Rotherham Abuse Scandal - New Interview in Today's Guardian

[Terfinator]

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/apr/01/sammy-woodhouse-interview

(Are we allowed to discuss this?)

One of the victims has waived her anonymity and spoken out about the abuse she faced. Her interview is shocking and brings shame on the support services in the area.

What's even worse is that stuff like this is still going on. Just yesterday, 7 were arrested in Oxford on similar charges (www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-39466980)

April my friend worked in the police force (Met) for about 15 years and left last year. His unit employed 12 staff, 9 were made redundant and he was essentially doing all their work as well. He had a heart attack and was off for some time, went back to the same thing so had to leave - the job was kiling him. Cuts to policing are wrong and shouldn't be happening.

Some families may be dysfunctional. but the amount of women/young girls I've spoken to who were desparate to get protection and prosecutions to court and were treated appallingly - some even prosecuted themselves, is scandalous. Not all officers are like that I know, just like not all parents are unable to look after their children. I think it's outrageous that SS removed children from their parents for reasons like they couldn't protect their children, and those kids were put in care homes where staff knew their abusers were picking them up/waiting for them and let them go with them. They were put in charge of some of the most vulnerable kids there are and they didn't protect them either.

Having reported to the police myself I have first hand experience of the lazy, half arsed 'investigation' that followed which resulted in no charges. Can't go into too much detail because I don't want to waive my anonymity. But complaining to the IPCC was a waste of time because when I got my police records via the subject access request and saw the lies that had been written, contesting them was a joke - the IPCC sided with them on nearly everything and when some of my complaints were proven and upheld only 2 officers got management advice.

I have a friend who is a serving officer and is passionate about getting rapists to court. Unfortunately a lot of her colleagues dont' feel the same and still use rape myths and victim blaming to NFA cases. We need accountability before much else changes.

Not a victim. But I can categorically tell you - the children's home I lived in let older men sign the visitors book and called them our boyfriends

Social workers checked us in to places that have been in the media

In my eyes having been so close, the men did do evil things, but I feel like girls were served up for them by the state of social services and I find it very hard to let go of that anger

To me that's the biggest evil. If I had been an actual victim of these men I would likely feel differently. But it was fairly common to trust them more than your social worker or family!

I also do believe the majority of what's in the book.

I saw it from a different side to the media back then though - in my time the girls thought they were in control and using men, at least initially. It's hard to be a child when you've already been told your not repeatedly, we were just troublemakers.

One day I hope to see the faces of people who were working in the system plastered over the news too, acknowledging how THEY made it possible for quite a few girls

April Skies 44 said -
"and its not just rotherham. just watch"

Terfenator said -
*April
I agree, that's why I linked to the Oxford case too.
In working-class areas, there's huge potential for this kind of abuse. I'm from a poor Northern town where this kind of thing happens often, just not on the same scale as Rotherham.

A while ago I tried to find out how many cases in how may towns there had been Asian/Pakistani grooming /rape gangs operating.
Eventually I found a list but it was not easy as nearly all MSM, including the BBC surprisingly haven't collated this information.
You have to wonder why.
It is irritating whenever this subject is brought up that they only ever refer to Rotherham where admittedly it was the worse case, but never seem to acknowledge that it is the tip of a massive and ongoing iceberg.

Colchester
Coventry
Yeovil
Bristol
Rotherham
Rochdale
Dewsbury
Manchester
Bradford
Oxford
Halifax
Littlehampton
Keighley
Oldham
Leeds
Aylesbury
Banbury
Slough
Sheffield
Chesham
Newcastle
Burton
Peterborough
Blackburn
London
Leicester
Barking
Telford
Accrington
Derby
Preston
Nelson
Skipton.
Many of these towns and cities have had multiple cases.

An old friend of mine was a teenage runaway, spent a year or so living in squats in London in the late 80s. She told me about gangs of men of Asian heritage who would target young girls sleeping rough or newly arrived at the bus and train stations, and groom them for sexual exploitation. Same tactics as the cases that have come to light -the girls being plied with booze, drugs, affection at first, believing the guys were their boyfriends, before it turned nasty. The police didn't give a shit she said.

Meant to finish -this has been going on for decades by now.

Please don't forget that Jimmy Savile has been the UK's most prolific paedophile/sexual predator, who was not asian. Nor was Stuart Hall, Ian Huntley, Ian Brady, Sydney Cook etc. This is about rape, not race.

Ok so we have to be loud about this.

Wee girls are not sluts. Protect them

HoldBackTheRain

Yes, interesting, to me the white British rapists seem to operate alone, and the Asian rapists operate in gangs. Do you think this is an accurate observation? I've never read deeply about it but this is the impression I get. If it's true, why do you think that is?

Holdback as the UK is majority white it is to be expected that most rapists are white. The type of abuse that happened in Rotherham and elsewhere was striking in that most perpetrators were from a Pakistani Muslim background and most victims were white English. The Jay report and the prosecutor Nazir Afzal from the Rochdale case both cited cultural and ethnic issues (the men had grown up to believe women from outside their communities were worthless) as well as social workers' misguidedness and the sexism of the police. None of these cancels out the others. Fear of racism was one of the things which prevented the authorities from intervening. It's unfortunate but it can't be swept under the carpet.

Not entirely true that they grew up to believe women outside their culture were worthless. One married a white girl

but the mother of others who stuck up for her sons summed it up pretty well what the attitude in their homes was "they should have been playing with dolls then" I think were her words.

The men think they're victims of the children in this country

But then so did social services

The worst part of this personally for me is the way people would deflect and deny from this particular trend of abuse because it didn't fit with their agenda, namely that if you bring it up, those on the far right will use it.
It is such a bad part for me because I bought into it. I can remember the first time I heard it when at a party somebody brought it up about 10 yrs ago. The next day I brought it up in work and a fellow left winger shut me down immediately saying "It was all crap propagated by right wing groups in the areas where Asians lived. She had looked into it. Why didn't the media cover it if it was true? Wouldn't it be covered everywhere?" I took her at her word, she was a feminist, why would she say this if it wasn't true?

It gives me no pleasure saying this as a life long left leaner/voter but every time over the next few years I heard somebody deflecting or denying what was going on, both itrw and online, and especially as it became more widely known, they were on the left.
I am not saying everybody on the left did it, but everyone that did it was on the left.
Looking back you have to ask yourself how many thousands of girls could have avoided being raped, trafficked around the northern towns and prostituted had it come out earlier and if those people that deflected and denied it for so long.

fake name I'm not sure I agree that white rapists operate alone - jimmy savile was allowed to get away with what he did not only because people heard rumours but turned a blind eye, but because people around him facilitated it. He was given they keys to Stoke Mandeville by someone and I find it hard to believe that they didn't know what he wanted those keys for. Same as Sydney Cook - his gang of paedophiles (I think only 4 jailed alongside him) were in it together. As were the 2 men that raped and killed Daniel Handley in Beckton - they met in Wormwood Scrubs and killed him together.

cuirdr I don't agree that it was fear of racism. The police aren't scared of being called racist when it comes to stop and search. And at the time this abuse was going on, 95% of men on Greater Manchester's Police sex offenders register were white men. The Jay report (I think it was the Jay report) also cited that the asian men who were raping white girls in Rotherham and other places also raped girls in their own community but the girls were less likely to come forward. I'm only using my personal experiences here, but I believe that.

childrenof the stones I don't understand your post (sorry have heaache this morning). I'm reading it as people on the left covered up abuse in rotherham etc because of political correctness? They were wrong if that's what you're saying but people on the right cover up sex abuse all the time too. And I think it's true that people see race rather than rape. And that's wrong I think because we should be focusing on men who rape regardless of what colour they are, and that's not what's happenning. Women are still disbelieved and girls and boys were disbelieved in places like Shirley Oakes in the 50's and 60's (most of the abusers there were white men). Victims are routinely disbelieved over their rapists, that's the problem. Sorry if I've misunderstood your post.

I am from Rotherham and remember how blatantly this all went on 10 years or so ago, and yes horrible newspaper articles with misogynistic language, i remember "12 year old has 5 lovers" ... why I find so interesting is the resistance at actually deeply looking into the families that produced these monsters. 4 brothers were sent to prison for being deeply involved one brother incredibly infamous, but noone wants to go there, if that was a family off a sink estate that had created 4 violent kidnapping paedophile rapists there would be an hour long Doc, on Crime & Investigation talking to people who they uses to go to school with

Fear of racism was one of the things which prevented the authorities from intervening. It's unfortunate but it can't be swept under the carpet.

YY. It's true. However much some people find it uncomfortable.

Venus I agree

Again i dont think it was fear of racism and it doesnt make me uncomfortable - police arent worried about being called racist when they stop and search predominantly ethnic minorities. And many white paepophiles are also not brought to justice. There is a lotof PR around how the authorities deal with rape but the reality is different and rapists of all backgrounds are let off the hook to carry on raping women and children.

www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/6634360.Jury_acquits_man_in_group_sex_case/

Old article...

Note the crime is not a 24 year old sleeping with 13 year old girls on the run from a children's home. It's not framed as paedophilia. It's framed as troublemakers crying rape when they wanted to have an orgy with older men.

This was the attitude. Not race, not rape - troublemakers and tearaways crying rape. At least in my experience.

"It gives me no pleasure saying this as a life long left leaner/voter but every time over the next few years I heard somebody deflecting or denying what was going on, both itrw and online, and especially as it became more widely known, they were on the left."

This is the result of "sex work is work" propaganda.

Child victims of rape have long refused to see themselves as victims through complex protective mechanisms, but never before have the excuses for "good people" turning away from these victims been so righteously upheld.

The billions of dollars pornographer have spent on public relations to whitewash their rape industries into public acceptance is one of the greatest marketing successes of all time.

confusicous that article is shocking. Even if his defence was true (dubious) girls of 13 can't give consent so how can he say it was consensual sex? Article also says the girls were in a children's home and had run away. Show again how children aren't automatically protected when they go into care. I believe there are thousands of foster carers who offer loving home to children. Not all of them do though, and being in care doesn't protect children from abuse.

Society was done with us in Oxford by the time we were in children's homes. We'd run riot. Staff in homes would escalate situations possibly due to having no other powers but training could have addressed it. There was the odd staff member who'd have you up by your neck or try locking you in first. Generally male ones. Mostly for things like us not wanting to go to bed on time or going to school on time - just like any other teenager into calling the police and getting us arrested for criminal damage and assault when we took our frustration out on them winding us up. There'd constantly be emergency services outside the homes annoying residents.

The home I was in, we were in mostly because placements had broken down repeatedly. The next step was locking us up in secure units...

We were criminalised by the people who were meant to look after us

Oxfords attitude was those nuisance troublemakers... and for many girls it became nuisance child prostitutes. Staff were entirely unequipped to deal with sexual allegations - it was basically your own fault

Stage was set beautifully

30 years from now the scandal of sexual abuse within Pakistani/Asian communities will shock people. We know it's there but shame and fear keep it well hidden.

I do agree there is a problem in the Asian community but I don't think it's a race one personally. I think it's that it's acceptable in some families and religious practices for girls to be used as "women"

And possibly they leave alone girls who are Asian and in care due to family links and honour violence/killings being a reality, or the girls don't speak up for the same reason knowing it wouldn't necessarily be dealt with via the justice system but taken into the hands of male family members

I think that a big part of the reason why nothing was done is because the police themselves and also prominent members of the community (councillors, social workers, businessmen etc) are up to their necks in it. It was convenient to have the "fear of being seen as racist" excuse to stop people who wanted to investigate further by holding it over their heads but I don't believe it was the primary reason, but more of a silencing tactic. I seem to remember one person in Rotherham was sent on some kind of a racism awareness course after making their investigations known and as a result dropped it after that?