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?

Charlie Peters reported that Muslim girls were abused too but that took place within the family and they weren't passed around like non Muslim victims. I don't think they've ever been considered and probably have no hope of seeing justice for the crimes committed against them.

I did not realise there were murder cases? Any link?

Those are individual cases. We are talking about 250,000 victims across all major cities here. It's in a different league numbers wise.

I don't think cover-ups need to be conspiracies and organised at the highest levels. They can be what we're seeing here - unspoken, organisational cultures.

Surely you know why this was suppressed?
The worst crime in the UK is not the rape and torture of young white girls but god forbid being accused of racism.

people saying there weren't gang controlled areas in the towns where this was going on clearly never lived there.

It was/is well known by those of us who live in these towns that this shit was going on, how rife it was, how BAD it was (and still is)

We have been saying all this since it started to come out, but whenever we bought it up we were accused of being racist, and shut down, and deleted.

YANBU to be horrified... YABU to have not listened the first time around.

Reading this really breaks my heart. You would hope lessons have been learned

But they were! This is from 2013 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-21445538. Certain extremely explicit/upsetting details are often omitted in court reporting on the grounds that they might traumatise readers and because children may read them. This is normal and applies to all types of distressing details in different types of crimes.

No never seen any news on this sex gang

Here is the testimony of a survivor. Harrowing and explains why the Muslim offenders targeted non- Muslim girls thus indicating a religious element.

Exactly the same. I thought they were being coerced into regular sex with individual blokes, not brutally gang raped and tortured. I had no idea. I am horrified and absolute furious that people in authority knew this and did so little. Some of these men were even given deportation orders that were never acted upon.

Pretending that the problem isn’t related to the views and behaviour of a certain demographic of british pakistani muslim men is a) not going to make the problem go away and b) is astonishingly insulting to the vast majority of british muslim men of all backgrounds who wouldn’t dream of doing something so appalling, regardless of their personal/cultural views on women.

This behaviour HAS to be universally condemned from all sides, without any misplaced ‘racial sensitivity’ bullshit that patronises and demeans the law-abiding and non-abusive vast majority of british muslim men. The public need to see these rapists and child abusers being denounced by the authorities and by their own communities like the scum that they are. That’s the only way forward for both community harmony and the safety of vulnerable children of all backgrounds.

I'm not disputing that children growing up in care and living in poverty need greater protection, I'm pointing out that not all victims were part of the care system. The 3 girls I know of came from 'normal' families who fought tooth and nail to get them away from their abusers.
This can happen to any child, no matter their background or family situation.

Exactly. It's the only way.

And are we all forgetting the general misogynistic state of society here??
You can talk about Islam all you want but it's the UK who had topless 16 year olds in its newspapers even in the early 00s..
It's the UK who doesn't take sexual violence against women seriously.
The rape prosecution rate is appalling in general.
Lots of posters saying there's some conspiracy... there's no conspiracy, this is systemic.
Many of these girls were just considered sex workers because they were over 16.
The police didn't take it seriously back then.. and still don't much now.
And baring in mind many of these girls insisted they were consenting to the police.. they viewed these men as their boyfriends etc..
More needs to be done to educate and protect girls in care and living in poverty or vulnerable situations, about grooming.
And it needs to be taken a lot more seriously when parents or family members raise concerns about grooming.. even if the child is over 13.

That’s the main issue. We saw it in the 60s, 70s and 80s when children in care homes were subjected to appalling, organised abuse. When a child did speak out they were dismissed. When those scandals finally came to light you would have thought the lessons would be learned. Instead, again, the girls that were abused were regarded as unreliable witnesses, troubled, just like the ‘delinquents’ that were abused in the generations before them.

People have objected to the use of ‘grooming’ because it minimises the horror of what was done to the children but it’s a major part of why it went on unchecked for so long. The girls were vulnerable. They didn’t come from solid, middle class families and have people watching out for them. That’s why those specific girls were targeted. They willingly suck out to be with someone who showed them affection and willingly drank and smoked drugs. That’s why it was easier for the police to be dismissive when the girls went missing and turned up intoxicated. Grooming is the act of a predator. Selecting victims that are unlikely to be missed, unlikely to be believed and easy to manipulate.

‘You can find this with any religious extremism including Christianity.’

I’ve heard it all now. Care to link to any examples of a group of church going chaps dilating a girl’s anus so that four of them could sodomize her simultaneously? I feel that if this was the case, we would have heard about it, loudly and often, from the ‘white Christians do it as well’ lobby.

It astounds me that there are posters on here calling people thick racists. What the actual fuck is wrong with you?

This is probably the most notorious. House set alight killing a pregnant 16 year old who had already had a child from abuse at 14 , and her family. https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/10544477/telford-grooming-gang-dad-killed-mum/amp/ Another child was killed with heroin

Of course it can happen to any child.
But children living in care are vastly more at risk.
This is like bringing up domestic violence against men when talking about domestic violence against women!
Of course it's still an issue that needs addressing.. but there's a massive massive problem regarding sexual abuse of children in care. It's clearly a factor that needs addressing. They are deliberately targeted

It's extraordinary that people take that approach. The Catholic Church had to take responsibility for the abuse. It's as if some people feel that grooming gangs should get a free pass because of "racisim".

Mostly allegations with no substantiation about cover up. We know the Police treated the victims like they were responsible for their plight. That and guidance over witness credibility, which Starmer had re-written, has much to answer for.

These activities by a small sub set of Pakistani heritage men were, and continue to be, lazily referred to as Muslim Rape Gangs, effectively tarring the whole if Islam. With that as a background it's not surprising there were public order concerns around a backlash against anybody who was brown skinned.

https://archive.ph/GiOZP

That is the trouble with covering things up. No one knows the truth so innocent people will be hurt. Labour need to allow a national enquiry even if it leads to Keir having to take responsibility for his failures and resign.

Are you actually joking??
Have you no idea the abuses committed under the banner of the Catholic church in Ireland for example??
And evangelical Christianity..
Just bloody Google it before talking nonsense.
Surely you've heard of the documentary "keep sweet pray obey" on netflix?
It's on netflix right now. Go and watch it.
Absolutely horrific.