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?

@Bluepiano God I hate posts like yours.
Totally ignoring it is a male problem just because a teeny % of women are involved, and those are usually because of men. Fuck off.

It was child sexual abuse on an epic scale. Nearly all were children.
It’s an absolute travesty and scandal.
I tried to read the impact statements and couldn’t get to the end.
The fact is do we know this has even stopped? What is being done to prevent the same thing happening again and again?

I believe they are having to crowd fund to even get some of the transcripts of the court cases. So no, it hasn't all been out in the open for years.

It is truly horrendous and words cannot express how badly these girls have been treated. By so, so many.

Child rape, murder and torture gangs

From the first 2013 article I linked

The girls – all of whom came from backgrounds in care – were drugged, raped, sold as prostitutes and trafficked around the country while supposedly in the safekeeping of the local authority in the city.

Police were alerted at least six times by victims – who were aged between 11 and 15 – of the exploitation and horrors that were taking place within flats and guesthouses and in the parks and open spaces of the Cowley area of Oxford

The gang of men – most of whom are of British Pakistani descent – subjected the girls to acts of sexual depravity of such extreme violence that police sources said it amounted to torture.
The men – who included two sets of brothers – denied 47 charges relating to six girls aged between 11 and 15 over eight years in the Cowley area.
In all they faced 66 counts, which included trafficking, forcing girls into prostitution, procuring an illegal abortion, rape and physical violence. The men plied the girls with drink and drugs such as crack and heroin, to which they became addicted.

Just because you couldn’t be bothered to read beyond the headlines doesn’t mean that this wasn’t covered by the media.

There was not this level of information. I say this as somebody who reads a broadsheet daily, watches , is active on social media, on here, etc.

As others said, the narrative was that these were girls tricked into having exploitative sexual relationships with older men who they believed were their boyfriends. They were plied with dino and dugs. Reprehensible, abusive, but not the level of violence and sadism we have since seen. Neither was the widespread corruption in the police, councils, social services etc given much prominence.

In any case, even if it were shouted to the rooftops previously, why should we not discuss it now? Why are you so keen for this not to be discussed?

Did you even read the Guardian links from 2013 in this thread? They repeatedly refer to ‘torture’. People don’t read newspapers then blame newspapers when they don’t know what’s in them!

It did not ‘all come out’. No one published any of the details which are now being publicised. I lived in Oxford at the time, and it was very difficult to find out any more than the bare minimum ; there was a lot of suppression under the guise of ‘protecting the victims’ . Yeah, the same victims who were appealing for help at the police station, Social Services, even the local press. No one wanted to know.

Why do you want to minimise this appalling behaviour?

I just looked this up. I didn't realise until I saw that crowdfunder that transcripts weren't just available by default (like Parliament).

Apparently they are all transcribed but there is a fee to access them which is per word or page so it gets really expensive for large cases.

You're wrong. There are gang controlled no-go areas, I know this because there's areas in my home town that are 'no-go' and there has been since the late 1990's.

People turned a blind eye because they were kids in care.

Looked after children have been raped, beaten, murdered and seen as easy pickings since day dot. One of the most well-known cases conspiracies involves an ex Prime Minister. Yet nobody believes it because the victims were kids in care. They’re not ‘credible’ witnesses because they’ve usually turned to drink/drugs to anaesthetise their pain. So men continue to get away with it.

This will never stop. In fact, there’s been a much bigger outcry over Asian gangs than there ever was over powerful white British gangs (some involving government ministers.

It is the opposite. This WAS widely reported in the press at the time. Please read the links already provided on this thread.

The REAL problem is that far too many people do not read papers or their websites and instead get their current affairs and knowledge from Social Media. Those same people are on here right now with 'media repressed it' and other conspiracy shite blah.

That is why it is possible to be so shocked now.

@Summerhillsquare What are you on about? I come from a *Naice area in Greater Manchester, it was happening in rougher areas all around and this was back in the 90’s and early 2000’s
Everyone knew to avoid them, everyone knew they weren’t safe and not just unsafe, many acted in such an evil way. When you turned down their advances (no matter how nicely) they shouted that you were racist.
This was a long time ago now, god only knows what it’s like now
This is no conspiracy (?!) never heard it called that before, it happened and likely is still happening now

Like the post office scandal. It was happening and reported on inside pages and sporadically. Think about what else took out attention then - royal weddings, celeb gossip, austerity.
Watch Three Girls on iplayer - as good a fictionalised account as Mr Bates and the Post Office.
But assumptions were made, impoverished teens did not appear to be believable, they could not advocate for themselves easily and like all violence against women and girls, it’s not an easy hero and villain narrative. Even things we now think were massive scandals like Peter Sutcliffe were cloaked in massive amounts of misogyny ie the women killed were ‘prostitutes’.
A few women in police/social services fighting for male bosses to take it all seriously and a growing sex work positive movement that sees women as freely selling their bodies, plus erosion of distinction between girls and women. And a perception that community tensions would grow if the fact that it was Asian men who were preying on white girls was seen as the most prominent factor.
But the two are merely the most starkly contrasted version of something that is prevalent ie ‘she was dressed like that, went there, was out at that time’ compared to those women and girls in a more strictly regulated/controlled community whose men are perceived to ‘protect’ their women.
It’s the patriarchy however you cut it. And rather than wonder, beat thing is to support women-led groups working to empower and support women and girls and help them when raped or abused in other ways.

I heard a documentary on Radio 4 one evening at least 15 years ago about Asian grooming gangs so it's baloney this stuff has been suppressed.

Yes.

I didn't hear about the girl who tried to defend herself with a knife being hit on the head with a baseball bat before being penetrated with it, did you?

Or the use of pumps to stretch girls for anal penetration by more than one man. Or the branding. Or this happening to girls as young as 11 or 12.

I don't recall reading about a woman notifying the police of screaming coming from a house and the police arriving to find two young girls (aged 13) drunk and nearly naked in a house with 7 men and the police arresting one of the girls and locking her in a cell. She was charged.

Where did you read about this at the time?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000kv7v Interesting podcast that I listened to nearly 5 years ago now. Horrifying how the victim was blamed.

Yeahh it was definitely common knowledge at least in 2016 because that’s when I was new to Twitter and tweeted about expressing my disgust after watching an itv or bbc documentary about it - and a bit off topic but all these far right accounts who were obviously focusing on it for the wrong reasons retweeted me, which was terrifying even though they were agreeing with me.

Interestingly none of them had ever and have ever since retweeted any of my other posts involving other child abuse scandals and cases which involved non-Asians. I wonder why.

Here. www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/JCO/Documents/Judgments/sentencing-remarks-r-v-dogar-others.pdf

Particularly disturbing to me is page 11. Although the whole thing made me weep for those young girls.

Yes - to try to find out more about the crimes and see if she would help them build a case!

There are claims that in 2008 a memo went out to say don't make arrests these girls made their own choices.

Not verbatim.

We need to know where that came from and why.

Is it true?

There are claims Gordon brown made it, when you think about a young girl trying too get help in a police station to be walked out by her attacker and raped again....

We need answers.

Agree. There are girls who get into unhealthy relationships and are plied with gifts and asked nicely. That's bad, but it's a different level of bad to this rape and torture and coercion.

Spot on.

I can't believe that there wasn't absolute outrage when this originally came to light. Instead it was minimised by much of the media, police, local councils and politicians of all persuasions. Called 'grooming' instead of what it was; rape, torture and murder. The BBC suggested that Britain has a problem with child prostitution. Child prostitution!! As if 10 and 11 year old's make that type of decision. This has been going on for decades, it involves 100's of thousands of little British girls and Pakistani Muslim men, and is still going on all over the UK. Why? Why has it been allowed to continue for decades?

I thought England was a wonderful country when I came here in the late 90's, I loved your culture, your opportunities and especially the British people. I would not raise daughters here now, your country is unrecognisable. Your government and authorities don't care for the indigenous people of this small island, and your children's cries are ignored for the sake of 'community cohesion'. Unforgivable behaviour from all of the authorities involved.

No, it hasn't stopped.

Nothing significant has been done to stop it happening.

People who try to raise it publicly are shouted down, intimidated and silenced.

There are still girls today this is happening to.