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?

Have you ever discussed these concerns with a Muslim person?

This is rubbish. Logically and empirically

I'm sure that would go down well.

In what way?

What a load of tosh. I read the Jay report (focused on Rotherham) in 2014 after it had been published. It was not hidden away, the information was there for anyone who wanted to engage with it.

No, there aren't gang controlled areas in the UK - it's a far right online conspiracy theory.

You are wrong. Speak to any local police officer in such areas and they’ll tell you, if you can find one prepared to speak honestly. I remember, when my children were small, asserting to a police officer who policed my street that our area was pretty laid back and crime free and he told me to consider the idea that I, as an older, white woman, was experiencing the area very differently from a teenager - any race. He was absolutely right, as became apparent when my teenager was repeatedly approached for County Lines purposes to the point where he refused to go out after dark unless accompanied by a family member. Only the unaffected - ie non working class usually, confidently assert that there are no gang controlled areas and that to say there is is Far Right. Ridiculous!

:In “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” Arthur Dent’s house is scheduled for demolition to make way for a bypass. When Arthur confronts Mr. Prosser, the local council official, about the plans, Mr. Prosser claims that the plans have been available at the local planning office for nine months. However, Arthur reveals that the plans were hidden in a locked filing cabinet in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying “Beware of the Leopard.” This scenario illustrates how bureaucracy and obfuscation are used to keep important information from the public, making it difficult for individuals to challenge decisions that affect them."

Well luckily I was able to quite easily find the Jay report online in 2014 and read it in full then so none of that obfuscation was necessary

The person in my life who first made me really concerned about Islamism (in the sense of having it become embedded here, not things like plane hijackings by foreign terror groups) is a female Muslim friend of mine who is a thoughtful believer but who has seen what militant Islamism has done to her region and values the rights that women have in the west (and for the record in moderate Muslim countries).

Oh, so you’re talking about extremism in other countries, not our own that wasn’t clear thanks

Who are you replying to? If its the OP in the post before yours, she's talking about extremism here in the UK. Of which there is as we know a fair bit unfortunately.

She was referring to a friend who talked about ‘her region’ that’s not a phrase that I would associate with England. I associated it with another country

I would use region in the UK. And we have regional accents after all! Are you based in the UK?

there was extensive news coverage of it at the time! Vulnerable girls who were groomed and tortured by grooming gangs and no one believed them! Is it that it happened some time ago 2013 so people who didn't read the news at the time because they were too young only learning about it now.

To be clear my friend lives in the UK but is originally from the MENA region which is what I meant. Her relatively moderate country has political issues with Islamist factions hence her concern.

My concern is for the UK: that the same forces have or will soon take root here. I think it is clear that in many of these rape gangs, the rapists have had community insiders in place on councils, in the police, etc which has prevented justice. This is exacerbated because these communities are concentrated in particular towns/councils so they can make up a relatively small % of the UK overall but have political control over their area.

Since this is a touchy thread, I'll be clear that I'm using "Islamist" in a specific narrow sense to refer to radically conservative political Islam - not as a synonym for Muslims in general.

Er, yes there are? Do you live in a gated community 😆 ever leave your house? Just because it's not your lived experience doesn't make it false and shutting down debate with the lovely cry of far right as more details finally get into MSM makes you look a bit silly

Apologies
@Iwanttoliveonamountain Region outside the UK

Maggie Oliver (the ex detective in charge of the case who resigned from the police) gives quite an insight in the case on this recent podcast). Apparently it was swept under the rug because of lack of money/police resources and the girls being poor they "did not matter". Seems like sadly the misoginy those British pakistani men are being accused of is apparently quite alive n kicking within the midlands police, there was certainly an element of political correctness due to the mens etnicity but it was mostly those two factors (or that's what I gather from her interview). I wonder what would have happened if these were boys being groomed by men...

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=46rigtezr6U

These crimes are horrendous, but also the incompetence/cover-up/secrecy that followed. We need to know:

• How wide spread was this?
• Is this still happening?
• How could is happen without being being reported?
• Who failed to act or covered this up?
• And, I am afraid, what is the background of the perpetrators? If this isn't provided that there are many who will draw their own conclusions.

Please post on other groups/platforms. And please write to your MP and ask that this investigated with complete transparency so that these questions are answered. I can not think of a worse scandal in modern British history.

YANBU. I listened to a podcast on YouTube earlier today (Triggernometry). They interviewed a survivor of the Rotherham grooming gangs, Dr Ella Hill, and am absolutely horrified and disgusted at what I have heard. Things like the perpetrators making their victims lick the soles of their feet clean before they are raped as an act of degradation. I naively thought this just happened in Rotherham until this has been reported in the news again, and didn’t realise how wide spread it has become. In the interview, Dr Ella comes across as intelligent and gentle person and you can hear the emotion in her voice as she speaks about the ordeal she went through. She had to move away and change her name to escape it. I have a young daughter and the thought of anything like this happening to her fills me with horror.

@MrsPeregrine I know. It's so absolutely appalling.

Keir Starmer has said that those vast numbers of us calling for a national enquiry into the rape and torture of children "are jumping on the bandwagon of the far right"

He needs to resign.

I'm a big labour voting leftie and strongly believe in opening a national enquiry. I hate the far right and I'm not jumping into any wagon. Nice try at gaslighting us on his part.

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

We’re jumping on ‘far right’ bandwagons, are we?

For caring about mass, organised, rape and torture of children.

He really hasn’t thought this through, has he?

If the PM is willing to smear any ordinary voter who has the temerity to care that poor white girls are raped and tortured as ‘far right’ and willing to position Labour and his PMship as being above all that, what does that say about him and his party?

He's perpetuating the main problem! Police and the authorities too scared to arrest or prosecute people in case they were accused of being far-right or racist. What is wrong with Keir Starmer??