Another Muslim gang raping and torturing young white girls...

[endthiscowardice]

And yet again we are told that there is no racial or cultural element to this phenomenon.

I accept that absolutely child sex abuse is, horrifyingly, present across society.

But refusing to confront the ethnicity of the perpetrators/victims seems very unhelpful in addressing this particular problem. This is the nth gang like this with exactly the same profile of members, victims, and modus operandi.

Given the length of time most of these cases have taken to come to light, it's hard not conclude that the lives and rights of these girls were given a lower importance than 'cultural sensitivities'. Otherwise why were they disbelieved and a blind eye turned for so long, even when help was sought?

It makes me so angry that officialdom ignores this racial/religious elephant in the room. Members of these 'communities' are also too willing to deny the horror in their midst and aggressively claim their own victimisation. I've just watched a Muslim MP on Newsnight claim that he found Jack Straw's 2011 comments about this phenomenom (Muslim rape gang, vulnerably young white victims) 'offensive'.

More cases just like this are bound to come to light.

Am I the only one that feels infuriated by these flat-earthers who persistently deny the reality? And what can be done?

I'd be interested to hear the views of people from all backgrounds.

Have there been any instances of say, Sikh or Hindu Asian men specifically targetting non-Sikh/Hindu girls (especially white ones) in grooming gangs?

Eve Teasing

Blue Orange I agree it did sound a bit like that but if they are born here where is this attitude coming from and why are they still stuck such a backwater mentality.

Of course there are British men behaving like this but I thought the way one of these girls was branded like an animal was beyond the pale.

I take your point Crescent Moon. Of course it is not all Moslem men. What frustrates me is the way the authorities seem so useless in these situations and I do think the perception of being seen to be racist impedes people to do their job effectively.

One of the mother's of the men blamed the girls for leading her sons astray. I can't find a link but it was in the Mail and I know it probably puts a spin on the story but honestly!

alemci. Such backwater mentality also exists in white british men too. What makes you think that the mentality could not have come from britain and it had to be pakistan or islam?

This notion of bring afraid to be seen as racist is just daily mail type hype fuelling tension and causing unease. I have not seen any concrete findings to suggest that fear of being seen as racist can affect professionalism - however, i have seen racism affecting professionalism in some instances. Remember the stephen lawrence case - an investigation found police then to be institutionally racist. It is racism that affects professionalism and not fear of being seen as racist.

I have not read the story about mother blaming a victim, But why is that relevant? Do you feel her views represent the views of most pakistani muslim women?

This whole thread asks for a religious and ethnic connection to this crime. It was not islam that did this, nor was it pakistan. It was a depraved gang of men.

fromparistoberlin agree, your posts pretty much echoes mine on previous page.

"I have not read the story about mother blaming a victim, But why is that relevant? Do you feel her views represent the views of most pakistani muslim women? "

I expect that the woman in question was not prepared to face the fact that she had utterly failed as mother to bring her son up with any basic morals. Blaming rape victims is pretty international sadly.

There is a difference between one or two British Asian families being crap at parenting and blaming an entire ethnic group.

I agree, that there are some asian families who have probably had the best intentions but not been the greatest parents. There are also some similar white british families.

What has religion and ethnicity got to do with it? (This question is not directed at you reallytired , more for those who feel they can't do their jobs or be themselves for the fear of being exposed as racists! )

I know there are men like that who are British Blue Orange but they are not in the dock in this case and the mother's take on the situation is relevant. I understand her burying her head in the sand but to blame the girls is really unfair.

Also similar cases have been taking place in other cities with groups of a similar ethnic profile.

I have been watching this thread with fascination and I have to admit there have been too many similar cases recently to just write them off as coincidence.

IMHO rapists and paedophiles (regardless of race/religion etc) will always try to justify their actions to themselves and that's the reason we have such a high reoffending rate for sex attackers.

I would like to see far more support for vulnerable girls. I would like to see girls who are at risk of being groomed being giving self defence classes to improve confidence and a female mentor scheme to give them an extra layer of support.

I would also love to see a Praed Street type organisation to help victims to get reeducated, provide emotional support and reenter society without feeling the stigma of their past.

The police need to take these crimes far more seriously there is wrongly still a shame/stigma with regards to being a victim of sexual abuse and victims need to know the police will believe them and take what they say seriously.

using the Oxford sex ring criminals ? who would be regarded as scum in Pakistan - as representative of all Pakistani Muslim men is an object lesson in false equivalence.

Agree with this completely.

I started this thread and have been off it a few days because of a bereavement. But it's been really interesting to come back to it and read the different perspectives. Despite the criticism I got (and outright accusations of racism that I do not accept), I posted this thread and with a blunt title to stimulate discussion and I am glad it has achieved that.

Such backwater mentality also exists in white british men too.

BlueOrange no one is disputing that. But 'everyone does this' is not an argument against there being a particular phenomenon of grooming gangs that seems to be concentrated among Pakistani muslims as perpetrators and white British girls as victims. Yes, there are problems of child abuse across all cultures. That that was not the focus of this thread does not discredit it because it was simply about a particular issue 'in the news'.

So this specific phenomenon - these recent cases which have so much in common - was what I posted this thread about. It was not in any way to suggest that these offences were isolated, or that Pakistani muslims have any kind of monopoly on rape gangs or child abuse.

This whole thread asks for a religious and ethnic connection to this crime. It was not islam that did this, nor was it pakistan. It was a depraved gang of men.

I agree that this thread asks if people think that there was a religious/ethnic connection between these crimes. I started it and that was the point I wanted to examine. And there is no controversy with respect to this being a depraved gang of men. But it was also another example of a 'depraved gang' that happened to be composed of Pakistani muslim men with deprived and vulnerable white victims.

I think the title I gave this thread was not inflammatory but provocative. And I mean that in the sense of wishing to provoke a discussion. It has been successful in that respect. But I never wished to tar all muslims with the same brush or to imply that this was exclusively a muslim problem or to suggest that there was anything 'Islamic' about the motivation for these offences.

However, there are elements in the Islamic church that are profoundly misogynistic. Honour killings are a manifestation of that. Again, Islam by no means has the monopoly on religious misogyny. It is present in many religions and there are tenets within many religions which lead to nasty social consequences. The insistence on celibacy in the Roman Catholic church has, arguably, led as a natural consequence to the abuse of children. Why? Because sexuality is a natural human instinct. To deny it has tragically created a situation where the only 'safe' way for some men within the church to find an outlet for their sexual urges is to impose them on the most vulnerable individuals that they can intimidate into keeping silent - children.

Sorry this is all long and convoluted.

What I am trying to say is that there is nothing unique about sexual abuse, child sexual abuse within a particular culture. There are victims and perpetrators across all social groups, sadly. But this specific cluster of cases have a pattern. The gangs are mostly composed of Pakistani muslims of a particular social background (rather deprived, likely under educated). The victims are young, vulnerable white females. The pattern is striking and undeniable. I am interested in the question of whether the offender and victim profiles are simply a matter of chance, or whether there is something about them that relates to racial or cultural factors. I don't think this is an unreasonable question to ask.

I have said myself what I think - that these are at some level, hate crimes. That the prerogative of claiming victimhood on the grounds of race or religion should not be the prerogative only of non-white members of our society.

That sex crimes and crimes against children in particular is not limited to any social group is indisputable. Responding to a question about whether there is a pattern to a particular cluster of offences by giving examples of multitudinous offences committed by and against other groups is a non-argument.

But the persistent and vociferous denial that there is a racial or cultural element to these crimes strikes me as unique and rather disingenuous. It is trying to shut down any interrogation of this as an issue. Why? Because there is a kind of terror around being seen as racist or discriminating against religious groups - Islam in particular.

There seems to be a general reluctance to link crimes in any way to religious views. Religious views are just that: it is to do with the interpretation of the objectives and tenets of that religion. An example was the 7/7 killings. Persisently the press referred to the 'London bombers'. It was politically incorrect even to describe them as terrorists, let alone Islamist terrorists. Which is exactly what they were, as videotapes came to light in which the perpetrators made clear that their motivation was based on their own (twisted) view of the objectives of Islam. I just don't understand why this was something that was downplayed and swept under the carpet. Surely understanding the mindset of the offenders was critical to understanding why these offences took place, and also to preventing similar offences in the future.

Any reports of these offences refuses to acknowledge that some of the views and practices within these groups are fundamentally at odds with the laws and values of British culture. And when I say British I am talking about the laws and social structure of this country in the 21st century, not talking about historical views of 'Britishness' whatever that means.

This is, I think, unhelpful. It does a disservice to the victims and to potential future victims.

totally agree you End and you summarise the situation well.

As I see it these so called 'grooming' gangs predicate themselves on a deep seated hatred of women/girls first and foremost, and this is fuelled in part by a 'pornified' culture and in part by sexism embedded within much cultural and religious ideology, a lot of which was detailed upthread. But we are in danger if we try to suppress the fact that there is also a racial element present. You cannot and will not be able to pass away as 'coincidence' the fact that ALL the perpetrators are male and Muslim, just as you cannot and will not pass off as coincidence the fact that all the victims are female and white non-Muslims.

So what we have here is a combination of hate crime and sex crime. Perpetrated by men, all of whom share a single culture and religion.

And yes I accept fully that there are equally wicked white non muslim males who rape, exploit and groom girls and boys of all colours, cultures and creeds. But in these particular cases, we avoid the elephant in the room at our peril.

Morning, all. First post here. Normally-liberal DW pointed me to this thread. I rarely post on forums these days for a few reasons: It doesn't matter how many facts you put together, once someone has buried their head in the sand and decided to become an apologist, nothing you can say will change their view. Guardian report showing Pakistani men are 10x as likely to groom children than any other group in the UK? "Must be a statistical anomaly". It's like peeing into the wind.

However, what made me post on this thread was the fact that I would guess we're all parents here. And I find some of the suggestions that somehow it was the child's fault, and we should "stop demonizing" the men and concentrate on better social care and blah blah blah... I find that sickening.

Reality check: The girls are mostly 11-15. THEY ARE CHILDREN!! The men are almost always over 50. There is NO excuse.

And are some of you for real when you talk about this "not being a problem for a particular community?! And you try and explain it away as if the Jimmy Saville case is in any way remotely equivalent to this cases.
Yes, the Saville thing is appalling and inexcusable, but as the second report says: The court heard that on 29 October 2011 Iblal Fiaz drove her to a hotel and dropped her off with an unknown man who raped her.
Despite bleeding, she was then raped by two other men.

3 weeks ago, it was a large trial of men from Shropshire. Last week it was Oxford. This week it's High Wycombe. Next week? What?

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/10071898/Thousands-of-child-sex-abuse-victims-says-minister.html

^Police found 2,409 children and young people had been confirmed as victims of sexual exploitation in gangs or groups between August 2010 and October 2011, said Lord Taylor.
Lord Morris of Aberavon, the Labour former attorney general, told the House of Lords that more than 50 alleged child grooming gangs were being investigated.

He asked: ?Is it collective amnesia that has blinded us to the underlying circumstances, whereby at least 27 police forces are investigating 54 alleged child grooming gangs?
?Why has investigating and prosecuting in so many different parts of the country taken so much time?
?Is it the fear of racialism, or is it the fact that many of these vulnerable girls come from care homes??
An Old Bailey jury heard earlier this month that six girls were drugged and suffered sadistic abuse while aged between 11 and 15.^

If you excuse this, if you attempt to explain it away, you enable it. And the idea that a parent could do that makes my stomach churn.

Here's the latest from this morning:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-22626994
^A young girl was repeatedly raped and sexually abused by 10 friends over a five-year period, a court has heard.

The court heard that on 29 October 2011 Iblal Fiaz drove her to a hotel and dropped her off with an unknown man who raped her.

Despite bleeding, she was then raped by two other men.

The victim was just 11 when she was groomed and raped by Iblal Fiaz, 21, who plied her with alcohol and drugs, Oxford Crown Court was told.

Iblal Fiaz regularly threatened the victim who was also fed cocktails of drugs such as cocaine, cannabis and ecstasy to reduce her reluctance, the jury heard.

Iblal Fiaz and his brother Khasim Fiaz, 23, both of St Georges Close, High Wycombe, deny multiple rape charges.

Ammar Rafiq, Mohammed Adnan, Kasam Dad, Rameez Ali, Janaid Sharif, Asif Hussain are also on trial.^

Enough "learning lessons". Enough "interfaith dialogue". Enough hand-wringing Guardian articles. Enough child rape. The problem lies where the problem lies. Full stop.

Ah, evidently the formatting options don't actually work which makes it harder to read. There should be bold and italicized quotes. Still, you can get the idea...

It's geographic lard. In some parts of the country, the child traffickers are Pakistani. Bur in other areas they are Eastern European, Afro Carribean, White British.

The same as all organised crime. The girls are a commodity, more profitable than drugs. In the cases in the news, it is the racial difference which enables the criminals to dehumaniae them

That doesn't mean any demographic is more likely to be a sex offender

Do people think the girls were targeted because they were white, or because they were available (in the sense of being accessible)? If the former, it is of course a race crime, which aggravates the seriousness of the crime. If the latter, then not.

And how can we be sure these men did not also target girls from their own family or race/faith group? It could well have remained hidden, as so many sex crimes do. Even more likely, if the victims feared they would be shunned if they disclosed being abused.

One defendant in an earlier case was tried and convicted of abusing a young family member. So he at least appears not to have cared where his victims came from. I bet he's not the only one. And of those men who might have abstained from abusing family members or co-religionists etc, I would again bet that self-interest was far more likely to be the reason than any high-flown principle or belief that those women and girls had worth.

Evil raping bastards don't suddenly stop being evil raping bastards the minute they get home.

"I accept that absolutely child sex abuse is, horrifyingly, present across society.

But refusing to confront the ethnicity of the perpetrators/victims seems very unhelpful in addressing this particular problem. This is the nth gang like this with exactly the same profile of members, victims, and modus operandi."

You've contradicted yourself OP.

@Boomba "That doesn't mean any demographic is more likely to be a sex offender".

But they are. I linked right to a report in the Guardian showing Pakistani men are 10x more likely to be involved in child grooming and rape/prostitution. Let's be clear - that's not 10% more, but 10x more.

The other thing I meant to say in the last post was:

Those people who come onto a thread to post "hide thread" should be ashamed, doubly so as a parent. Yes, you might be "peacocking" your lefty/ credentials, and across Islington a thousand Guardian readers can see how very "progressive" you are.

But all you've done is choose to bury your head in the sand. By ignoring it, you enable it.

From years as a forum moderator, I can say with some certainty that people who pretend to leave or write "ignores thread", don't. If you wanted to hide it, you'd just press the hide button, not come onto the thread to tell people you've hidden it, waving it like some kind of badge of apologist ignorance.

So, if you're one of those people, I only hope your conscience catches up with you before one of these men catch up with your children.

I suggest that the people who think this is an ethic or religious problem specific to the British Muslim population go on holiday to Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand. Hundreds and thousands of old, white men abusing children who are trafficked. All of whom are a different race to them. All of them have nasty, misogynist beliefs about South East Asian women.