Rochdale grooming trial: Nine found guilty

[ariadneoliver]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-17989463

Hope they get long sentences.

Guardian breaking news - the 59 year old ringleader has been given 19 years....

'but I believe the 59yo is some kind of religious figurehead in the local community'

Lucky for him he's not a Catholic priest. One rule for one religion, eh?

Is it possible the 59 year old is being prosecuted in another case and so can't be named so he is given a 'fair trial' in the next case? Just a thought

it could also be that the 59 yo is related to a victim and naming him could mean that she became identifiable. Just a thought....

When I was at uni in the mid-nineties it was routine for large gangs (think 20 plus) of young Asian males to form a line across the whole of a shopping arcade and block the doorways and refuse to allow white shoppers passed or in through the doors. One day I put up with the insults of white slag etc and walked through the phalanx. One of the lads stubbed out his fag on my coat burning a hole through it. The security guards stood and watched.

It was also routine to block the doors of the refectory and abuse white female students who tried to get through.

The uni's answer to the problem and the myriad complaints. To authorise a written report from one of their own lecturers on "The Use of Public Space by Asian Youths in and Around the University Campus".

The lecturer declined as he did not want to put his name to it and the problem continued.

I also had bottles and cans thrown at me. The intimidation was full on. That was the worst three years of my life.

@redruby Where was that?

EthelB

I will PM you if that is okay?

of course, understand if you don't want to out yourself.

redrubyshoes and ethelb - sorry to hear about your experiences but sadly not surprised that the verbal abuse I experienced in the late 'eighties evidently escalated in later years. I do think the Authorities in Greater Manchester were hamstrung by a fatal combination of so-called political correctness and also by the actuality of local politics.

I've been thinking about this case and my own experiences a lot this morning. The asian lads who thought it was OK to call caucasian women "white slags" 20 years ago are now roughly the same age as the perpetrators in this case.

The leader of the gang has the cheek to claim the prosecution is racist because the jury was white. The gall of the fecker.

And one of them is appealing because Nick bonehead Griffin tweeted about the case.

I live and grew up in a northern city and as a teen me and my friends (some mixed race so not all white) were harassed lots of times by groups of asian lads. It happened lots, and because it was so common I never really thought anything of it. I have been kerb crawled lots of times, one time a car full of lads called out and asked me for a shag, I told him to fuck off. He called me a ugly white slag and spat at me!

A girl from school who was in a care home had a much older asian boyfriend and used to brag about having sex and threesomes with his mates too. Looking back she was a victim like these other poor girls.

I'm sure lots of asian girls are being abused too by these men but behind closed doors and will probably not speak out.

People are scared of bringing up the fact these crimes are disproportionately committed by asian men but you can't argue with facts can you?

The bnp will use this to get supporters in my area and iv already had some leaflet from them with a kind of "lock up your daughters" scaremongering!

"People are scared of bringing up the fact these crimes are disproportionately committed by asian men but you can't argue with facts can you? "

I think this is the problem with focusing too much on race. Because people start to think and talk like this - but there are no facts here that indicate perpetrators are disproportionately Asian men. Only that there are some in the Asian community that target White girls.

I think not addressing the cultural factors here is shortsighted. I am appalled at the lack of action in some cases that may have been down to a belief that protecting race relations was more important than protecting girls. But authorities have always been reluctant to protect girls from men, so even that may not have had much to do with race.

But there are plenty of White men who treat girls just as badly and it would be a mistake to focus on this as if it were an exclusively Asian crime. This is mainly a mysogynistic crime. Not a race one. We have a lot of factors in almost all British sub-cultures, from Peckham Gangs to Oxbridge Junior Common rooms, that mean too many girls and women are sexually targeted and abused by men of all races. If you take the race out of this, you would still have a terrible crime. If you took the misogyny out, you wouldn't.

@such the thing is that the crimes are nto disproportionatly done by asian men. the point is that it is racially motivated.

If the one that is supposedly 22 is actually that age then I'm a monkeys uncle. He looks more like 42.

ethelb I quoted a comment by ButteryBiscuitBase as an illustration of why I think a lot of people want to stay away from the race discussion. I don't think avoiding talking about the cultural factors that influence different sectors of our society is good, but when people so often turn that to a way of scapegoating one section of society I think it is a difficult conversation to have and I understand why some people want to ignore it. I also think it helps the majority (i.e. White British) avoid looking at the cultural elements of our own lives that allow men to do this to girls and women within the dominant culture too.

Also, I don't think it is a racially motivated crime, it is a sexually motivated crime where the victims were targeted because of their race. It's misogyny that is the driver, not race.

@such I don't really agree. I think it is both sexually and racially motivated.

Why can't people accept that white people can be victims of racism? I'm not saying that white people are oppressed by society, of course not.

But in this situation white women were targeted because they were white women.

Frankly I think the focus on trying to say it's not about race (by the police) shows clearly that it is.

After all they are the ones who know the statistics, they have the evidence, about time people got over themselves and spoke the truth. after all it has been well known for a long time that crimes do run along social and ethnic divides.

Most burglars are white working class men where as most muggers are black working class men and corporate fraud is committed most by white middle to upper class men.

It's the constant denial that things are race related that feeds into racism, we need an honest society rather then one that tries to pretend everything is equal, such things breed suspicion.

The sentences they have been given are ridicilously lenient. Why do the media say things like jailed for a total of 77 years? It's meaningless. Some of them men will be out in under 2 years, what kind of sentence is that? They should all be deported IMO, as should any immigrant that breaks the law.

Agree with ryoko whenever the authorities deny Race is a big factor in cases inevitably they are trying to put a lid on people discussing it. The police and ss action in this case has been appalling apparently they were eventually forced to take action by the school which one of the girls attended because they were so concerned about the number of Asian men picking her up and when she eventually became pregnant. She 13 years old at the time. If the authorities can overlook crimes such as this in the name of not upsetting certain communities you wonder what else is being left to its own devices. Maybe if this affected the daughter of a prominent figure they'd have been more of a hue and cry much earlier.

I have witnessed this in the south too. I am worried that the media coverage is meaning people assume this is a problem only with asian men in northern towns when in reality grooming is common across a wider society. However I think there are some unique factors.

The situation I have seen were very similar to those in this case, but the girls lived with their families not girls in foster care. The men targeted young girls over women because they wanted sex, and knew they wouldn't be able to treat many older women like that and get away with it. The schoolgirls were young and naive and easily tricked.

White girls were generally targeted over asian girls as they were out on the streets more, allowed more freedom and so were more available. Also they wouldn't dare do anything within their own community where people would talk, it would be discovered and they would be punished, probably vigilante style. The segregation between the white and the asian communities meant they were able to keep it quiet from both their own families and the families of the girls. Speaking another language that the girls didn't understand was also useful, the gangs could speak about them and trick them easily.

I think it is a sexually driven crime, first and foremost but thinking of the victims of 'lesse/other' made it easier to commit.

Its all so very sad and agree has been going on for too long. Has been a lot of coverage on Woman's Hour of this subject over the years but along with the high incidence of cousin intermarriage in some communities and the problems that causes from a genetic perspective on babies - there has been resistance to discuss it for fear of being branded racist.

Was also wondering what the 'legal reasons' were that prevented the hideous 59 year old being named.

It's way more complicated than saying we need to talk about race and crime. Sexual exploitation is actually, statistically, most likely to be done by a white male. White people who do this tend to do it differently though: one child at a time, grooming to the point of having the child staying with them to further isolate, moving the child away from their family, then once fully dependent on them they bring in the groomer's friends as well for sex. They may have multiple children at once but tend to keep them separate. These Asian gangs tend to work as a group, use more drugs/alcohol rather than the gift based grooming (though drugs/alcohol and gifts are a key part for both groups), and tend to use multiple children at one time at one place in party-style fashion (which Whites will also do as well, but usually later in the process with one child at a time). Thankfully charity groups working against child sexual exploitation such as Safe and Sound and Just Whistle are starting to get more work to help children and parents learn the signs of grooming and community based groups, particularly Asian groups, are speaking out against it more.

Agree with ryoko, obviously other ethnic groups target and sexually abuse young girls but this type of situation seems to be associated more with asian men. I'm sure these men would do the same to young asian girls too and most likely have but due to "shame" within the community it is more likely to be swept under the carpet than reported. I know quite a few asian women who were abused in childhood by older relatives but never reported it as the "shame" it would bring on the family and fear.

They targeted these girls because they had access to them and knew how to manipulate them. They are paedophiles at the end of the day their race has nothing to do with that.

This was happening in Blackpool (and probably still is) a few years ago. One young girl is thought to have been murdered by the men who were abusing her and her friends... in exchange for bags of chips from their takeaway and alcohol. There has been a trial, but her body has never been found.

When my classmates were targeted by older asian men in the 80s it was usually one or two blokes who would also ask the girl they were seeing to bring for friend for his mate. Over the years it seems it has become more organised with a network of men from a particular community targetting young vunerable girls systematically for sexually abuse. The girls are pimped probably not for money but to boost the egos of the men and to increase their position within their own network as in "look at what I've bought to the party". When I watched the Dispatches programme on this subject 10 years ago the reporter noted as a lot of the men worked as taxi drivers they had the means of transporting the girls to other cities to be used by men there and also whisk them away if parents, the police or ss came looking for them.