Police still fail to understand grooming gangs

[ArthurbellaScott]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67655654

'In its report published on Friday, the HMICFRS said though some progress had been made more recently, "we expected to find, ten years later, that the police and other organisations had a greater understanding of the problem and had developed effective responses to protect children".
"In many respects, we were disappointed.
"We found that an accurate view of group-based child sexual exploitation still wasn't available to the police service.
"Most forces weren't gathering data and intelligence on these crimes."'

'It highlighted the use of officers who were not specialised in sexual abuse investigations, warning that they often lacked experience and training.
It also raised concerns about "victim blaming" by the police, often seen as a reason in the past for young people who have been abused not coming forward.
The inspectors found "inappropriate language" was used on a few occasions in the three of the six forces they examined more closely.
One example, relating to a young female victim, was a note that concerns had been raised due to "her general proclivity with older men".'

Report is here:

https://hmicfrs.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/news/news-feed/police-not-doing-enough-to-tackle-group-based-child-sexual-exploitation/

I don't think it's a question of not understanding, I think that they actively dislike young girls and don't give a shit.

Yes, the men are still picking up the girls from the care homes (they wait outside, girls think they have a boyfriend with a car, money, etç) and no one cares really. The care workers try but can't stop it, the girls have no close family around to stop it, it's just a cycle. Vulnerable girls will always be exploited, the people who need to protect them just aren't doing their job. I speak from experience.

That was a fascinating report. I was interested to see that as well as continuing to fail girls targeted by Asian grooming gangs, the police were criticised for completely ignoring non-Asian grooming gangs altogether.

They know alright. They just don’t give a shit and whether anyone wants to admit or not they do not police fairly and are biased towards certain demographics and causes.

...posted before I finished. The implication in the report is that there is little proactive drive to really get to grips with understanding sexual assault threats, everything that is happening is driven by media attention. So if the media focus is on Asian gangs, the police reluctantly focus on them and carry on ignoring girls groomed by other groups.

Yeah, it's misogyny. I suspect a lot of coppers still think they needn't concern themselves with what they think are 'silly little slags' who are doing just fine selling themselves for trinkets, rather than seeing these are exploited, vulnerab;e children.

I'm not sure that by obscuring which forces they looked at, they're not potentially contributing to this problem of a lack of understanding of who is committing what offences.

Or that what Javid set out to understand has now become easier to understand:

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9070905/DAN-HODGES-reveals-inside-story-cover-abuse-young-girls.html

The recommendations take some reading but 1, 5 and 6 seem to leave too much room for things to drift inside a whole financial year. Or for forces to have different ideas about what they think is best, making any national picture even more of a mess for another year:

hmicfrs.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/publication-html/effectiveness-of-police-and-law-enforcement-response-to-group-based-child-sexual-exploitation/

Recommendation 5
By 31 March 2025, the Home Office should stop collecting group-based child sexual exploitation data through its annual data requirementt_ on custody, known as ADR149.

Recommendation 6
By 31 March 2026, the Home Office should introduce a new and specific annual data requirementt_ on group-based child sexual exploitation. This should be aligned with its existing child sexual abuse and exploitation crimes annual data requirement. The supporting guidance to forces should use the agreed definition of group-based child sexual exploitation from our recommendation 1.

Recommendation 1
By 31 December 2024, the Home Office, the Department for Education, the Welsh Government, the National Crime Agency, the National Police Chiefs’ Councill and the College of Policingg should adopt the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abusee_’s definition of an ‘organised network’ as a definition of group-based child sexual exploitation. Or they should devise and implement a suitable alternative.

I wonder if it's more a reluctance to pursue crimes with what I'd call 'reluctant victims'. Victims who don't see themselves as victims, who don't cooperate with the police, who collude with the offenders to conceal the offences.... when the police are desperately stretched operationally, crimes like this get pushed down the order. I'm in no way saying this is right or even that it's actually happening, but it's a theory.

I think it's also a 'cottage industry of denial'. If anyone remembers the film Spotlight? It clearly shows the police, judiciary, law and powerful interests letting predators ( Catholic priests in Boston)get away with heinous crimes against children. The same is happening with grooming gangs in the UK but I would argue its more manipulative and deceptive now because the media and academia colludes with the perpetrators with claims of faulty data. There are a group of academics that keep obscufuting the data. They keep saying its faulty and the sample/ science is unsafe. This is a a really devious sleight of hand and these academics must be routinely questioned who do this. The abuse of white girls by Pakistani men in parts of the UK is on an industrial level. It is reminiscent of the care home scandals that took place all over the UK for decades. Similarly initially it was denied at every level and the victims credibility similarly to today was under constant attack. The UK has a horrendous track record of reporting/ prosecuting CSA.