To be horrified at how much worse the "grooming gangs" actually were than I thought

[OneAmberFinch]

There are several other threads about Elon Musk, Labour, Jess Phillips, etc.

I don't want to discuss them in this thread. The other threads keep getting derailed and I just want a place to discuss how absolutely horrifying the new details that emerged this week are.

I knew that there were "grooming gangs" who would entice girls in care or from broken homes to be their "boyfriends" by giving them cigarettes and vapes, for example.

I didn't know that girls as young as 11 were being brutally tortured and raped, that people had been killed over it, including one policeman who arranged for some of the rapists to get off, houses burnt down. I didn't know the details of the violent gang rapes which I won't repeat here but you can find on X.

I'm just genuinely shocked and horrified.

Some of the court transcripts circulating are from 2013. How did I not know?

Tbh the emphasis on religion is almost unhelpful. There seem to have been a lot of scumbag men in the Pakistani community who had effectively got this arrangement of abuse organised very well for them. It is totally normal for people to say, we want more action, tougher penalties and an investigation into repeat offending in a relatively small town. This pattern has repeated elsewhere in England. The offending was sadistic and organised. Nearly all of the offenders should have life sentences given the age of their victims.

The law in England is geared up to be very tough but consistently it is not in matters of child abuse and sexual offending. My view is that a majority of men do not take it that seriously. If they did, our prisons would look different and women would be much safer from predators.

I don’t know Islam acknowledges “concubines” (I.e. slaves that can be raped and gifted). I’m not saying these men were observant muslims because they clearly weren’t. i’m not even saying that most muslims approve of this because the ones I know certainly don’t. But lets not pretend it’s not there.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_views_on_concubinage

But I agree with you, the kinds of things these men did to these girls were sadistic, it wasn’t just rape it was torture. I doubt they treat the women in their homes with kindness and respect.

They are not picking up little delinquent Muslim girls and raping them en mass across the UK. If you watch the interview I posted earlier, they pick the non Muslim children as they are "dirty " and then they feel they can do what they want to them.

And who knows how they treat their wives?

See this where I part company. This is just bullshit. There is no party proposing to do anything on this matter beyond the current government saying it will implement IICSA. That is something.

No other party has proposed ANYTHING to help.

We don’t know because the wives aren’t taught English, don’t work outside the home, are kept at home, marginalised, controlled and when they venture into the public they are veiled. This is related to the use of shame/ honour to enforce submissive compliant girls and women.

Many Muslim women share these views about non Muslim women being cheap and easy.

Yes they probably aren't having a good time.

Who specifically are you referring to?

https://amp.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/nov/27/guilty-prostitution-bristol-rape-girls-sex-abuse-somali

There was a grooming case involving a gang of Somali men. Their mothers and sisters were outside the court protesting the men's innocence. The women were perfectly articulate and were clear the fault lay at the feet of the women, who were easy, and not their sons / brothers.

Well women have been declaring their sons and husbands innocent of sexual offending each time a man is prosecuted. That’s not a sin that applies to certain groups. Women turn a blind eye to their men being wicked for many reasons. If the victim was a whore so much the better as the man is still noble and so is she as wife or mother.

In a speech to the House of Lords in 2019 Baroness Cox raised the issue of grooming gangs and highlighted that the Government allocated up to £12 million in funding sexual violence support services. What level of support do you think can be provided on such a paltry figure when the estimated scale of abuse runs into thousands of victims?

Baroness Cox also highlighted in 2019 that “Council staff, social workers and the police allowed the mass gang rape of children to continue. It seems it was far less politically complicated to keep quiet. Many victims did not receive support because of the state’s reluctance to interfere in supposed cultural practices.”

Many cases did not even reach the CPS due to police hierarchy quashing investigations. The cases that did reach the CPS were incredibly challenging to prosecute. It is near on impossible to secure a conviction without solid evidence and yet there is so little funding to investigate, support victims, remove them from harmful situations and obtain the evidence needed to convict. Jury’s need to be convinced - and so many men, and some women, questioned why the girls went willingly with the perpetrators in the early days of the ‘relationship’. Grooming was not understood then and still isn’t now.
Men that held these views were common place in the police service, on jury’s and in prominent positions on councils. Many men (and women) had deep rooted beliefs that it wouldn’t have happened to nice girls.

The abuse of women and children has occurred for centuries. Society has slowly changed but we still have a long way to go. Rape convictions remain pathetically low and still too few child abusers face justice.

We should be angry but not blindsided. Elon Musk is no saviour and Kemi Badenoch, who held the position of Minister for Women and Equalities also did very little. The victims have been through enough and deserve more than to be used for political point scoring.

Change is woefully overdue but it starts with implementing the recommendations already made to protect children now, and additional funding to investigate historical crimes and bring people to justice.

We need to not attack the people who have and continue to do the soul destroying work of building cases to prosecute criminals and achieve some form of justice for victims. There are many dedicated social workers, police officers and barristers who care and work tirelessly.

The courts are in a mess, our judiciary has been grossly underfunded for years. Good people are not flocking in their droves to join the police or the criminal justice system. It is frightening and at the rate of decline, with so many leaving the profession, even fewer victims will get the justice, support and protection they deserve.

Imagine what would happen if sexual offences prosecution was highly funded? Police units, higher wages, payment by results.

My god. You would get people rushing to join these services. But no.

Instead we pay estate agents more than legal counsel for this stuff. And it is an insanely hard job.

I guess frankly that is how many like it. Or else it would change. It never does. A bit like domestic violence. The cost is all these ruined children and women. But it is cheap.

Well said @PoppyFleur

If you honestly believe that then you must be going around with your eyes closed.

Naz Shah, who is a female Muslim Labour MP, retweeted a comment asking for line to be drawn under all grooming cases for the sake of community harmony.

fullfact.org/online/naz-shah-diversity-quote-tweet/

The issue is that the perpetrators are/were specifically a group of men of a pakistani muslim background. This was/is common knowledge in the areas affected. It’s well-established that some cultural interpretations of islam commonly found in afghanistan and rural pakistan DO encourage an attitude towards women that is very different from our own. That’s not to say there aren’t plenty of problems with misogyny in our own culture, but they have different roots and expressions.

I really don’t think it does anyone any favours to try and pretend this isn’t the case. Of course this small minority of british pakistani muslim men don’t represent all pakistani muslim men, any more than i represent all british women -
but everyone is influenced by their own cultural background and beliefs and can twist those to cause harm. As an analogy - remember Fred Phelps and his hideous homophobic religious sect in america? No one would argue that these people represented all americans or all christians, BUT the fact that they were american and christian was a factor that needed to be considered and acknowledged when deciding how to understand and deal with their beliefs and behaviour.

This was happening in the 80s when I was at school - back then we didn’t have a name for it. Once again our justice system fails women and children……..

Absolute BS. The majority of ordinary women in this country would be absolutely APPALLED if their son or husband did something so heinous as was done to those girls. They would not be in court harassing the victims, as happened in a number of cases. How can you be on a forum where on a daily basis women condemn male bad behaviour in their family without hesitation, then come out with such an egregious untruth?

Wives of the men involved in the grooming/ child rape gangs.

Honestly you don’t know. Many mothers know their own children are abused by their husbands, or indeed are complicit. It is quite common. Child abuse is often hushed up in families. There will be some women on here who will have had such mothers.

This.
I know of a case years ago where a young child told someone in complete innocence something deeply shocking- The child's mother was told, and the child's mother screamed and shouted at the person telling her, almost to the point of slapping the 'messenger', calling the little child a 'liar'.

{Because the person the little child was mentioning was a family relation}

But how would a little child know the physical workings of a male appendage?

Family members often minimise, accuse the victim of lying, which is really surprising.

Specifically them? Because they are Muslims from Pakistan?

You didn't read the Full Fact article you linked, did you.

I'll help: Naz Shah accidentally retweeted a statement from a parody account. She deleted it eight minutes later. Naz has been working for over 20 years on the issues of child abuse, violence against women and grooming, which is well documented.

I'm not even a fan of Ms Shah, I just hate this kind of smear being repeated. She successfully sued LeaveEU for doing what you just did.

I mean yeah I would react badly because I fucking hate child abusers. Unfortunately there are quite a few times on mumsnet where I’ve come across people worried that they have family members who have been convicted of these crimes no-one is taking it seriously. It’s shockingly common tbh. Really very depressing.

I don’t understand your point.