Gov refuses home office investigation into historic child sex abuse in Oldham

[Perzival]

I've just read on x that Jess Phillips has formally declined Oldham council's request for the HO to investigate the grooming gangs in Oldham. Why on Earth would they do this? Apparently JP says it should be a local investigation? Clearly that is a conflict of interests and if the council are asking for help they should?

The only link I can find other than x is GB news (apologies).

https://www.gbnews.com/news/oldham-grooming-gangs-labour-government-inquiry-abuse-scandal

I hope you change your mind about closing the thread @Perzival - we should be able to express our horror and shock about what has happened to these children. JP is local to me and she used to be great but as she's got sucked into the political machine, she's become more fickle and unreliable, I'm afraid. I'm not surprised that the right wing press has got hold of this story and frankly I don't care. What matters is that these young people are heard and get the justice they deserve.

If you want to know how the Weinsteins/Savilles/Cyril Smiths and grooming gangs of this world get away it then I thoroughly recommend listening to this fascinating Radio 4 documentary - Jeremy Thorpe: The Silent Conspiracy

well worth 40 minutes of anyone's time

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04wz633

It's pretty much the blueprint for any establishment conspiracy.

@porridgecake

TRIGGER WARNING

They may work together and be in close knit communities but how do you suddenly find yourself gang raping an 11 year old with your cousin, work colleague and/or your brother?

How does it progress from chatting at work to deciding to rape an 11 year old at the same time as your three mates/relatives? Is the abuse of white girls being discussed openly? What about the men they asked who didn’t fancy watching their colleague gang rape a child? Why didn’t they speak out? Or call the police?

@D23456789 That leads to another question. Why don’t the ‘left wing’ press care about children being raped? Why are they happy for it to be buried. I too am glad GB have reported it.

To the posters saying that Musk shouldn't interfere in 'British politics' - he's not. He's commenting on a British sex abuse scandal spanning 40 years. And it's going OFF on twitter, it's gone international. If Musks's attention can maybe get some justice for these victims, and prod supine British politicians into finally doing something, then good on Elon Musk.

Too many victims to count (I hope Jess Philips reads them out in Parliament, those who agree to be named, after all she has admirable form for so doing with victims of DV) but I will say that the mother of CHARLENE DOWNS needs justice.

CHARLENE DOWNS. Say her name.

Sammy Woodhouse who is a survivor of Rotherham took this to the Times originally.
In August she had a meeting with the transport minister that same papers headline was Tommy Robinson supported meets with Transport Secretary.
That's why there has been a culture of silence its been silenced.
I live in these areas, I grew up in these areas and trust me its the tip of the iceberg. You don't speak out because YOU then become the issue, court cases, no support, labelled racist or far right, bomb threats, firebombing etc.

I'm amazed it's taken this long and the yanks getting a hold of it for people to actually talk about it, whilst not fir the reasons listed above.

Those girls were failed, treated with utter contempt by the authorities because they saw them as prostitutes.

It's crazy because it's not even a 'story' in the newspaper/media sense, in that it's not new. It's just only now being talked about properly.

Nothing this truly awful government does surprises me.

It’s important to keep in mind the difference between public inquiries, and police investigations.

Public inquiries take a lot of time, and cost a huge amount of money.

They’re sometimes useful when there’s a fundamental issue with an underlying system or process. They generally don’t deliver anything practical when the existing processes in theory are ok, and the problem lay in them not being followed properly.

Racially motivated child sexual abuse at scale, and decades long failure to deal with it (at best) or systematic institutional cover up constitutes a non story in your book?

One of the best things I ever did was to stop yielding to peer pressure about the 'right' and 'wrong' sorts of media I consume. I decided to stop doing this after a lengthy harangue from a friend in, I'm gonna say 2004, about something in the Sun - the gist being that unless the Guardian sanctioned it, it wasn't worth believing and was bigotry. Anyway she was wrong about that and I realised that when someone tells you that something isn't really a story because it only interests the 'far Right', it might actually just be a story that the Establishment wants covered up.

Now I read as widely as possible and do my own thinking on what I've read.

Out of interest, why do you call Musk the First Lady? Is that some kind of homophobic joke about his friendship with Trump?

I thought that kind of homophobic nudge winking had been left behind in the 1970s.

I am sure Keir Starmer cares deeply about this. If he thought the Southport riots were bad over 3 girls killed...

There have been so many scandals but even Wikipedia has individual small pages for each individual town / grooming gang, sorry! Child rape gang! How can anyone comprehend the scale. At least 1400 girls, I saw.

In October there was a fair bit of talk about Wikipedia editors renaming the collected page on grooming gangs into the UK into "Grooming gang MORAL PANIC" - focusing on how it was just a right-wing racist conspiracy. The page doesn't exist anymore / got merged into a long generic page about child sex abuse overall.

I'm not sure what point there is having a Minister for Women and Girls if she just wants to wash her hands over decades of institutional disregard for the mass rape and torture of young girls. If she's too cowardly to deal with issues that she thinks might lose her the next election, she needs to bloody step aside and allow someone to take over who will act.

Wouldn't it be great to have politicians who put doing their job before clinging on to their job for as long as possible?

I don't believe this is a non story, but the beating of labour and Jess Phillips with a stick about the investigation is. It is disingenuous to say they don't want to investigate, a lengthy review has taken place previously and the findings are yet to be implemented, I think that should take precedence for the government whilst the local investigation takes place.

Me too @GiveMeSpanakopita - in my circle there were people shaming others for reading right wing papers; they thought that only the likes of the BBC and Guardian were reliable papers. Well I can't recall the specific event that caused me to turn my back on that but I now read as widely as possible. I actually feel freeer for doing so.

I personally think this scandal deserves MORE light, attention and outrage, not less. As much as possible. Glad it's finally happening, I always thought it might but not on this scale

The transcripts are really harrowing to read, nothing done so far in terms of enquiries, reviews, etc. has been near enough to do justice to the victims of these gangs and prevent these crimes from happening again, nothing enough

But Oldham Council is saying that it needs more help co-ordinated at state level.

I'm thrilled that it is getting more light as I am when any abuse of women and girls is taken seriously. What I am not thrilled about is that Elon Musk is seemingly holding Jess Phillips and labour personally liable and putting her in danger, she quite rightly said they should do their own investigation as a systematic review has already taken place.

I was aware of Sammy Woodhouse years ago. I am impressed she is still campaigning on X etc despite what people (on this thread) are saying about threats in the local community. I hope she gets the justice she is campaigning for.

But why isn’t she posting on here? The biggest female website in the U.K.? Are we seen as part of the problem? Too left wing?

@GiveMeSpanakopita
It does appear that Labelling someone Far Right = Shut the fuck up.

@OneAmberFinch I saw that about Moral Panic. Plus shadow banning the Urban Scoop documentary. So wiki and YouTube hiding things too?

Once again op thanks for posting about this.

Putting her in danger? She's the safeguarding minister. If it puts her in danger to defend the decisions she has made then how is she meant to execute her role?

Eeeesh, I'm not bothered, Jess Philips is a highly committed feminist who's very strong and fearless, also moral integrity is very important to her. I know this because I've read her book, and she talks about her courage, integrity and her fearlessness a lot in it.

Absolutely any public elected official who had any role ever in blocking full transparency on this scandal should be exposed and questioned for doing so. As Jess Philips is very big on personal integrity and on exposing wrongdoing (again, something she spoke on at length in her book), she will welcome this scrutiny, and speak on it, I am sure.

I'm glad that Musk is bringing attention to these appalling rapes against young and predominantly white working class girls. I read an extract on X of what had happened to one girl and it was absolutely horrific. Some of what happened to her would definitely be described as torture.

The term 'grooming gangs' needs to be changed to child rape gangs. I'm not at all political but there needs to be a proper investigation done and all involved in covering up these crimes need to be put in prison.

I see the Labour voters no matter what are out in force. Homophobic jokes, justifying the cover up of some of the biggest rapes and abuses of young girls this country has ever seen. Then people will moan and bleat at how on earth did reform get in?

Apparently there have been reports/enquiries done into this activity in various towns, but perhaps some kind of overarching enquiry is needed to pull it together and form a national strategy us needed?

I've seen a couple of podcasts before on Triggernometry (one with a victim, one with a police woman who resigned because of inaction); also Julie Bindel has written about this more than once.

Agree the snippets posted on X lifted from court transcripts (so not made up, exaggerated shit) are beyond nightmare. No wonder it's gone viral.

As for Elon Musk reposting it (and commenting), so what? At least it's being highlighted widely and will hopefully force a discussion and action here in the UK - so far politicians have held their noses and averted their eyes from this mess because it raised uncomfortable questions, and could cause civil unrest. Civil unrest could've been avoided if these crimes (against children) were robustly investigated and charged appropriately AT THE TIME instead of authorities wringing their hands about being accused of racism.

As already pointed out, everyone in the UK (including politicians) had plenty to say about France's appalling judicial and social attitude to sex crimes over the past fortnight. (that fucking mayor of Mazan minimising the impact of these offences anyone..) So, the rest of the world is quite entitled to highlight our failures, and castigate us accordingly.