HELP! [Child rape gangs in Bradford]

[bradfordisdamned]

I know this is a horrible subject.

This news article from today shows how much it's being ignored here

After the death of Star Hobson, Bradford was stripped of its child protective services because it was completely unfit.

It continues to be an absolute disaster. I feel that this nightmare is being ignored because Bradford just so happens to be the city of culture for 2025. It's being ignored for many more reasons than that of course, but this is completely and utterly unacceptable. I think officials just don't want to be accused of racism and our children continue to suffer because of it.

Can you please help me make some noise with this? I am going to be writing to my MP, but this needs more attention. We need to put pressure on prominent people to get a public enquiry underway. Rejecting it is despicable. They just don't want to admit we have a major problem.

I am pasting the article here because unfortunately the newspaper site can be riddled with ads that sometimes make it unusable, but I didn't want to ask for Mumsnet help without providing sources.

I don't think I'm being unreasonable to want this enquiry to go ahead. I think Mumsnet will agree with me. Thank you in advance.

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Officials reject new calls for public inquiry on child abuse

A PUBLIC inquiry examining child sexual abuse in the Bradford area is "unlikely to provide us with any new learning", according to the district's safeguarding partnership.
In the House of Commons on Monday, Robbie Moore, Tory MP for Keighley and Ilkley, said "rape gangs and child grooming" have "haunted" the district "for decades" - and he again accused local leaders of refusing to launch an inquiry.

He added that he feared the scale of child sexual abuse and exploitation across the Bradford district would "dwarf that of Rotherham".

In 2014, a report by Professor Alexis Jay described how more than 1,400 children were sexually exploited by gangs of mainly Asian males in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, between 1997 and 2013.

Phillipa Hubbard, of the Bradford District Safeguarding Children Partnership, responded to Mr Moore's remarks by saying: "The national Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, which was published in October 2022 and to which Bradford contributed, has made it very clear that this is a national issue.

"Like many local authorities up and down the country, we know that agencies in our district have made mistakes in the past.
"This is why we commissioned an independent review into child sexual exploitation which was published in 2021 so that all the agencies in our district who work with children can implement the learning from past cases.

"The review was extremely detailed and thorough, and was written by an independent author. It looked in-depth at local and national learning and best practice.
"In addition to the review, our multi-agency safeguarding team undergoes regular independent scrutiny from Ofsted and the partnership also publishes an annual report, which anyone can read and which is open to public scrutiny.

"All the local agencies who are working in our district to keep children safe are committed to continued development and improvement.
"The view of our partnership remains that a public inquiry would cost a huge amount of money, use precious officer time and is unlikely to provide us with any new learning that would better-protect children from being abused."

In response, Mr Moore said: "This is a complete and utter dereliction of duty.
"The Council says its 2021 review was 'detailed', but it focused on just five children.
"Meanwhile, the Rotherham inquiry focused on the experiences of over 1,400 children.
"The idea that a Bradford inquiry would bring about no new information is an outright falsehood - and I am completely shocked by these comments.

Indeed. You'd think then that our brand new, completely different and supposedly more efficient government would want to conduct their own strenuous investigations and immediately put in place all recommendations wouldn't you? I wonder why they don't want to? 🤔

Was about to ask the same.

It would appear so?!
Also, apparently people aren’t bothered about appearing racist either, erm ok then

Why do you think ?

I don’t know what you are insinuating.

This is a genuine question because I know there could be issues I'm not aware of.

What was wrong with the 7 year enquiry that already happened and the recommendations (not implemented by the Tories) that came from that in 2022? Wouldn't it be better to push for Labour to accept those recommendations ASAP, rather than start another enquiry?

That article is wild. I mean I already knew of course but 🤬🤬🤬 We can't function as a civilised society when we have the police scared to police because of potential unrest. A bit like the rioting Romas somewhere in the Midlands/ North (??? 😅) last summer because one of their own had their children removed.

You will find a lot of deflection on this thread as people do not want to acknowledge that there is a problem with peadophile gangs within the Asian community. This deflection will not help past, present and future victims however. Would you mind sharing a template letter for us to write to our MPs?

Have you read the Guarduan article? It was the police, not the council, who requested that the documentary wasn't shown as scheduled because the BNP were using it as election propaganda and elections were about to take place.
The documentary was shown in August 2004.

I agree.
It's long past the time for talking, enquires, it's been done, no more, it just kicks the can of actually doing something about it down the road. Putting recommendations into action and making some big changes, not just for child rape victims but for adult rape victims as well.

Police / Council it doesn't really matter. Of course they work v closely and would have had discussions before approaching C4.

No I'm proud to not have a TV licence and would never watch something like that, I think it's disgusting and your slurs don't work anymore. I suggest you've been brainwashed by too much channel4/BBC/probably Guardian. Try doing some proper research from a respected source before wasting time commenting (and no those 3 aren't respected sources).

The police were concerned about unrest on the streets and Asian youths rioting (according to the article).

"with zero evidence other than silly gossip and a number of convictions"

I understand that the police told the girls not to be so silly and not to be racist when they tried to report the rapes.

I am from Bradford and have lived here for most of my life. I started getting sexual abuse and street harassment from men when I was young, and it continued until adulthood. I have been physically attacked. I was threatened with rape. A gang of men came into the shop I used to work in to threaten me with rape because I wouldn't serve them when they kept asking me if I had a fat pussy in Punjabi, thinking I didn't know what it meant.

I am a rape victim.

Bradford has a major child rape problem, from men of all backgrounds. I have experienced harassment and sexual violence from white men, and from asian men. I am big enough to defend myself now. Our vulnerable children are not.

The city of culture is a fucking joke.

I also made this point and it has been ignored. So clearly people dont want to engage with this idea. Makes you wonder why?

And alot of these cases are actually rape torture of 12 year old and under if you read Elons posts on X. It is embarrassing that most of the public don't know the disgusting detail because of the legacy media covering it up - I have been looking on bbc website page this week and zero details.

Agree was the police who asked for the doc to be pulled as per the article however they work together.

They can not be scared to intervene or disallow exposure of abuse because it may inflame tension.

Yes the documentary was then shown later in the year.

Shamefull that Channel 4 decided to go ahead with this program at this time.The focus should be on all those abused and tortured girls.Shame on you too…

We have had plenty of public enquiries. The Tories refused to implement the Jay recommendations. We need to pressure the government for action not another 2 year talking shop

It didn’t include many towns or cities where this is still happening, and has been for decades.

I grew up on the outskirts of Bradford in a northern old market town, and experienced abhorrent abuse by south asain makes. I also lived and worked in Bradford in my early twenties. It was an “open secret” what was/is going on and lots of people who are still in power actively took a blind eye. I even wrote to my local Labour south asain mp aged 17 and asked him to help intervene and had no response.

There are large areas of my hometown (one which none of my family live any more due to how disgusting it has become) I wouldn’t feel safe walking through, some examples of what it was like growing up there;

• My mum used to get taxis to work as she didn’t drive; rang from the landline. She would get propositioned in the taxi and then the disgusting phone calls started happening, they intensified when I answered the phone once and they realised a young girl lived there.
• Walking home from school men would drive up onto the pavements to prevent me passing and would demand blow jobs and other sexual favours to allow me to go past. They would only stop it if I screamed and or other cars came passed - this stared from age 12
• the above continued until I was 18/19 (very young looking 18/19 I may add, I only stopped getting asked for if in shops when I was 34) in very public places, nobody would help, on lookers would turn a blind eye and I had to learn what to say to get them to piss off and leave me alone
• I was on a bus to Bradford and men surrounded me and offered me a bottle of southern comfort to join them at a “party”, I ran away from them when I got to the bus station, ran towards the cinema where I knew it would be busy (so safer) and a different group of men tried the same thing
• A lone man stopped me early one Sunday morning in his car to ask for directions and as I approached the car it was clear her was having a wank
• my asain boyfriend and his sisters all knew what was happening and would tell me which areas and which shops to avoid. In fact a recall a couple of istances where me and my boyfriend would be on dates and men would come up speaking Urdu to my boyfriend and he would get extremely angry and almost got into a fight or two - because they assumed I was available to be passed around
• as a child my local shop was taken on by a set of Muslim brothers, I would go in to buy sweets and they would block the doors and try and get my to stay and go into the back, they would grope my hands when I paid for my sweets, I was about 9.
• my mum almost murdered (light hearted) me because my aunt though she saw me on my bike near one of the places where the gangs hung around, it wasn’t me, but goes to show how widely known it was happening

Not a single person in power has been investigated or prosecuted for their blatant disregard to investigate what as clearly going on - again teenage me wrote to my MP and was ignored. I reported some of the offences to the police but nothing was done about it. No follow ups just nothing. And it is still going on. It’s honestly so disappointing - I thought better of Jess Phillips but here we are. The victims, who have had much much worse than me happen, in the forgotten towns are being completely let down.

And whilst some prosecutions have been made of men in my home town - they where only found out because they was trafficking girls from towns where the original inquiry was focused.

I grew up in one of these towns and Pakistani Muslim would harass the schoolgirls in town, sat in their cars outside schools and cars homes and exploited ie raped and sexually abused the most vulnerable children.

I grew up in a very white town in the south and men there did exactly the same. They were white though.

So basically they need to stop the young Asian teens from following in their brothers and uncles footsteps of dealing vape spice weed and cocaine. Usually the first 2. Don't tell me I'm wrong as I am not. The young girls at school want to vape thc or spice therefore they are drawn to each other and end up being groomed. School need to discuss drugs and the dangers of vaping thc or spice parents need to be more aware of it and the punishment needs to be harder and the police need to be on it quickly when families report it not making the girls feel they are to blame. Definitely need an inquiry

That is terrible @Itsverycold . But surely the answer is to implement the recommendations of the national enquiry and then investigate how they need to be expanded or implemented locally?

This is also a genuine question.

Why are we saying EITHER another enquiry OR implementation of the recommendations.

Why do they have to be mutually exclusive.

Can we not implement the recommendations already agreed by both Labour and Tory parties while simultaneously pusing ahead with a national enquiry to join up all the local enquiries?

This is exhausting. No one in their right mind is suggesting white men don't do this. The issue here is that it was swept under the carpet for so long and professionals didn't want to deal with it as they were scared of being called racist. Police & social workers have come out & said this. I know Pakistani women who are quite open about the differences in upbringing (mainly attitudes to women and stereotyping white girls/ women) and the issues that this can bring when talking about young Pakistani men in the UK. The lad involved in the Manchester arena bombing inquiry said he didn't challenge the man as he was scared of being accused of racism. Why are tying yourself in knots to try and say this is not a problem? It makes absolutely no sense.