Male grooming behaviour

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Why are we so scared of speaking about behaviour which creeps us out and we know to be wrong?

It's well known that Jimmy Savile was not subtle in his approach. Many people knew what he was doing, he even wrote about it in his autobiography but somehow the truth didn't come out properly until after his death.

Similarly, the grooming gangs in Rotherham were not picked up for a long time, because no-one cared sufficiently about the girls affected and were trying to avoid being racist.

When the NSPCC came to talk on Mumsnet many women wanted to know why they weren't doing more to protect girls' boundaries in school. The NSPCC were not interested in answering.

Why is it that women can recognise boundary breaking behaviour as dangerous but organisations are very reluctant to allow discussion of it?

Have we learned nothing?

Falsely accusing can be life ruining, suspecting is different. But better to be wrong, then do nothing and be right.

Predatory behaviour is often not recognised as predatory. When the word predatory is used about the behaviour, it's seen as a revolting accusation. Somehow the accusation of being predatory is far worse than actual predatory behaviour.

I remember having a crush on an older lad. A year or two later he heard about it and asked me out on a date. I was thrilled, of course. I'd have been 15, him 19. It didn't end very badly, but badly enough. He clearly had no interest in me as a person, just an opportunity for him to gratify himself.
Same thing happened again and again, now I think about it.
Seemed to rush from 'she likes me, I can try and have sex with her.'

Much easier to pretend there are "animals" and "monsters" out there whose mothers never raised them righ

Over and over again it's always the woman to blame. I was put off true crime because every single awful murderer, rapist, thugs mother was to blame somehow for every event that led to murdering, raping, thugging (I know that's not a word) even the female criminals.
All the way through life, women are to blame for mens crimes.
Frankly the narrative is tedious now. I'm sick of men using us as a shield for their crappy behaviour.

Theres also the perception that 'falsely' accusing, or even suspecting, a male of sexual impropriety is absolutely the most life ruiningly awful thing you can do to someone
It's interesting this, isn't it. On the one hand you have the "no smoke without fire" bunch, who refuse to accept not guilty verdicts and assume accusations are all correct.
On the other hand you have the "she is making it up for attention" gang, because clearly having your body, your behaviour, your apparel and you entire sexual history torn apart in public is somehow a really fun cool thing to do.
You'd imagine there are more people in the latter category, given the strength of MRA sentiment and the antipathy towards possibly "ruining a man's life".
But I think there must be substantial overlap, where people are saying they don't believe a woman who accuses a man but deep down they feel unsure.
Otherwise why would his life be ruined by an accusation? (Ignoring here the rich and powerful men who have faced serious accusations and suffered zero ill effects.)

You can't buy into the "ruined life" trope unless you admit that the tainted image is directly related to the number of people who feel, deep down, that he probably did it.
So we have a baked-in mistrust of the legal system specifically relating to sex crime. Why? Because we know that the conviction rate is 2%. We know therefore that 98% of rapists get away with it.
Our unease at accusing men is balanced with our unease at failing to convict them.

Which, taken to the logical next step, means all men are capable of it and just don't have the opportunity.
Quoting myself, because of the reaction to this.
I wasn't clear, I don't think all men are capable of abusing children. I mean physically maybe but I am well aware that men have morals too and that many men would not take advantage in an opportunistic way.
What I was trying to say is that with overcrowding being the number one risk factor, many more men than we would expect, are indeed open to abusing children sexually even if in other circumstances they wouldn't commit this type of crime. So that rather than a "paedo" type we actually have specifically paedophile men and other sexually entitled abusive men who happen to commit paedophilic crime and that there's no point looking for the bogeyman former group when the latter group is just as dangerous and is probably bigger.
The consequence of the paedophile group might be higher but the likelihood of the opportunistic paedophile group is higher so the both end up with the same risk rating overall.
It's also worth remembering that poverty, drink, drugs, violence in the home, religion, etc are all much less influential than overcrowding.
So as much as NAMALT, actually a lot more men are open to committing opportunistic sex crime than we want to admit.
Which is again why safeguarding measures have to be tough. Because we aren't defending girls against the one in a hundred bogeymen, we're defending them against a much higher percentage of men (no I'm not going to even guess) who may not be sexually fixated on children or on specific acts of abuse, but who consider their sexual comfort as more important than anyone else's self-determination or indeed the law.
Specifically thinking about men who put their own sexual pleasure first opens up a whole new can of worms, however.

Very interesting thread, thank you.

I think that victim-blaming can be linked to magical thinking, as in ‘if the victim is to blame and I don’t behave that way, I won’t be a victim’, and almost annoyance at finding out some pillar of the community is actually a predator, because it requires people to adjust their ideas and they don’t want to - unconsciously they think ‘if only I didn’t know about this’.

I think the earlier post about ‘what women are for’ goes to a lot of what is so unsettling about TRAs and especially AGP people - they say they are women but all they are doing is reinforcing the idea that women are simply things to be looked at & to have sex with.

What is so different about the story of a teenager having sex with men from commuter towns and what happened to the Rotherham and other victims? When you boil it down, it’s the same. I think it is disgusting, and dangerous.

There's also an element of my worst nightmare appears to be your fantasy, why is that and what does that say about you as a person?

I think that victim-blaming can be linked to magical thinking, as in ‘if the victim is to blame and I don’t behave that way, I won’t be a victim’, and almostannoyanceat finding out some pillar of the community is actually a predator, because it requires people to adjust their ideas and they don’t want to - unconsciously they think ‘if only I didn’t know about this

Except now its moved up a level.

We are putting them into the situation by removing every last safe space and they will still be blamed. Worse still the victim will be committing the actual crime they care about

Thought provoking, horrifying and important thread. I guess I see why many don't want to think that deeply about some of this, it is scary to realise how little power women and girls really have

My friend taught some of the Rotherham girls, she did her utmost to stop them going with those guys. The girls were absolutely convinced they were their boyfriends, until it turned nasty, then as they got older and got dumped and at that point the girls realised the truth. Neither hell nor high water would have stopped it, at the time.

Well it seems the SW, nurses, parents, teachers and police didn,t. But I feel they could have. If they talked to each other and believed each other.

My friend taught some of the Rotherham girls, she did her utmost to stop them going with those guys. The girls were absolutely convinced they were their boyfriends, until it turned nasty, then as they got older and got dumped and at that point the girls realised the truth. Neither hell nor high water would have stopped it, at the time.
I can well believe that. I bet it was horrible for your friend to see and be unable to change anything.
You only have to watch Jodie Foster's scenes in Taxi Driver (where she plays a 13 year old prostituted girl marketed as 12) to know this kind of thing has gone on forever. Her pimp loves her, she's free to go whenever she wants, he looks after her, she likes what she does, all delivered with sincerity and a smart mouth. And all rubbish.
A grown man can outsmart a young (vulnerable and disadvantaged) girl and convince her of anything. That's why we protect older children from themselves!
But my sympathy to your friend, it definitely would have stayed with me if I had known what was going on and been powerless to prevent it.

A grown man can outsmart a young (vulnerable and disadvantaged) girl and convince her of anything. That's why we protect older children from themselves!

That is also exactly why some men are so obsessed with young girls, the fact that they're so easy to manipulate. Entry level cynicism tends to assume that the attraction is purely to people who look very young, really hardened cynicism comes to realize that it's the vulnerability and malleability that's the real attraction.

'Society is kind of ok with rape when the alternative is questioning a belief system and standing up to the power within it. It’s a perfect position for a predator. Lives are ruined, people are traumatized… but in a socially acceptable way where nobody’s ideology is threatened'

if you go to graham linehans twitter theres a fascinating thread on this - sorry couldn't link- which articulates something i hadnt quite seen before.

This is the thread :
mobile.twitter.com/therestofus5/status/1256298895002533888

Worth a read.

It's Lang's sacred caste thing, isn't it? Great thread.

DJLippy - "You've all heard about what happened in Rotherham but how many of you have heard about Oldham? This is a on-going scandal."

Bloody Nora!!!! That blog is mind-blowing!

I have posted a current OP about Rochdale so I will share the article that shows a link between the "grooming gangs" in the two towns: Shabir ‘call me Daddy’ Ahmed.

"The name Shabir ‘call me Daddy’ Ahmed will be known by everyone who has followed the Rochdale Grooming Gang scandal. What will be less known about him will be that he was both an active member of the Oldham Labour Party and an Oldham Council employee where he supported vulnerable children and their families.

Multiple ex Councillors have confirmed with me that as well as being a member of his local branch of the Labour Party, Shabir Ahmed was also a regular visitor to the parliamentary offices of the MP for Oldham West & Royton. Unknown to most Oldham people, what is now 100% indisputable, even though Oldham Council Leader, Sean Fielding, continues to dodge questions, is that Shabir Ahmed was active in Oldham. He held a job with the Council and a Cartel connected company where he had access to children, he was an active member of his Labour Party branch and was a regular visitor at his MPs office. Those of us familiar with the methods of peadophiles will know that these monsters associate themselves with powerful people through which their victims are further silenced. My understanding is that even the Police were unaware of how embedded Shabir Ahmed was in Oldham.

As stories of Asian grooming gangs spread from places ranging from Rochdale to Rotherham, there appeared to be an absence of such investigations in Oldham. Whilst multiple Oldham based groomers, including Shabir Ahmed, appeared to be conducting their filthy business in neighbouring towns, it appeared that Oldham had survived. Unfortunately, what I share with you now will suggest a very different story."

Continued at:
recusant-nine.com/recusant-nine/welcome2oldhampart4

This blog is an expose of the political backdrop to Pakistani-Muslim "grooming gangs". Not "political correctness" but political careerism: ignoring and covering up child-rape for votes.

The author, Raja Miah MBE, might be engaged in these exposes for not entirely selfless reasons (anyone interested, Google the name). That does not detract from the information he is putting out there - just that it is possible that his take on some things might be at least partly politically motivated.

Oh dear, such a sound thread, unfortunately.

A couple of things arise: Opportunity is a major factor in any offence, even stealing an unguarded biscuit. A lot of people could, but wouldn't have plotted to do it, or even thought of such a thing, until there was both opportunity and little perceived risk of punishment.

The other thing is that the understandable revulsion at child abuse tènds to divert all attention, at the price of overlooking that opportunists will abuse wherever there is opportunity. This thread has, thankfully, included references to other vulnerable people. A vague idea that nobody would rape a baby is bad news for babies. A vague idea that nobody would rape a pensioner or an incontinent invalid will lead people to be left in harm's way. Jimmy Saville was not even prevented from access to bodies in the morgue. Opportunity. Opportunity.