Abuse of hundreds of girls as young as ten covered up by police and social services

[edam]

today's Times - sadly behind a paywall but you can see the first par here - has a major investigation into appalling, widespread organised rape and abuse of girls in South Yorkshire.

Not only did police and social services fail to help the girls, let alone prosecute the offenders, they actually charged victims and their parents - one girl was charged with using drugs, while the men in the room with her went free, while one father who tried to get his daughter back was charged with racial harassment, ffs. AND his poor daughter, who had been drugged, was charged with assault. Another parent was charged with breach of the peace, another girl - only 13 - was arrested for a public order offence and convicted, while the men went free.

It beggars belief. The Times has seen more than 200 confidential documents from Rotherham detailing the crimes which were often not investigated - even though police and social services knew full well who the perpetrators were. But they were more concerned with hushing up the heritage of the offenders - Pakistani, Kurdish, Iranian and Kosovan gangs and families - than investigating hideous crimes.

In one case, police in Bristol rescued two girls who had been kidnapped but South Yorkshire police (where they lived) didn't even question them.

Neither the police nor the council apologised, btw. Oh no, the council just says ofsted think they are great and 'some work with individuals did not lead to court cases for a variety of reasons'. S Yorks Police say now they have eight officers looking into child sexual exploitation and they are 'a leading force in safeguarding vulnerable children'.

I suspect it won't just be Rotherham or Rochdale - I bet this has been happening elsewhere. Look at that group in Oxford who are being prosecuted at the moment (not found guilty yet, obv.). I don't know whether Oxford SS and police have been better at picking up and dealing with these crimes, but I would be surprised if there hasn't been similar negligence on the parts of the authorities in other areas. If Rochdale and Rotherham were outliers, their SS and police would have known that other forces/services were acting on these crimes. The fact that South Yorks and Lancs thought it was OK to brush these horrendous cases under the carpet (and West Yorks according to that brave MP who tried to expose these crimes there) suggests that's the attitude elsewhere as well.

It is an absolute disgrace. what a bunch of mysogonists. I am fed up with this stupid politically correct egshell walkiing that pervades GB.

would they treat their own wife,dd or sister like this? so why are other creeds and cultures fair game

Esther Tantzen has written about it today on the BBC website here.

Rantzen not Tantzen!

Ah yes - you can marry at the age of 13 in Iran. Girl power, eh?

Well said that woman. We are going to interview her in my magazine shortly - will definitely ask her about this. (Interview is mainly about dementia, but I'm glad Esther has spoken out on this issue.)

But really I think the scandal is not the behaviour of these men but the response of the authorities.

It is both.

There is no way sex education in western schools influences Muslim misogyny. The misogyny is there to begin with. It is there in countries where there is no sex ed in schools.

Extro -- I am not characterising sexual abstinence as bad. What I am saying is that when it is expected of women and not men, and when lack of it is used to blame victims for influencing men to commit crimes then what we are looking at is a society where male power is used against women. That is the case in the South Yorkshire scandal.

And yes, I do think one of the main ways Muslims maintain their cultural identity is to assign second class citizen status to women this is evident in the increasing numbers of Muslim women who 'choose' to cover faces, a 'choice' that is financed by Wahhabi money from SA that pays for conservative imams preaching the very conservative Saudi version of Islam and consciously seeking to drown out all others and I wholeheartedly approve of legislation like the burkha ban in France that unabashedly seeks to affirm a western idea about women's freedom.

I wouldn't go so far as to ban Islam but I see nothing amiss with making people obey the letter as well as the spirit of the law as it pertains to women's rights. I think if the west does not stand up to Wahhabism and all that it stands for where women's rights are concerned as it digs its claws into Muslim communities in western society, and stand up to attempts to establish dual legal systems (Sharia alongside western civil systems) Sharia being the system that would effectively govern the lives of Muslim women and the normalisation of the sight of elements dear to fundamentalism such as veiled women on western streets, then there will never be healthy integration, there will always be groups that are intensely hostile to the west, and the west will always be in danger of violent attack. Fundamentalist Islam must be tamed. Part of what fundamentalist Islam insists upon is the primacy of the family (meaning the patriarch) and the treatment of girls and women as family property.

CrescentMoon -- I would look very askance at a religion that thinks it is OK to murder teenage girls in the name of family honour.

Its an awful awful story. But I'm sure I first heard about this on woman's hour a few years back when they intereviewed a victim and her parents. I just can not understand why its taken so long for something to be done.

I recently worked in a home for teenage girls and the staff called the girls sluts and whores rather than believing that they been raped.

Sorry Margery I didn't see this bit up thread!

"Part of what fundamentalist Islam insists upon is the primacy of the family (meaning the patriarch) and the treatment of girls and women as family property."

I suppose this is why they are so resistant to challenge or criticism of any kind to the extent they will get violent if you dare try - and justify that violence as rooted in Islam. It's rubbish!! Consequently they get away with being as oppressive as they like and are never made to account for their practices. No one dare challenge them. All religion can withstand criticism but oppressive controlling fundamentalists can't take it - they hit back with more threats and punishments.

Race, culture and religion are red herrings here. Although racists are rubbing their hands with glee at the chance to blame politically correct social workers for "nothing getting done," they ignore the inconvenient truths about class here.

This article is worth a read - about how the authorities approached the case of Megan Stammers in a very different way from those of children of the same age or even younger subject to sexual exploitation throughout the UK, every night of the week.

Something I find interesting though about the two stories is how many people discussing the Stammers case on the internet seem desperate to frame it as a story of star crossed lovers. At nearly 16, she's capable of making her own informed choice (some even suggesting she probably led him to stray) conveniently setting aside duty of care in a position of responsibility and that she was only 14 when he started sending "sexy messages." As in Rochedale, it appears the authorities (in the school this time) were aware of what was happening, but nothing was done. Hopefully we'll soon find out why.

Those who seem so quick to pour sugar on Jeremy Forrester's actions or the action of teachers who have affairs with their students generally, have nothing but bile for the men who sexually abused girls in Rochdale. What they don't realise is that in making up their own romantic narrative about what happened between Stammers and Forrester (or what happens with teacher-pupil love,) they are projecting their own assumptions of "what's going on," rather than considering the facts and acknowledging the likelyhood that an underage girl could be at risk of harm. That's exactly what social services in Rochdale did when they pronounced that the girls were "making a lifestyle choice" rather than being sexually abused and exploited.

Hmm. I wonder if Penny Red saw my post on here last week arguing exactly the same point.

The father of one of the Rochdale girls who went to the police and SS was interviewed on BBC News this week. He was told by SS - as per Kritiq's post above - that his daughter was a prostitute and that it was a lifestyle choice. And they were therefore not going to intervene.

He told the interviewer - "There's no such thing as a child prostitute. There are vulnerable children and there are abusive adults".

I was really struck by the straightforward truth of what he said.

Just to pick up on what Margery said yes, there are front line practitioners out there working with vulnerable young people who are very, very judgey and potentially either causing them harm, or failing to protect them from harm as a result. I'm involved in a couple of projects trying to change this at the moment.

Most practitioners aren't given adequate training or support on this. They're taught about bullying, but not about sexual bullying. They are taught about "treating everyone equally," but without the context that different people need different things and the playing field isn't level at the start. They are taught to look for signs of neglect and classic signs of abuse from parents/carers, particularly with the younger kids. But when the child is that bit older, they tend to fall back on the prejudiced view the kids are just "streetwise," rather than victims of abuse an exploitation. It's like they are ticking days off the calendar to when they turn 16 and don't even have to think about them. This tends to be the view regarding girls, but also sometimes boys who are being sexually exploited by older men.

It can be a tough call because children and young people have rights, and you've got to balance up their right to self-determination with risks to their safety and well-being. Whether it's because practitioners don't give a stuff about outcomes for poor kids or those in the care system, whom they've pretty well written off anyhow, or because they want to believe the fantasy romance of the girl with the older "boyfriend" who really does love her, honest, it's letting children down, letting them down very badly.

On the religion angle, I think there are those who are loving the convictions in Rochdale because it gives them the chance to slam Muslims (which they like to do anyhow,) and appear all high and mighty on the side of poor, abused girls. They're a little quieter about similar convictions of groups of men for child sexual abuse (e.g. Derby, Reading, etc.) where the perpetrators where mainly white and British.

The common factors in all cases were the perpetrators were men, the victims were poor, often in the care system or with little support from families and although some people in authority were aware of what was happening, or at least had strong suspicions, the abuse continued unchecked. Having got away with it, it's quite likely the abusers became more emboldened in their actions.

KRITIQ -- the phenomenon you see on the internet is victim blaming, beginning with casting aside the notion that there is a victim at all, and ending up with the framing of it as love, just as child prostitution is framed as a lifestyle choice. You see the same phenomenon and hear the same rationalisations when the subject of pornography comes up. Same with adult prostitution.

It is almost impossible for many people to conceive of the idea that girls and women are victimised in huge numbers by men. That inability has nothing to do with class or race or religion. It is all to do with a male centric narrative of how life happens that is so dominant that people repeat it without realising at all what they are saying. There is a massive amount of cognitive dissonance involved.

In the case of Muslim men targeting Infidel girls and women without remorse it is easier to see the nature of the misogyny, but it exists everywhere, as evidenced by the unwillingness of the police to see the victims as victims.

although the teacher shouldn't have done what he did with Megan, i don't think it is the same.

It sounds like some of the crimes in Rochdale were gang organised and they treated the girls like pieces of meat. the broken bottle thing i read on here (n
ot sure if it was the same place) but absolutely awful.

The men in Rochdale probably treat their own wives like dirt let alone the poor girls they sexually abused.

if it was my dds (not that i would ever wish that) i think i would prefer the teacher situation. at least Megan was treated like his partner. i am not condoning his behaviour but i don't think he is perverted in the same way.

having worked in a school i do understand how people could get attached to students but the teacher crossed the line obviously.

Math, I agree that there is widespread resistance to hold perpetrators of abuse to account for their actions, whether individually or collectively. I do believe this is part of that overall picture.

The common "tools" used to perpetuate this are minimising, denying and blaming. So, some will insist it's "true lurve" and not abuse (minimising.) Some will say the media overblows the incidence and it only happens in a few areas involving specific people (denying.) Some will claim that girls mature faster and lead men on (blaming.)

There is certainly nothing inherent in Islam as a faith, nor Asian communities as a group that predisposes men to feel specifically entitled to sexually exploit non Muslim or non Asian girls. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the perpetrators pulled the excuse that "it's not wrong if they're not Muslim," out of the justification bag (from the "denying" file.) Similarly, you might get an Irish Catholic priest claiming that he was only showing love and affection for the young parishioners he had sex with (that comes from the "minimising" file.)

This doesn't mean that either faith nor either culture specifically sanctions abuse or agrees with the excuses given by perpetrators.

Alemci, I know you say you aren't condoning what Forrester did, but I'm still seeing alot in your post that suggests it wasn't all that bad.

He treated her like his partner? From my understanding, some of the victims of the Rochdale abuse also regarded an abuser as a "boyfriend." As often happens, an "older boyfriend" can morph into a pimp, often without the young person recognising what's happening.

You're also making alot of wild assumptions about the perpetrators in the Rochdale case "treating their wives like dirt." Would you also say you assume the 4 men jailed for filming sex parties with under age victims in Berkshire recently (a farmer, a bank manager, a scout leader and a member of the Household Cavalry - who all happened to be white,) treated their partners like dirt?

Yes, teachers can "get attached" to children, but there are policies, training, laws and management supervision to prevent the line being crossed into forming a romantic/sexual relationship. Forrester chose to step over that line.

Does it matter if a man abuses a child because he is "perverted" or because he simply thinks he's entitled to do it and/or his actions are harmless? The impact on the young person isn't automatically less if the perpetrator has convinced himself (and many of us, sadly) that he wasn't really doing such a bad thing.

Islam may ban sex before marriage. But the Pakistani in Britain CULTURE says that this only means with GOOD MUSLIM GIRLS. It doesn't matter how many non Muslim girls they have sex with, as long as they haven't sullied the name of a Muslim girl.

It is CULTURAL, not religion orientated. Or it's a deliberate misinterpretation of those religious teachings at best.

It is well recognised that a Pakistani family will turn a blind eye to their Son's goings on provided it is not involving Muslim girls. Anyone else is seen as 'fair game'.

It is sad but true that the majority of Male Pakistani's in Britain see white girls as somehow 'less' than their 'good Muslim girls'. And therefore fair game. At ANY age.

And while their may be ISLAMIC bans on sex outside marriage, CULTURALLY in British Pakistani's this is interpreted as a ban on sex outside marriage with MUSLIM GIRLS.

It is to protect the honour of Islam. Now if there is a girl who isn't Muslim, well then she HAS no honour to protect...

And THAT'S the way these men see it.

Interesting posts, Kritiq. Race was one of the excuses used by the authorities in Rotherham for failing to act, though, as the documents the Times found recorded.