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?

That’s the Bristol Evening Post. That is local news, not mainstream news.

The BBC managed one short article which has no follow up or mention of who they have arrested.

Thanks for proving my point.

You need to pay more attention. The story was on ITV news appealing for information weeks ago.

https://www.itv.com/news/westcountry/2026-04-03/appeal-to-identify-four-men-in-connection-with-bristol-rape-investigation

BBC follow up about arrest here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz90jwgyqyko

Honestly you really need to pay more attention.

https://www.avonandsomerset.police.uk/news/2026/04/arrests-made-in-bristol-rape-investigation/

Here's a link from the actual police force. Remind me what point I proved for you again?

That’s not what I’m saying. The known data shows that the offending rate is elevated in that group. The other information out there (proportion of children, ethnicity/origin) indicates that the known data underreports the issues.

The police will know if a criminal in custody is a white British man. He doesn’t have the option of concealing his ethnicity or country of origin. His full records from birth are available to the authorities. Some PPs seem to be unaware of this.

So it follows that where ethnicity is recorded as unknown or not declared, it won’t be the white British man because that is not an option for him. Obviously I’m not claiming that as definitive proof but in the absence of any other information, it could be a reasonable inference that the crime numbers for non white-British ethnicities are under-reported.

I and pp pointed out that it has not been widely reported on by the national media.

The Bristol Evening Post and one initial and limited article in the BBC doesn’t meet the threshold for a gang rape being ‘widely reported on’.

The ‘follow up’ article you managed to dig out doesn’t even mention gang rape and doesn’t come up on searches on ‘Bristol gang rape’. Apart from details on location you wouldn’t even know it was the same case. Maybe it isn’t. That is the point. We shouldn’t have to have extra search skills to find this information, the whole point of the media is to tell us the information.

So again, my point that the media are not reporting properly on this, rightly giving the public a sense that important information is being withheld, stands.

The above is to @SpaceRaccoon - I lost the quote somehow.

For more mainstream news sources see:

https://metro.co.uk/2026/04/04/urgent-seach-four-men-woman-raped-early-morning-city-centre-attack-27850640/

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15705171/amp/Police-patrols-raped-Bristol-attack-four-men-wanted.html

The Mirror if you want it, although it's not my usual paper of choice: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/bristol-rape-police-appeal-crime-36969869.amp

Even made the London Standard: https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/woman-raped-bristol-city-centre-b1277644.html

"Not widely reported on by the national media"? You must be having a laugh.

I refer you to my post above. That article with its careful decoupling of the information further backs my point.

We shouldn’t have to have extra search skills to find this information, the whole point of the media is to tell us the information.

You don't have to have "special skills". A mild interest, a smidgeon of initiative, and Google will do.

No-one is going to come to your house and spoon-feed you this information over coffee.

Well I didn't see that coming.

If he'd used this horrible crime to make political points, you would have been complaining about that.

"it's not in the mainstream news!!"

<Yes it is>

"But not in the way I demand!!"

So Metro is London, the London Standard is London, most people dismiss the DM out of hand (but good for them) and the BBC totally fudged its ‘follow up’.

It’s not making the information easily accessible which is their job. I typed in ‘Bristol gang rape’ and just the Bristol Evening Pistol and BBC came up. Funnily enough I don’t read the Metro or the London Evening Standard and no results came up for them or the others you have linked to.

They are using this to vent against something they are already furious about. Isn’t that what people do? They simmer on a resentment, and directly they get an opportunity to attach that resentment onto something current, they use it. It’s why we call it a tinder box. Any kind of heat and the whole thing will blow. The government just continues to ignore this though. Inflation goes hand in hand with civil unrest and the prices keep going up.

That was literally my point earlier when I accused Google of censorship. It took ChatGPT to explain that it wasn’t Google that was censoring, it was the news organisations!

I’m not sure you quite understand the role of the media. It is to report clearly on stuff that happens to as wide an audience as possible by using clear words, links and information. This has not happened here. As your posts demonstrate - the disjointed, mostly local reporting.

Thanks for that. I had a google and there is some info here on that meeting if anyone is interested.

https://www.itv.com/news/london/2026-04-17/epsom-protest-organisers-reassured-after-private-meeting-with-police

You are correct. They are not widely reporting on anything that could increase community tensions. I’m going to guess that directive is coming from somewhere higher, as it’s so widespread.

You’ll be accused if being a conspiracy theorist if you keep going.

That argument ended.

BBC, ITV, Daily Mail, Metro, Mirror etc are not "local" reporting.

Do you expect them to spoon-feed you? If you're interested in a subject, it's your job to read around it.

Was it an argument?

I thought it was me asking a question and explaining why I was asking and you deciding not to answer it, as is your right, but expecting me to answer yours. Which I did.

Anyway, hopefully you have learned something - that the capital city of Wales is not, as you thought, in England.

Exactly. I have friends in the media and marketing and comms. I hear from them how important it is to ‘trace’ a story through and link different elements together using key words and ensure that the information is made available to the widest audience who are often passive consumers (don’t always go off and do deeper research on things as LV does).

We know how badly the media has manipulated information about the trans/LGBTQ issue. For example the BBC repeatedly platforming drag queens and trans identifying males for their ‘feelgood’ or hard luck stories yet a stony silence, underplaying or outright concealment on the issue of sex offenders in that community. They have edited stories midway and deliberately hidden important information.

The media gets away with it because there is always someone there to take up the plausible deniability approach they employ.

This government is very keen on ‘narrative management’. Much of the left leaning media is too and the left leaning regulator is used to put pressure on the rest.

Yes, the case in Bristol has had much less publicity. There's nothing about it on the BBC website.

As the perpetrators in the Bristol case are South Asian, it doesn’t fit the BBC's agenda that ethnic minorities are always the victims or the good guys. Their coverage of the case in Epsom is all about the fear of vigilantes. They are so biased and inconsistent.