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.

--

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.

I wish what you saying was true .

Where I grew up there were middle class areas immune to the issue. Maybe if you grew up in a middle class part of town you wouldn’t know about the men who are doing what they are doing.

As we know, predators know their victim, and it’s the poorest and the girls who no one cares about who are targeted.

There are people on the thread who have real world experience of the issue.

I for one moved to London in the late 90s and when I told people what was happening was dismissed. All these years later there are still people who refuse to believe it’s true.

It is uncomfortable to hear but it is Mirpuri Pakistani men who are targeting girls. It happened when I was at school and it happens now.

That's horrendous. I'm surprised you moved away. Of course you shouldn't have to though.

OMFG this thread is horrendous. How can anyone not see this happened to thousands of vulnerable girls - many in care, and continues to. Maggie Oliver's research shows Snapchat makes grooming and exploitation much easier.
Wake up. Yes racists use this as ammunition but there are gangs of men grooming girls in the North of England. Bradford, Telford, Rotherham, Oldham, Bury, Burnley, Rochdale, Todmorden, Sowerby Bridge, Halifax, Huddersfield, Keithley. All these towns have suffered horrendously and it need to stop. Anyone watching that documentary about the ONE false claim need to take a long hard look at the facts.

I'm not surprised!!!

I work with the victims. This is how I know it is true. I myself have been ignored by Police when reporting this.

Mind you, some posters on this thread are foolish enough to suggest that we enlighten ourselves about what is really going on in the world by reading Elon Musk's messages on X.

This hasn't happened on this thread.

You are making things up.

Some people are so simple minded!!! Rather than having difficult conversations and hearing things they may not like, they decide to just say it's racist. As that's so much easier. For the love of God!!! The OP was asking people to sign the petition. If you don't want to sign the petition and don't believe it's a problem then just move along. Why feel the need to comment and minimise the experiences of thousands & thousands of children. And why is it always women that seem to find it so hard to believe??

Somebody on another thread suggested a documentary recently aired by channel 4 that explored a case of so called Asian grooming that was entirely made up by the accused and I think it really goes to show how we can’t just believe everything we read or hear about with regards to horrific crimes like these.

I don’t know if there is any way to confirm or deny the veracity of what this poster is alleging in Bradford. I admit I have only been once in my life and it looked like a beautiful and well integrated Yorkshire city to me, I certainly didn’t notice anything untoward going on.

Exactly this, where I grew up there was lots of people living in poverty (real poverty where they couldn’t afford the £5 a week to hear their prefabricated house), working class like me, and the middle class. All very neatly segregated into our own parts of town.

it was the girls who lived in extreme poverty and working class girls that where targeted, knowing we had minimal supervision because we was either in care home, had absent parents due to addiction or where simply left alone to walk home from school because our parents where working multiple jobs to afford to feed and clothe us.

My dad would be away for the whole week on the Lorry’s and my mum worked in a bakery from 5am and then in a cafe or supermarket until early evening. I was left in charge of my younger siblings aged 13, in the holidays I was in charge of providing all 3 meals a day. The sheer lack of perspective and privilege of these posters who dismiss how these factors was used to groom these young girls is off the charts.

It is easier for people to dismiss it as racism.

It is difficult for people to comprehend and I don’t mean that in a condescending way but it is just a different culture to if you grew up down south.

In my town the police / councillors and even a lot of the teachers were very sexist, usually ex miners, who had no interest in listening to a young girl’s complaints or in getting involved in anything to do with the poorest girls who were being abused. They wouldn’t like the Pakistanis either but they wouldn’t say anything to them if they were harassing girls.

Yet women who grew up there have bravely shared their experiences with you on this thread. Some women cry rape. We know this. It's nothing new. Do we, as women, then not believe other women who tell us they have been raped? Of course we don't. Do you have any idea how hard it is for a child to come forward to disclosure sexual abuse? For those same children to have then been treated as they were, is Britain's shame.

Ok, so following on from the question about why we could not investigate the recommendations of the 2022 inquiry and have another one - is that not what Jess Philips suggested? That there should be local investigations into the local situation? Are people worried that local investigations would continue to cover up inaction by local authorities in certain areas and feeling that it needs to be a national enquiry to counter that?

Stop derailing this thread with the Barrow doc! We aren't talking about bloody Barrow!

exactly! Seems suspiciously times to me that this would air exactly when the scandals have come back to light.

THANK YOU!

I’ve name changed for this comment because I need to protect my SD but I couldn’t read and run.

My SD was let down by the same social worker as Star. Her mother had 9 reports made against her by neighbours and friends yet the SW closed them down without speaking to dad and taking mums word ‘he wasn’t in the picture’ and on another occasion, dead. We had 50/50.

It all came out when my SD bravely informed her school of abuse by her mothers partner. The school called us, as she was living with us fully at this time and refusing to go to mums for 8 weeks which mum was happy with not seeing her or speaking to her despite out attempts. The school however also called mum to give a heads up. Mother and her partner both work for West Yorkshire Police. Family courts and eventually a new social worker deemed no further direct contact ever even though the police case was closed as NFA.

We went through our MP to understand the NFA as all evidence indicated the abuse - lots of professionals involved. The report into what happened stated it was a case of he said she said and as she was only 7 at the time of disclosure, it wouldn’t be taken further but if she recalls further details as she matures it can be looked into. The crime commissioner office was very apologetic and said ‘for what it’s worth, we believe SD’.

Both still work for WYP. The SW who failed and failed when abuse indicators were first reported obviously didn’t have anything to answer for because they had already left as did the Manager and another senior manager who is apparently involved in referrals.

I support you OP. They are all out to cover themselves and their reputation as well as perception. We however have decided to look forward and continue keeping SD safe, thriving and we haven’t made it a taboo subject because she done absolutely nothing wrong and should feel any shame etc because of another adult.

Yes we are worried local inquiries would cover up the local cover ups we have all witnessed.

The people who live in the towns and cities want an independent and fair inquiry that covers the cope of all towns and cities where these crimes have happened. Dewsbury, batley, Huddersfield, Bradford, Oldham, Bolton the list goes on.

Referendum? No thank you.

Keighley is the consistuency where Labour MP Ann Cryer tried to bring attention to what was going on.

Having visited somewhere once you haven’t had the experience of a young , poor often neglected child who would be a typical victim.

This abuse unfortunately happens in most west and South Yorkshire towns.

Whenever there is some sort of scandal there will be someone who wants to benefit from it for whatever reason.

Just because one person made up a story doesn’t negate the fact that there is a major sexual abuse scandal that goes on to this day.

Not sure judging by your response if you think I've posted on this before, but I haven't.

The police didn't do anything about these crimes because they don't care about these girls. To them, they are not even victims, these children are just "easy" and "asking for it".

The police ignored Savile's open abuse of vulnerable children in care homes for the same reasons. That and the fact that some of them are also committing the same crimes if they can.

The BBC viewed young teenage girls the same way. Revered DJ John Peel and a ton of others, plus still idolised pop and rock stars like Bowie and the Rolling Stones were also known to be abusing kids and got away with it.

In my school years in the 90s men were always hanging around the school gates trying to pick off vulnerable girls, even getting one (that I know of) pregnant during her gcses (of course she was shamed and the guy was not even mentioned).

When teen pregnancy stats were all in the headlines, no one made anything of the fact that most of the fathers of those babies were grown men in their twenties or older.

It's only very recently that young teenage girls have been seen by the establishment as what they really are, i.e. children and potentially victims of abuse.

Why? are us northerners too thick to vote on important issues?

Oh my god

In relation to Star, I have a connection to that horrible family that I can't talk about because it would be so outing and I can't cope with the inevitable fallout because the bastard is still alive, and I was only a teen at the time.

This fucking city is cursed.

Agree, it is actually irrelevant.

Like when there’s a discussion about rape and someone is banging on about false accusations.

After Brexit, I don’t think the general public should be trusted with a referendum on anything ever again, never mind something as serious as this subject.

I think truthfully Labour will get to the bottom of this eventually, they just need more time to get round to it after the mess this country was left in by the previous lot. Some places like Yorkshire have been woefully left behind for many years and, as a strong Labour heartland Keir will be keen to win the hearts and souls of the people in those counties. So keep pressing the relevant people in your constituency OP and hopefully you’ll find some resolution on the matter.