical examples" are unacceptable.

A reminder that this training is for school governors. They hold strategic responsibilities for ensuring the school has robust policies, safer recruitment, the appropriate safeguarding appointments and structures, online safety procedures etc. That's why it matters that their training is free from political approaches / ideologies.

It's a chilling thought that some schools, sanctioned by their governors, are openly breaching their responsibilities to safeguard children by promoting mixed sex changing, social transitioning even the youngest of children etc because education failed to prioritise children's rights and needs over the demands of the adult trans lobbyists.

That's why, as this discussion shows, safeguarding should be child centred, not political ideology centred.

Sorry, but that headline is unbelievably misleading.

Yes, the question in the online training is poorly worded - and yes, there is an issue with grooming gangs which I do not dispute - but for the Telegraph to report it as governors being 'told to dismiss concerns' is just plain wrong.

Context - I've just this morning completed the online safeguarding training for two local colleges that I work in (albeit not using the same third party training tools as that being reported on). The question quoted in this article was a badly-worded hypothetical example, nothing more sinister than that.