It never stops in West Yorkshire. 29 Men Charged in Connection with Child Sexual Exploitation in Calderdale

[nickymanchester]

This was a press release from West Yorkshire police yesterday:-

www.westyorkshire.police.uk/news-appeals/29-men-charged-connection-child-sexual-exploitation-calderdale

It's connected to historic offences committed against a single victim from 2003 to 2010.

On the plus side, WYP do now seem to be taking these things more seriously but on the down side this is still from more than ten years ago.

Also, what really got to me about this story was that there were 29 men charged for crimes against the same, single victim.

I can't imagine what her life must have been like as a teenager when the offending was taking place.

Yes andy, because when anyone googles it now, the first results that come up are newspaper articles quoting the flawed HO report. So demographics on offenders is obscured again for the casual observer.

Yes, The Guardian did gleefully report on the HO report but they have always been in denial

Such epic awfulness.

I worked in the home office supporting projects relatives to grooming in 2001. The research team told me the girls in Rochdale were scared of their taxi firm and that things were being covered up. I blew the whistle everywhere I could- locally, across departments and was really sad to hear no real action was taken at all :( many years later I was invited back for an investigation and was so relieved that the 21 year old me had taken actions I could feel proud of, but also gutted it was not enough. I still wonder what I could have done.

This whole sordid, distressing affair has so many parallels with the Jimmy Saville case, albeit on a massive scale. The police, media, politicians ignored Saville, some might say "enabled" his behaviour and the same happened/is happening with these grooming gangs.
I also found this earlier on regarding Labour MP Naz Shah.

www.rotherhamadvertiser.co.uk/news/view,mp-naz-shah-should-resign-after-sharing-tweet-telling-sex-abuse-victims-to-keep-their-mouths-shut_23593.htm

Angliski

You did as much as any decent person could do. You and the victims were failed by the establishment.

[quote lakesidelife]@FindTheTruth

www.safeguardingchildren.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/NYSCP-CSE-Practice-Guidance-v3.1-Nov-19.pdf

This an example of the practice guidance that is being used currently.

That said it is hard to manage teenagers who are getting their needs met emotionally by abusive men, at least there is more awareness of the issue now.[/quote]
Just looked at the link re men in cars, there's this below... but is it enough and do various agencies know about it? do schools report men in cars outside the schools?

"A: Any information should be passed on to the Police via the NY Police Partnership Information Sharing form

It may be that it does not relate to any particular individual but just a comment relating to a place, people in a car or shop that is providing alcohol or where individuals of concern appear to be congregating. It could prove valuable in identifying a location, a perpetrator
or other potential victims and help the police take disruptive and pre-emptive action to remove any specific threat."

The awkward thing no one wishes to talk about with these cases is that it is very common for the perpetrators to not be British born. They are either resident, or acquired citizenship through marriage.

People of Pakistani heritage who were born in Britain and went to British schools tend not to be involved in these crimes. After all, to be blunt, you just don't rape the sister of someone you went to school with.

One could argue these crimes are facilitated by the nature of chain migration, which causes significant problems with the British Pakistani community itself. It's a practice that needs to be rethought, because it does extraordinary damage to pretty much everyone involved.

It's not just ignored it's still actively discouraged. I reported many things, directly related to one group, and was quickly regarded as having racist motivations. I admit it put the frighteners on me. I daren't report to SYP.

this makes my blood boil. can you whistleblow (if related to your work?) or present evidence to your MP? AFAIK The regulatory body for SYP (not sure who that would be) and MPs have to listen to whistleblowing evidence and protect you as long as you are passing on information rather than an opinion.

This whole sordid, distressing affair has so many parallels with the Jimmy Saville case, albeit on a massive scale.

Agree. the whole system has to change. it sounds like some change has happened but not nearly enough if people are still discouraged from reporting.

I saw this yesterday and knew what the ethnicity of the perpetrators would be. Race is an issue here - working class white girls are regarded as slags in certain cultures, and the police and other authorities were reluctant to investigate for fear of being seen as racist.

Girls have been utterly failed and nobody is being held to account, and the issue is still being obscured for “good race relations” which is more important than female children being raped

The awkward thing no one wishes to talk about with these cases is that it is very common for the perpetrators to not be British born. They are either resident, or acquired citizenship through marriage

The gangs are mostly British born, of Pakistani heritage.
But some of the victims gave evidence that they had been used for forced prostitution/trafficking and been forced to sleep with men who had foreign accents.

Its organised crime and related to the heroin trade and people trafficking in general. No wonder the victims were/still are scared to come forward. It's almost seems it's like giving evidence against the Mafia

@FindTheTruth It safe to assume that some dc will fall through the cracks, some always do.
But the dc I've worked with who were at risk had a robust multi-agency response that was very different to the one I saw years ago.
This comes with the caveat that it was different area of Yorkshire I was then working in and therefore different local agencies.

But in the past it wasn't that schools didn't notice, or residential workers didn't care so much as there were no systems in place to support dc, no understanding of grooming and a belief the dc were making valid if flawed choices, alongside the fear of racial tensions.

It's almost seems it's like giving evidence against the Mafia

the whole system has to change to enable victims and witnesses to come forward safely.

and stop it full stop from ever happening again.

The groups that were causing concerns in the area I worked in were Kurds who ran the taxis.
So it isn't just one ethic group causing issues.

It's decades old.
This is a newspaper report from 1975 (Rotherham). The victims of Pakistani gangs here were born in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

the whole system has to change to enable victims and witnesses to come forward safely.

Yes but the sheer scale of it by now hampers that. How many witnesses and their families can be protected? Some parents begged social services to take their girls into care to escape the gangs, but the gangs still found them. In Telford a victim and her family died in an arson attack.

@Flaxmeadow

The awkward thing no one wishes to talk about with these cases is that it is very common for the perpetrators to not be British born. They are either resident, or acquired citizenship through marriage

The gangs are mostly British born, of Pakistani heritage.
But some of the victims gave evidence that they had been used for forced prostitution/trafficking and been forced to sleep with men who had foreign accents.

Its organised crime and related to the heroin trade and people trafficking in general. No wonder the victims were/still are scared to come forward. It's almost seems it's like giving evidence against the Mafia

Rochdale was largely non British born, so was Oxford. Knowing of other northern cases, it is a principle that largely applies.

It's important to see this because there's a secondary issue over the difficult nature of policing individuals that have had little exposure to British institutions, and who may have English as a second language or claim to.

That's not to excuse the historical reticence of authorities, but it needs to be thought about.

Rochdale was largely non British born, so was Oxford. Knowing of other northern cases, it is a principle that largely applies

Which Rochdale gang, what year? There have been 4 gangs convicted in Rochdale

@FindTheTruth that was my obstacle, I don't work in that field at all but I was CS (Civil Service) and aware of attracting the label.
It was so blatant it made me question my own motives.

The crazy thing is I still am not confident that I'm not being racist when I say now (ime) there are a glut of eastern European gangs operating.

...Knowing of other northern cases, it is a principle that largely applies.

Which cases? There are close to a hundred gang convictions now (that's gangs not gang members).

It's important to see this because there's a secondary issue over the difficult nature of policing individuals that have had little exposure to British institutions, and who may have English as a second language or claim to.

Most of the gangs convicted were either born here or came here as young children but yes some are recent immigrants, Somalis for example

That government report is a disgrace. I believed it and started to think it was groups of white males but I couldn’t understand how that was happening when everything I read in the press listed Asian surnames.

It’s complete lack of respect for white girls and their freedoms.

This blatant covering up of race just makes more people racist and against any form of immigration- it plays completely into the Govts hands.

If the government report is a cover up, I don't understand why?

This government loves a good dog whistle & it plays nicely to the mail /express comments section. Surely they'd be falling over themselves to call attention to a real problem with a race element.

I can't buy it's the civil service woke mindset, the government would gleefully call that out and stomp all over it.

Wouldn't they?

Because the whole thing was awfully mishandled and is still going on and everyone knows it.

If they admit there's a problem they'd need a plan to deal with it. And they're not interested. And if they didn't deliver they'd be outrage. And they wouldn't deliver because there are limited resources and this just isn't anywhere on their priority list.

That's why.

The problem with this kind of cover-up and tiptoeing around racial sensitivities is that it just empowers racists to exploit the story even further.

If I can read the real facts about these cases in reputable newspapers and the government brings them into the daylight where we can all see what's going on and have an open conversation about it, then the problem can be tackled. If you obfuscate and prevaricate due to 'racial sensitivities', you just make it easier for the real xenophobes and extremists to lie to their followers and put out false information that fuels racism and hatred even more.

Nah nicegerbil I don't buy that.

It was badly mishandled by a labour council, mostly under a labour government (the latest wave of cases seem to be '90s and 00's).

The government could play off that so powerfully as them finally sticking up for the white working class after years of labour failure.
That'd be perfect for them as they fully raze the red wall.

As for not delivering, it doesn't seem to bother them on other issues. They'd find a way to twist the truth.

I can't understand why they don't care about something that has political mileage.

But maybe protecting poor girls isn't a vote winner.

Yes exactly. Not a priority.

For any of them.

This is why it's not party political. Political systems were designed for men by men to address the things men care about. Same as the laws. Men control governments/ and the other systems in place in the vast majority of the world.

I remember watching Bob crowe on the telly years back speaking at a union conference thing.

He kept saying we stand for all workers etc. But it was clear to me that in his head the workers meant men. I mentioned it to DH and he agreed even though he enjoys being an irritating devils advocate at me when I start on politics

Neither the left or the right are interested in women. Some individuals sure. The women more. But they're in the minority and it's dangerous to step too far out of line.