@Nordione1 if you’re willing to read and listen ....
Concerns about the abuse of underage girls by members of minority communities in towns in Yorkshire, Lancashire, Greater Manchester and some Midlands counties first surfaced in 20022**, when they were raised by the then-Labour MP for Keighley, Ann Cryer.
Subsequent reportss and investigationss**confirmed that some people believed “a fear of being labelled ‘racist’ had hindered the ability of official agencies to combat the grooming and sexual exploitation”.
However, Mr Starmer did not become director of public prosecutions and head of the CPS until 1 November 20088*
A number of prosecutions involving grooming gangs were taking place around the time Mr Starmer took up his new post.
In the first of a series of articles exposing the grooming gangs scandal, published in January 2011, The Timess* identified 17 grooming gang prosecutions dating back to 1997. Of the 17 cases, 14 had taken place since 2008, the year Mr Starmer became the director of public prosecutions.
“In total, 56 people, with an average age of 28, were found guilty of crimes including rape, child abduction, indecent assault and sex with a child. Three of the 56 were white, 53 were Asian. Of those 50 were Muslim and a majority were members of the British Pakistani community,” the newspaper reported. *
*
Mr Starmer was the head of the CPS in 2009, when a key decision not to prosecute a case in Rochdale was takenn.
According to evidence given to the Home Affairs Committeee**, the decision was based on CPS guidelines of the time which suggested a jury might see victims as unreliable if they had come forward some time after the offence, if they had deviated or changed their accounts, made use of drink or drugs or had subsequently gone back to the perpetrator. As a result, such cases were thought not to have a realistic prospect of achieving a conviction.
In 2011, Nazir Afzall, who at the time was director of prosecutions in London, was made chief prosecutor for the north west. He subsequently overturned the 2009 decision and a total of nine menn** were later convicted.
In a recent intervieww* Mr Afzal recalled: “The only way we could bring that case was to admit that we had failed these victims when they had first made a complaint in 2008. Keir was 100% behind the decision to publicly admit that we had got it wrong in the past.”
Following these convictions, Mr Starmer appointed Mr Afzall as the head of a newly formed national network of specialist prosecutors for child abuse and sexual exploitation. Mr Afzal went on to oversee numerous convictions against other grooming gangs.
An independent reportt* into child sexual abuse in Rotherham, published in 2014, noted that prior to leaving the CPS, Mr Starmer had established a new set of guideliness* around the prosecution of child sexual exploitation to prevent earlier mistakes from being repeated.
Has he not done enough? Sure, I can agree with that. No one did. Deliberately blocking prosecution of Asian rape gangs specifically? No.