Suella Braverman vows to stamp out grooming gangs behind organised child sex abuse

[IwantToRetire]

The Home Secretary, writing in The Mail on Sunday, pledges to 'track down and punish the grooming gangs with the same sense of mission and determination' used to pursue the murderers of Stephen Lawrence, the black British teenager who was killed in a racially motivated attack at a bus stop in South London in 1993.

Ms Braverman, who was born in Harrow, in North-West London, to a Kenyan mother and Mauritian father, writes: 'The time has come to make right one of the greatest injustices seen in Britain in modern times. The systematic rape, exploitation and abuse of young girls by organised gangs of older men – and the disgraceful failure of the authorities to act despite ample evidence – is a stain on our country.'

A Buddhist, Ms Braverman describes the 'perpetrators' as 'groups of men, almost all British-Pakistani, who hold cultural attitudes completely incompatible with British values'.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-11928629/SUELLA-BRAVERMAN-mission-ensure-really-no-hiding-place-gangs-grooming-young-girls.html

I am not sure if this is just the DM take on what she said, or if it accurately reflects what she said.

If she did say this and not talk about how men of all cultures, given the opportunity, have and will exploit young women, then she is letting down all the women who are exploited.

They've had 12 years to deal with this crap, let's not give them any longer.

Grooming gangs have existed for decades and no Government has dealt with it as the assumption is that the women and young girls who are exploited are "no better thant the ought to be".

And also they wont deal with it if they dont accept it is a male problem in all communities:

For many in Britain today the term “grooming gang” immediately suggests Pakistani-heritage Muslim men abusing white girls, but the Home Office researchers now tell us that “research has found that group-based offenders are most commonly White”.

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2020/dec/analysis-new-home-office-report-admits-grooming-gangs-are-not-muslim-problem

So I suspect that this is just an electioneering tactic, and like the Brexit campaigner is designed to get the vote entrenched little Englanders, rathr than any actual concern for young women. They are making out it is "allowed" to happen because Labour councils turn a blind eye to what is happening.

The Stephen Lawrence murders that the police studiously avoided investigating, lost or failed to gather evidence from; where the perpetrators' families were linked to corrupt police officers?

Where the police treated the victim and the main witness like criminals (and prosecuted the witness, if I remember)?

Where rumours were diligently put out for years that Lawrence must have been a drugs dealer?

Where the family had to bring private prosecutions?

Where even now, the memorial stone to the victim gets racist vandalism?

That "same sense of mission and determination"?

I am deeply uncomfortable with this narrative. Of course, I want grooming gangs to be dealt with, just as I want all abuse of women and girls by men to be dealt with. But when the Home Office's own report clearly suggests that this is not just about Pakistani men, one has to wonder what motivates this particular focus. The words "dog whistle" definitely come to mind, and I suspect that Braverman thinks she can get away with it because of her own ethnic background, but it isn't quite that simple.

I suspect it's a dogwhistle to the surprising number of people who were angry that the police eventually investigated the murder of Stephen Lawrence, after a lot of pressure.

How dare the Lawrence family get given special treatment, of have their son's murder investigated? There was a lot of talk along those lines at the time - I heard some of it. Clearly the Lawrences were supposed to sit down and shut up.

Braverman is playing to the racist crowd for whom it's all about Them vs Us.

That's why she chosen this particular murder rather than any other case. It's tapping into the narrative of "special treatment because the victim was one of Them (black), but the police don't care when it's one of Our Girls (white)"

The fact that this narrative is deranged, and the inverse of what actually happens (missing pretty white girl effect) won't stop her.

It's a thorny issue. I've come to accept that the grooming gangs is an iffy problem because they appear to be sanctioned or even instigated by local authorities, and to be blunt, Labour-led authorities - Rochdale, Rotherham, Oxford and I think Telford, also Greater Manchester. I'm not an authority on it, but reading between the lines of memoirs such as the one by Sammy Woodhouse but also a few others, it does seem to go to the top. So if Braverman is going after this, well, there will be pushback even though it does corner the Tommy Robinson vote. A good many local authorities are in effect the local mafia. I don't so much blame the subsection of Pakistani men who are doing this - though I do - but the so-called Safeguarding heads in LAs who let it happen.

And like the idea of not reporting suspected sexual abuse as being made illegal, it's hard to know where that goes with Govt because under the Met it appears rape is as good as legal because they don't bring it to court. So it's more likely instead to lead to various whistleblowers being accused under 'suss' laws of certain stuff so they can have their kids taken off them or have them put on a register.

In the Home Counties there seems to be a different slant on LA corruption - it' more in proactive attitudes to end-of-life care in nursing homes (i.e. they get bumped off via dehydration without the families' knowledge`) and rolling out the red carpet to Russian oligarchs while critics of Putin get rubbed out in Surrey and the Greater London area, the coroner citing 'natural causes'.

Don't get me wrong, I'm very pleased the police finally started going after grooming gangs, and that there have been many successful prosecutions (led by um, a British-Pakistani prosecutor. Whose values AFAIK I'm just fine with, thanks Suella).

But I doubt Braverman is sincere about protecting women and girls, or she'd be interested in the majority of groomers, who are white.

As you say, OP, this is an election tactic. Tap into the racist vote; turn up the anger; direct blame on political target of choice.

I think it will be very successful. Especially with a bit of viral social media stoking.

It would seem fairly easy to establish the rates at which men from different demographic groups engage in grooming of this type:

Find the percentage size of each demographic group in the general population, find the (overall) percentage size among the men in grooming gangs for each demographic group and then relate the latter to the former.

If all the ratios come out (roughly) the same, then no demographic is more represented than any other. Anyone could do that with good enough data on the membership of grooming gangs.

This is what I thought too. That ‘sense of mission and determination’ amounts to not bothering, blaming the victims and pretending they are making a big fuss about nothing.

Which is probably a fairly accurate description of how the kinds of CSA crime she’s talking about are treated anyway.

@nepeta the problem isn’t the calculations through. It’s that good data about grooming gang membership is not that easy to get.

Sorry, Suella Braverman is a Buddhist?

Actually practising?

If so, she needs to practise a bit harder. Bloody hell.

Surely this is obvious. An election is coming and they need to harness our votes. Hence the recent avalanche of mini policies on anti social behaviour, grooming gangs, “trans guidance” for teachers, etc.

The reality is, they will ignore actual evidence (so this grooming gangs is classic, implying it’s only about Pakistani men and white girls when the facts show otherwise), introduce pointless legislation and won’t actually tackle the issue.

Analysing data is a good thing. Looking at the issues clearly and objectively is a good thing. Understanding the cultural perspective is a good thing. I’ve worked in areas where there are issues but you couldn’t voice them. That isn’t good. We have an issue in this country with girls being exploited and trafficked for sex or used in the drug trade. This needs analysis to understand what is happening and whether the patterns are the same or different in different communities. I hazard a guess that they are - girls are being trafficked in my community but who is doing it and why? Needs further research.

Also the role of people who should have safeguarded these girls (and some boys, too) but failed to do so. Politicians, some social workers, the police. All of this deserves more attention, and so does the question if grooming still continues on the kind of scale we have seen in the past.

"If she did say this and not talk about how men of all cultures, given the opportunity, have and will exploit young women, then she is letting down all the women who are exploited."

But everyone already knows that. Do you have to speak the obvious every time?

The fact that it's all cultures, doesn't mean that there wasn't a particular issue with crimes being overlooked precisely because it was a minority culture in such and such cases.

Also, the fact that it's all cultures, doesn't mean that a minority culture can't have such and such especially bad aspects.

We know that large groups of mostly Pakistani men in Rochdale etc have been convicted of grooming mostly white teenage girls. Is there an equivalent situation with white men working together to groom teenage girls? I genuinely don’t know. If there is then that too needs to be centred in these discussions. It’s the systemic nature of it that needs to be rooted out.
one of the issues with investigating Rochdale etc was the police were afraid of being called racist. That is probably not an issue when looking into white groups unless Easter European?

Sadly, I think you're right. It will indeed be very successful.

Is this the same Suella Braverman who a few weeks ago was saying that those who are trafficked into this country would not be protected by the modern slavery legislation?
Is it a bit like Boris was never told what the covid laws are? Suella hasn't been told what those children are being traffiked into?

I wonder if she'll also bother to include the grooming of our children in schools by the Stonewall lot.

The report she refers too explicitly states that the majority of grooming gangs are white British.
This is nothing more than dog whistle politics to try and get racists to vote for her still.

I saw her on Sky News being interviewed about it and won’t be surprised if someone reported her to the police for insisting hatred/ a hate crime/ racism, take your pick. She was just shocking. Doesn’t she realise white men groom children too?

Maybe they aren't white girls so she doesn't see any political capital in protecting them?

This was my first though. Can you imagine MPs being arrested for being part of a grooming gang? If that can't happen then this law is useless, there can't be any scared casts.

Tony Blair brought in the GRA and Teresa May brought in self ID, that has lead to grooming gangs and I consider what happened was Fabricated induced illness and CSA, interference in the growth of sex organs. I would want everyone involved arrested.

It's not going to happen so this is all lies like men are women is a lie.

Her statement is clearly designed to whip up racism, and ethnic tensions within communities, so I can only assume that it is part of their usual ‘divide and rule’ strategy in the run up to the next election. The Tories probably sat round a table and said “right we need to get the far right excited again, who can say something racist and get away with it - Braverman, you’re up.”

The Home Office report said we don’t have good data at all, but based on the data they had the key findings were:
”(p27)Key findings:
• Research on offender ethnicity is limited, and tends to rely on poor quality data. It is therefore difficult to draw conclusions about differences in ethnicity of offenders, but it is likely that no one community or culture is uniquely predisposed to offending.
• A number of studies have indicated an over-representation of Asian and Black offenders in group-based CSE. Most of the same studies show that the majority of offenders are White.
• Community and cultural factors are, however, relevant to understanding and tackling offending. An approach to deterring, disrupting, and preventing offending that is sensitive to the communities in which offending occurs is needed.”
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/944206/Group-based_CSE_Paper.pdf

I do think she has a point in that the police had mountains of evidence regarding the grooming gangs in many northern cities and did nothing due to fears of being accused of racism. So it’s not about who is doing it necessarily, but rather who is getting away with it for longer than they should.