To suspect police are worried about vigilantes - Epsom attack

[ReadingCrimeFiction]

I live relatively close to Epsom and so this appalling assault is all over my news feeds and social media.

BBC News - Town left in shock by appalling rape outside church
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8dl5yevjg9o

The police have asked for witnesses but no descriptions have been given. Cue lots of very disturbing posts and comments from people who very clearly think these men are not white.

I can think of half a dozen scenarios where this is not being disclosed but, based on the comments, I think it all comes down to fears that local communities will take it on themselves to "apprehend" anyone who even vaguely looks like the perpetrators? And while the comments I am seeing are mostly white people being disgusting in their assumptions about brown and black people, i can imagine police would he equally concerned if, for example, the woman was Asian or Black and her attackers were white.

Is this where we are at? Where people make horrible racist assumptions and/or where police have to worry about how they will protect the broader community if they give any details of criminals?

As I said up thread the extreme far right will use the young woman's ordeal as a vehicle as they've done for decades.
I named the organisations the methods to spread their message has changed .
But the message is always the same.

I am ethnically Indian. The environment we are now living in is becoming quite toxic and dangerous. My wider family are experiencing considerably more racism when they are out and about and my kids (early 20s and half Indian/English) were recently questioned as to what they were doing here in their local Morrisons (the town has a hotel which was then housing asylum seekers). Any criminal act by anyone not white is being used now to create an impression that communities are under siege by anyone who does not look like them. The data does not in any way support this and my family have lived here, paid taxes and contributed via the NHS for over forty years. We live in dangerous times and it is getting worse.

I am so sick of this aspect of women's experience being rewritten to suit racist, male agendas.

Every woman I know has at least one experience of sexual harassment. Most of us have too many to count. 5 of my friends/family members have been raped. None got convictions. My stepmother was told if she went to court all his friends would declare under oath that she'd slept with them too - she was 16 at the time. Another was in care at 17 and raped by the adult son of the house. The court concluded she consented. Both made multiple suicide attempts. That same friend's sister was in a care home at 14 and regularly picked up by adult, white men. We flagged it with social services but they said they couldn't control her. My friends and I recently realised we all had 1 teacher at school who had "an affair" with a pupil under 16. It was never called grooming, or assault. I was first followed by a man when I was 9. The police said he admitted it, but was having a bad day and they didn't want to ruin his marriage or reputation.

Rape conviction rates have always been insanely low. Victims have been retraumatised by questioning. Male outrage has always been focused on false allegations.

So now, when a woman has been raped (white men gang rape too and form paedophile gangs) and the first response is to whip up anger against immigrants and to riot, I am absolutely furious. How dare they make this woman's life altering trauma about them. How dare they, who have been at best complicit in a culture that accepts sexual violence, use our safety to justify their racism.

Protect our women and girls was used to justify lynching in America too. If you only care when the perpetrator is not white, you don't care.

Agreed.

I also think it’s about ownership of women.

(I see this across ethnicities btw).

For a lot of men “we can abuse our women and girls - but how dare outsiders do likewise.”

Doesn't the report say they were acquitted by the jury?

Unless you were sat in court throughout the trial and heard all the evidence you wouldn't know why the jury acted as they did.

Haven’t read all the replies. I live not too far away. The police could alleviate some of this by releasing some information. Any information, however small. The silence is not helping.

There could be any number of operational and investigative reasons for the police not to give information. And their processes should not have to be compromised by appeasing racist right wing thugs.

If they needed to give descriptions in order to get sightings form the public they would doubtless do so.

The fault here is with the disgusting public, not the police.

It's possible the police know who they are looking for, if that is the case they may not release any details whilst they gather evidence and build up a case to get warrants for searches and to make arrests. This stops the suspects catching wind and destroying evidence/absconding.

They're not being silent. They put this statement out yesterday afternoon:

https://www.surrey.police.uk/news/surrey/news/2026/04---april/update-following-a-report-of-a-rape-in-epsom/

Away with your logic and reason and basic understanding of police work. Don't you know the police are clearly conspiring against the native British population??

(Sarcasm, for those who will inevitably misinterpret).

Oh they know that. They have 'form'.

It’s being alleged that the perpetrators are from the one of the two hotels in the area housing migrant men. Apparently these hotels are also very close to an all girls school.

Yes, it's horrifying.

And over the years I have rolled my eyes as Epsom has been repeatedly 'named' by newspapers, Time Out etc as one of the best places to live / quality of life etc.

Both times we went (to a particular specialist shop) my non-white family were accosted by street corner leaflet stalls and petition wielders promoting right wing / anti-immigration / white supremacist doctrine and this was a few years ago so I can only imagine what it is like now.

Sad for the good people of Epsom who want a lovely place to live that lives up to the media clickbait.

Although your link says;

Despite refining the type of offence heard at courts, 33% of defendants at the magistrates’ court, and 36% of defendants at the Crown courts had an unknown ethnicity. Data extracted from administrative court systems relies on ethnicity information recorded at earlier stages of an individual’s journey through the criminal justice system and the recording of this information is not mandatory.

> they don’t even have the brain to google the statistics which shows it is majority white British men

Be careful what you wish for - if they do google crime statistics, they will find that - for those where the race of the perpetrator are recorded - certain ethnic minorities are vastly over-represented in committing some crimes, which will just give them even more ammunition for the racist scattergun beliefs

'The men, all from Poland' - so, a group of migrant men.

https://www.thisisoxfordshire.co.uk/news/24933438.banbury-gang-rape-sentencing-teen-delayed-court/

If the police don't immediately announce that the person is white, then most times he isn't. That seems to be the case.

I'm so sorry that this is happening to you, but I'm afraid I'm not surprised.

I have a friend of South Asian heritage. His forebears have been in the UK since before WW1. He told me recently that the level of racist abuse he's experienced in the last few years has got worse and worse and he was the victim of a racially motivated attack late last year.

A gang of youths came up to him while he was waiting for a bus and started shouting at him to "Fuck off back home". When he replied "I will as soon as the bus gets here", they laid into him.

Like you, he's someone who's contributed a lot to his country: 10 years in the RAF and 15 years in FE.

"... Why are you so opposed to the idea that the police don't actually have the information and must be hiding it?"

As several posters have said earlier, the police apparently do have descriptions and are going to disclose them tonight.

Although why wait I don't know.

I know the hotels being referred to and the girls school - I went there. Has anyone from the school reported any issues?

"apparently" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence, but that aside, statements can't be drafted in a moment, press conferences can't be organised instantaneously, and senior police officers have other commitments they can't just leave at the drop of a hat.

Hence why they've probably scheduled it for later when everyone's had time to organise themselves.

I'd be interested to know too

My daughter goes to that school but I have no idea what the hotels are being referenced. The biggest issues to “ our women and girls” won’t be from some migrant hotel (if it exists )it will come from within the home or family unit. The call is literally coming from within the house as they say. Stranger rapes are incredibly rare but somehow loom so much larger in the imagination. Easier to demonise an immigrant than think your step dad or your brother would hurt you.

It has certainly veen interesting to see the difference in protests for sarah Everard vs what's happening in epsom.

Quite honestly, I have no idea how the police put out a description that actually helps. Pictures from.cctv, maybe, but i regularly see "can you identify this person who we believe can help with our enquiries" posts and often wonder if I would recognise MYSELF in such a picture, never mind some random bloke.

All the yelling about worrying about daughters and wives feels completely performative.

I really hope they find these men and if they are not British, I would certainly understand using that as proof that who we let in needs to ve considered. But in the meantime, I am worried about the brown young men I know locally who, I feel, are probably at risk right now.

I am also worried about yojng women who.probably dont feel.safe to go for a drink with mates, or for a night of dancing.

If I was a parent of a student in epsom, I would be wanting to know if these men were in the club. Was she drugged? Was she targeted? How do I assess the risk to my daughter?.

@Divebar2021 - you can be concerned about both, no? Or additionally lone males of any nationality à la the Wayne individual who killed Sarah Everard. Are you saying that women are a bit silly to be worrying about walking home alone in the dark because “stranger rapes are incredibly rare”?