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?

I knew of all those accusations at the time - read in newspapers, utterly horrifying, however it did seem like either the news was repressed or most likely people didn’t want to know/talk about it for fear of being accused of being racist.

Ironically it was mostly the people who I know who are more into conspiracy theories that were actually talking about it.

It’s nothing that the mainstream press haven’t reported. The Police Commissioner for Wiltshire called for a public inquiry into him, and it was knocked back by the Home Office.

It doesn’t astound me as it’s mumsnet which seems to have either a number of hard left, or a few shouty hard left characters, and their way of shutting down anyone’s reasonable concerns is to call them far right or racist. It’s meaningless and should be ignored.

Can you explain then why 80% of the men involved in these gangs just happened to be muslim?

Are we discussing the Catholic Church now? Or are we deflecting from grooming gangs in this particular case?

All of this and an appropriate and robust response also denies the far right the opportunity to weaponise the issue for their own ends.

Thousands and thousands of children - usually boys - were abused - which included being brutally anally raped - by Catholic priests around the world and this wa actively covered up by the Church. It’s a huge, global scandal and I can’t believe people don’t know about it.

And again, I am not disputing what you are saying. I am simply pointing out that in the 3 cases I am talking about none of the girls were in the care system at the start of the abuse and all 3 were from 'normal' and loving homes.
And please don't insult me by likening me to someone who brings up 'what about the men' when speaking about female victims of domestic abuse. As someone who suffered years of severe domestic abuse it's incredibly insulting and competently unnecessary. Thanks.

The question I keep coming back to is how exactly did Starmer fail.

Our government and society is being trolled by the world's richest man who for his own reasons has a vendetta against the PM.

We, and the rest of Europe, need to understand Musk for what he is and deal with his sh1t appropriately.

@Anonym00se - you need to check your source re: Leon Brittan. You do know this was made up by Carl Beech? Who was jailed for wasting vast amounts of police time and public money.

What’s worrying is that there are 14% at the time of me posting this that think the OP is being unreasonable.

I had to stop reading some things I saw published as felt sick. Those poor vulnerable girls getting tortured. To think that people turned a blind eye is horrific whether they are family or people in positions of responsibility. There need to be a full enquiry into this, who the perpetrators are, what their background is. People need prosecuting for turning a blind eye.

These particular gangs. Because that area has a high Muslim population. Look at the statistics for child sexual abuse across the UK as a whole. There's no bias towards Muslim men.
There's a bias towards men in general.
But if you were to experience sexual abuse in the UK it's statistically more likely to be from a white man unless you are in a certain area that has less white men.
Which is bloody obvious isn't it?

This is very similar to what the foster family I knew said.
Police just didn’t want to know.

The foster family used to take “ Hard to place” teens mainly, but girls who had been targeted like this were a nightmare to keep safe as they were so damaged before arriving at the foster home.
Goodness knows what the answer is.

( Not Rotherham, but a major city)

Absolutely - full transparency and a robust response to the minority of men of this specific demographic who are actually at the root of the problem would prevent far right misinformation and reduce general anti-muslim/anti-‘brown person’ sentiment. The anger and blame would be directed squarely at the perpetrators.

We are talking about poor white working class little girls raped by Asian Muslim grooming gangs at the moment. I'm not sure whether we need to discuss on this thread all the other cases of paedophilia. That rather detracts from the victims we are currently discussing.

Can you explain then why 80% of the men involved in these gangs just happened to be muslim?

I would say, in fairness, that they are from a country that borders on Afghanistan, so there are cultural elements at play that woudn't be the case with say for instance a Bosnian Muslim community.

Oxford?

i always think mumsnet is more right of centre. With associated biases

I would be very, very keen on some kind of Romeo and Juliet law in the U.K.

At the moment, though the age of consent is 16, the police and CPS aren’t interested in taking any action against the older partner of an under 16 if the under 16 says the sex was consensual. Romeo and Juliet laws basically say that action will be taken if the age gap is too big, regardless of consent.

No one is interested in teenagers being criminalised for having sex with other teenagers but the way the law is enforced at the moment, no action will be taken against a 25 year old having sex with a 15 year old. I think 21 would be a reasonable limit. It would automatically shift the way the police and CPS would look at situations where it’s reported that a child under 16 is involved with an adult. It would mean that action could be taken against the adult without cooperation from the child.

Read today's papers to find out why.

We are talking about because several people have had the audacity to try and link paedophilia to Islam. As though there's some special link. As though you can't find men using their religion to abuse children within any religion.

Yes there are rules on how sexual offending is reported. Some of this is to prevent people being identified and some is to stop really perverted people getting off on the details. It can also mean that ongoing investigations or other cases aren’t prejudiced.

I would have had these men imprisoned and if dual nationals, stripped of their British citizenship. We do this for terrorists, Why not these offenders?

Google it. There are many prosecutions for offences committed in the early 2000s around West Yorkshire. Often the trials were much later.

…and nobody has a problem discussing this and criticising it. It’s been widely discussed both within and outside the church.

The same needs to happen in the british pakistani communities in which these men operate, surely? Sunlight and air, transparency and justice, rooting out these scumbags from within their own communities/families/places of worship.

Could you help be by telling me which paper(s)?