Posted by Fred Bassett
The child victims of rape were denied justice and protection from the state to preserve the image of a successful multicultural society
Sam Ashworth-Hayes. Charlie Peters
04 January 2025 6:00am GMT
Safeguarding minister Jess Phillips’ decision to block a public inquiry into the Oldham grooming gangs seems, from the outside, to be almost inexplicable. Children were raped and abused by gangs of men while the authorities failed to protect them.
A review of the abuse in Oldham was released in 2022, but its terms of reference only stretched from 2011-2014. Survivors from the town said that they wanted a government-led inquiry to cover a longer period, and catch what the previous review had missed. In Jess Phillips’s letter to the council, revealed by GB News, she said she understood the strength of feeling in the town, but thought it best for another local review to take place.
This is a scandal that should be rooted out entirely, and investigated by the full might of the British state. Voices ranging from Elon Musk to Kemi Badenoch have joined the calls for an inquiry. Yet the Government seems curiously reluctant to dig into the failings of officials.
This reluctance is not new.
Across the country, in towns and in cities, on our streets and in the state institutions designed to protect the most vulnerable members of our society, authorities deliberately turned a blind eye to horrific abuse of largely white children by gangs of men predominantly of Pakistani heritage.
Over time, details have come to light about abuse in Rotherham, in Telford, in Rochdale and in dozens of other places. But with the stories released in dribs and drabs, and the details so horrific as to be almost unreadable, the full scale of the scandal has still to reach the public.
Suffer the children
The following paragraph makes for difficult reading. But you should read it, if you can. It’s drawn from Judge Peter Rook’s 2013 sentencing of Mohammed Karrar in Oxford.
Mohammed prepared his victim “for gang anal rape by using a pump…
You subjected her to a gang rape by five or six men. At one point she had four men inside her. A red ball was placed in her mouth to keep her quiet.”
Her story is horrific.
It is also far from unique.
Take “Anna”, from Bradford. Vulnerable and in residential care, at the age of 14 had made repeated reports of rape, abuse, and coercion. When she “married” her abuser in a traditional Islamic wedding, her social worker attended the ceremony. The authorities then arranged for her to be fostered by her “husband’s” parents.
In Telford, Lucy Lowe died at 16 alongside her mother and sister when her abuser set fire to her home in 2000. She had given birth to Azhar Ali Mahmood’s child when she was just 14, and was pregnant when she was killed.
Her death was subsequently used to threaten other children. The Telford Inquiry found particularly brutal threats. When one victim aged 12 told her mother, and the mother called the police, “there was about six or seven Asian men who came to my house. They threatened my mum saying they’ll petrol bomb my house if we don’t drop the charges.”
Yet in a pattern that would repeat itself, Telford’s authorities looked the other way. When an independent review was finally published in 2022, it found police officers described parts of the town as a “no-go area”, while witnesses set out multiple allegations of police corruption and favouritism towards the Pakistani community. Regardless of the reason, the inquiry found that “there was a nervousness about race… bordering on a reluctance to investigate crimes committed by what was described as the ‘Asian’ community”.
Similar concerns applied at the council, where anxieties over appearing racist saw safeguarding officers waving away concerns simply because the perpetrators were Asian. It was felt that some suspects were not investigated because it would have been “politically incorrect”.
This is not to say that the council did nothing. Aware that taxi drivers were offering children rides for sex, in 2006 it suspended licensing enforcement for drivers, allowing high risk drivers to continue practicing. As the Telford Inquiry found, this was “borne entirely out of fear of accusations of racism; it was craven”.
A review of the abuse in Oldham was released in 2022, but its terms of reference only stretched from 2011-2014 Credit: Getty
And above all, there was the concern over community relations: senior council staff were terrified that the abuse of children “had the potential to start a ‘race riot’”. The result was stasis, despite officials acknowledging in at least one case that abuse by Asian men had gone on for “years and years”.
It had: at least 1,000 girls were abused in the town between 1980 and 2009. Yet even this conservative estimate was disputed by authority figures, with West Mercia police superintendent Tom Harding insisting in 2018 the figure was “sensationalised”.
The independent review later found it entirely plausible.