Rotherham council unfit for purpose

[Justanotherlurker]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-31130750

What is going to be the outcome, I was initially against the idea that it was for fear of being racist, but after reading the report that did play a part(if you haven't read it, it is hard going). With the recent convictions in Halifax it is looking as though there is some systematic negligence, corruption and people more worried about their position of power above duty but a particular blind spot.

And in a lot of communities the local politicians (of whatever hue) are a) a bit complacent, and b) just wholly out of their depth on this sort of issue. Sorting out whether a local community should have a playground revamped is more the sort of issue that they are comfortable with.

The more I hear about this, the more horrific it is. The refusal of all the authorities concerned to protect the girls, their complicity in the abuse - you don't want to believe it's possible in this country, in this century, but clearly it is. And sounds like it still hasn't been anywhere near resolved.

Inevereven re your link, I saw her interviewed on the news last night and it was dreadful. Their response to her initial report was to send her on a racism awareness course. They took away her notes so she wouldn't be able to substantiate her claims, although she'd had the foresight to make copies.

She was even threatened by a police officer, who said something like "wouldn't it be a shame if they [the abusers] were to find out where you live".

She tried to bring this out into the open in 2002. How many girls must already have been abused by then for her to be able to find that much evidence? And how many more have been abused since then? This is one of the worst betrayals of girls and young women that you can imagine.

I'm so sorry that you weren't protected, to all of you who went through this, and thank you for your courage in telling your stories.

Talking, the BBC has worded it in a way which makes it sound like her notes were simply removed but in reality there was a break in and they were stolen, which is yet another thing never investigated.

Police forces in these cities knew about the wholesale abuse and turned a blind eye but when Nick Griffin brought the scandal into the public eye they were round in a flash to arrest him as a threat to "community cohesion". And the Crown Prosecution Service was just as keen to see him in the dock, and presumably behind bars, for daring to challenge the officially sanctioned status quo in Rotherham, Rochdale, Oxford et al.

I know, and that seriously worries me. Much as Nick Griffin's politics are abhorrent that abhorrence seems to have glossed over the fact that our criminal justice system was used to try and prevent someone from telling the truth.

It's hard to admit but there isn't much outcry apart from the far righters.

I heard on the news some woman going to picket cineworld about 50 shades , I even started an AIBU because I thought it can't just be me that thinks there are better things, i.e. the rape of our own children, to protest about but I'm told IABU.

Couldn't see that AIBU Fatstacks, where is it?

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/2305089-To-not-really-care-about-50-Shades-misogyny-when-CSE-is-so-prevalent-IN-REAL-life

This one Moan
Apparently the book is much more worthy of outrage.

Any political philosophy or mindset that will, whilst those things are done to children and protect the perpetrators is evil.

Regardless of how many people adhere to it, and regardless of how plausible it sounds.

There should be nothing in the world that would cause people to do that when a single child is involved.

In these incidents, thousands of children have been abused - the authority employees involved ought to be tried and if only the law allowed it, hung or shot for their part in such an evil mass atrocity.

I was almost groomed in the back of a well known taxi firms vehicle, whilst I had a school uniform on , was 14 and asked do i make pornos with my bf on my (then motorola flip phone) and locked the car until i gave my no. (Fake no.) ...taxi firms need much deeper investigation.

Oh it's not about party politics or about race. It's about male violence against women. Sure there's a race element to some of the response, but the gang in Doncaster were mainly white and the response to the victims in that case was exactly the same - silly little slags, lifestyle choice, fuck off and stop wasting the police's time. There was no race motive in that case, to treat the victims that way.

My friend years ago at the age of 15 got raped by a man in a very naice part of London - he dragged her into the park, so it was one of the minority of cases, where she had no previous knowledge of her attacker. She went to the police station to report with her mum and was told to go away and stop wasting police time, because she shouldn't have been out at 10PM on a Friday night. She wasn't in care, she was from a deeply posh family with serious money.

The authorities have ALWAYS treated rape of girls and women by men as a trivial affair. Race and party politics have got nothing to do with it.

When I say nothing to do with it, obviously in Rotherham they had a bit to do with it - but the indifference to the victims isn't something new to do with local party and racial politics, it goes right back to women and girls, particularly working class ones, being considered to be there for men's use.

I don't think PR would solve anything. What is needed is a culture shift away from misogyny, acceptance of pornography, acceptance of violence against women, and the attitude that there is no such thing as sexual immorality. And more of a French attitude towards strands of Islam that have a non-western view of women.

The Republic of Ireland has had PR since the start of its history, but that did not help victims of industrial schools or orphanages or Magdalene Laundries because the general culture was such that the poor, especially poor women, and the children of the poor were seen as lower than dirt and not worthy of any respect or protection by the state or any of the institutions it farmed social services out to.

Agree for the need of a complete cultural and earth moving shift of away from the abuse culture and in line with a consent culture. I'm really hoping that Sarah Champion et al can make necessary and effective changes. Labour are lucky to have her.

Police need to get on and investigate and collect evidence effectively and they must need extra funding to do it properly. As do the charities which have supported the victims and survivors. As a country we all want the best for Rotherham and for this blight to be over, out, exposed and for it not to be possible to continue or ever be repeated. The community needs to be revived.

It seems like such a mammoth task!

And then there is every single other town, every other way and place this control and power and violence has spread.

www.thestar.co.uk/news/crime/man-jailed-for-child-sexual-exploitation-in-rotherham-1-7098607

Here we go.
This is the fella who took three girls at the height of the abuse scandal publicity.

What a sentence!

I saw that yesterday tje sentence is v. Poor although i lost a lot of respect for the Star after there treatment of the late Ali Hassans family re. Breaking.that.story just hours after him dying.

A girl I knew when I was a teenager told me about her experiences as a young runaway in London. She was a bit wild and spent a year or two living in squats or on the streets, begging in railway stations, etc. One thing I remember was her account of gangs of men from the ethnic group mentioned who targeted vulnerable girls sleeping rough or hanging round bus and train stations. They were well-known for luring girls into prostitution and drug-taking and my friend was warned against them by her friends, but she said she was approached many times and had to be careful about being alone at night, getting taxis or whatever (a lot of them were taxi drivers). The police weren’t interested and turned a blind eye. I thought about that when these terrible stories came to light.

This happened in 1987/88. Horrific.

It became party political in Rotherham when they chose not to take the Jay report seriously. It is a mistake to think councillors act as individuals, there is a strong line (unwritten but like party whip system in Westminster) to follow the local party leader/group secretary.

And the local MP described the party leader as a sexist bully.... which tells you a lot about why nothing happened.

I read the report and it took some determination on my part to keep reading at points. We have failed as a society to protect these girls. How awful that this continues today. It is also no wonder that the UKIP are so popular in some of these areas. It looks like they are the only party who listened to these communities.

It is a sad day when it comes to this. What these men have done to these girls is so far beyond society norms and should not be tolerated at all. I think at this time there needs to an inquiry into the racial make up of councils and taxidrivers. Also there should be a very strict penalty for any Police who do not take the reporting of these crimes seriously.

Has anything changed? Have we moved on? Sadly, it would appear not.

im 25 i went to school right when this was happening ...taxis were horrendous i got locked in at 14 once cuz i wouldn't give him my no. ..this was balding So quite an age, but yes taxis were scary scary places I have more stories but wont go there, a driver 10 years later told me he left the Above company where i was Locked in, because he couldn't believe what he heard over the radio and that they were all "peados" this was a good 10 years later, the taxi firms need huge investigation imo.

*this man was balding

Having read the report, I dont know how anybody with a conscience can ever vote for the labour party again.

Oxfordshire County Council is Conservative - the Serious Case Report published today is horrific.