The Police still failing to protect thousands of girls - The Times Investigation

[MrsOvertonsWindow]

The Times have a series of articles 10 years after they exposed the Rotherham abuse scandals detailing how little has changed despite all the resources and prosecutions. Unbelievable that this still continues.
Share tokens:

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/2770d410-befa-11eb-8144-d3653cd81e51?shareToken=60fcf884fea3a98ca94410e5d0e3bd49

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/54165316-bf0c-11eb-a904-b6ed9daa84aa?shareToken=c45496b24dec6130b00a108296f1f9e9

Yet there is still time to investigate stickers?

Thanks for the share.

At some point it was accepted that these girls are an acceptable sacrifice, nothing has changed.
You would imagine with better use of tech and a wider understanding it'd be well on it's way to being stopped.
With all the publicity GG have had it should be impossible now. That only happens if there is a desire to stop it.

Thanks for sharing this. It’s heartbreaking that those young girls were treated so inhumanely.

I just read this and am so filed with rage. Especially the part where it quoted an internal report saying that while efforts were put into safeguarding the children, there was little to no evidence of investigation into the perpetrators! WHAT THE FUCK!

I think this is an age old thing of labelling the young female children as miscreants and tearaways, lost causes etc. and complete acceptance that predatory men will be predatory men. Do they forget that THEY ARE THE POLICE! So angry.

Anyway, thinking in terms of channelling this into something useful, what is being DONE? What can we do to hold the police to account here?

@NutellaEllaElla

I just read this and am so filed with rage. Especially the part where it quoted an internal report saying that while efforts were put into safeguarding the children, there was little to no evidence of investigation into the perpetrators! WHAT THE FUCK!

I think this is an age old thing of labelling the young female children as miscreants and tearaways, lost causes etc. and complete acceptance that predatory men will be predatory men. Do they forget that THEY ARE THE POLICE! So angry.

Anyway, thinking in terms of channelling this into something useful, what is being DONE? What can we do to hold the police to account here?

There was a BBC drama on the scandal a few years ago which made clear that the abused girls were viewed as “trash”, the bottom of the pile. It broke my bloody heart to see it dramatised so God knows how it felt for the girls it happened to. There’s something very very sick and twisted at the heart of this.

It also leads me to wonder why, 10 years on, is the case system so ill equipped to care effectively for these young people. Why is there a shortage of accommodation - and people that care? Wtf has gone so wrong that young teens and pre-teens are left to their own devices to such a degree, something in dien which leaves them so open and vulnerable to grooming and abuse. No wonder they're such easy pretty for these men, the 'care' system clearly doesn't.

I agree, Inflagrante. It’s a scandal in itself that already-vulnerable children are so uncared for. As a society we should be deeply ashamed of this.

Ten years ago there was a significant amount of money and resources put into local authorities to enable joint work to tackle these issues and it's so disappointing to see the lack of impact of that. I know services are pulled in all directions and these children are some of the most 'hard to reach' that there are. But the evidence is that the police haven't changed in their approach in too many areas.

25 years ago I was involved in caring for some of these girls. It was impossible to keep them safe in the city, when the abusers were ever present and threatening them with worse if they did not do as they were told. Even in secure accommodation they were groomed and the men were waiting when they left. Even when perpetrators were jailed there were more to take their place. So angry that this is still not being dealt with appropriately.

25 years on- many of the current abusers would have been in nappies/ children/ not yet born at that point. So what is happening for these boys to grow up into abusers/groomers/unpleasant individuals?

I am thinking of the poor kid who has been reported missing 197 times over a 3 year period. That's once, on average, every 5 or 6 days.
That's probably at least 197 appalling criminal offences against one child.

I'm just trying to imagine what it would be like - even as an adult - to know that a serious crime like sexual assault or rape was going to be committed against you today, Friday and then again on Wednesday and Monday and Saturday, with no end in sight.
And that your abusers would be able to carry on with impunity for years and that nobody seemed to have the power or desire to stop them.

And this is a child.

There are some books on this by experts - will dig them out.

Experts have the answers but it's not getting through. MP letter writing, campaigns etc needed

This is so disheartening.

The Times has a range of new articles. This one identifies a problem with Health workers not referring abused girls to the police / safeguarding because of GDPR concerns. Share token:

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/06934a56-bfb4-11eb-8144-d3653cd81e51?shareToken=59d4fec7eaaeba2a3a6a96e89fa09ddb

there are many factors at play - i used to work in safeguarding.

if this cycle is to stop - the relevent authorities need the resources to deal with it - its not that the authorities - be it the police or social services dont care - its that there are ever present other emergencies that need to be dealt with.

if this is to stop there needs to be dedicated monetary resources given by the government. hte police, councils and social services are severely under resourced - the focus should be on the govt - dont be fooled

This is only possible because large swathes of society don‘t take this kind of thing seriously, particularly when it concerns lower class kids. Epstein paraded ‚his‘ girls around in front of the highest levels of Society, including politicians, and nobody raised an eyebrow, including a lot of women in these circles. And the same attitude is apparently rampant among police, social workers...
(That and presumably inadequate funding, so that those who might be sympathetic are overehelmed by the work load and can‘t afford to invest time and energy...)

Anyway, thinking in terms of channelling this into something useful, what is being DONE? What can we do to hold the police to account here?

What I want to know is where are all the feminists campaigning on this issue? Anyone?

There was a good item on Tuesday (1 June) about this ongoing scandal on - believe it or not - Woman's Hour. They interviewed former Chief Prosecutor for the North of England, Nazir Afzal, who prosecuted the Rochdale case. He's clearly angry that all the work that was done 10 years ago has been undone by complacency and budget cuts. He confirmed that it is GDPR concerns that is preventing a joined up strategy between different agencies. He pointed out that, whilst children's services claim to not know where missing girls are, they do know who their groomers are, but nothing is done to seize their phones and get the information they need from them. He also pointed out that the police use the excuse that unless the girls complain they are being abused, they can't do anything - thus shifting the burden to identify what is abuse onto children who have known nothing else, rather than pro-actively spotting and dealing with abusive situations.

At 32 minutes:

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000wjpv

Nazir 'it's all the fault of the night time economy' Afzal and the BBC?

Urgh. No thanks. What the fuck are they going to do? Fuck all as far as I can see

who prosecuted the Rochdale case

Which Rochdale case? There's been about 5 "Rochdale" cases. Same with many other towns and cities in the North. These "cases" are a regular occurrence. Every week there's another "case"

Nobody is required to listen to anything, Flaxmeadow, so if you don't want to, don't. "The Rochdale case" is shorthand for the first successful prosecution of a grooming gang in 2012, which Afzal brought to court as chief prosecutor - that's what the fuck he did. It's common knowledge that this is an ongoing problem (and not just in the north of England), but that case was a watershed moment in legal history, and is shorthand for bringing the issue to national attention.

Like I said, if you don't think his expertise has anything to say to you, don't listen; but don't complain if nobody else listens to him and others like him either and nothing gets done, because he is actually advocating for the police and other agencies to pull their fingers out and pro-actively help these girls, and doing so from a place of knowledge of what should have been actioned following the work done 10 years ago.

What are you doing about it?

"The Rochdale case" is shorthand for the first successful prosecution of a grooming gang in 2012, which Afzal brought to court as chief prosecutor - that's what the fuck he did

No he did not bring the first successful case to court. These gangs have been prosecuted since at least the mid 1990s, as Andrew Norfolk pointed out in his award winning investigations for the Sunday Times (published January 2011). The first, for there have been many in the town, successful Rotherham grooming gang prosecution was in 2010 (South Yorkshire) and had nothing to do with Afzal (Greater Manchester).

It was Norfolk and the Sunday Times who exposed it not Afzal, that's Afzal who still says grooming gangs are just as much a white perpetrator problem, which would be laughable if this wasnt so serious. He also backed the flawed Home Office report. A report that avoided including any geographical area in its data where the gangs are rife. He is an apologist and obsfucator.

What are you doing about it?

Wow

Like I said, if you don't think his expertise has anything to say to you, don't listen;

I don't need to listen to bourgeois showboaters. I know what's happening. I live where this is happening. I know the victims of these gangs. I know people who have fought them in the streets where I live and almost died for it. I know people who have been tortured for days by thes gangs, almost to the point of death, and, on leaving ICU and an induced coma, had to be rehomed 100's of miles away