Girls "left at mercy" of grooming gangs in Rochdale, England because of failings by senior police and council bosses, damning report says

[DerekFaker]

No surprise to anyone on here, I would guess. Those poor girls.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-67967919

There are many teenaged boys, in my experience as a foster carer, all Pakistani or Bangladeshi, who were being trained up as pimps. They could pose as “boyfriends “ who inducted the girls through rape and later threats to families and carers, and the girls were passed on to the older men once their will had been broken. Even in secure accommodation, they receive letters from abusers in prison and yes, they wait for the girls . As carers you can’t lock these girls in, although one might want to. As always the fact that men and boys generally will look for younger girls is not acknowledged. And becoming 18 does not suddenly mean it is acceptable, or empowering.

The OP's link says that there are 96 men still deemed a potential risk to children. In Rochdale alone.

Why?

I do think there is a larger cultural context here, which is that our society is very inconsistent around teen sexuality, and especially teen girl sexuality, in general.

The thing is we can't treat teens just like kids, they are starting to mature, and are interested in sex in many cases. So protecting them from becoming victims has to be done in ways that take that into account. Like actually teaching them what a healthy sexuality would look like, but also old fashioned things like not giving themselves away to cheaply. To modern ears that sounds horribly anti-sex and puritanical, but not putting value on themselves is a big part of what makes these girls vulnerable.

I think we are altogether to blase about underage sex, in terms of giving kids access to things like hormonal birth control and abortion, without parental involvement. The attitude described in several posts about seeing these girls as just expressing their sexual agency - that is exactly what many health care providers, including in schools, are taught about dealing with teenagers. They are not quizzing girls on their sexual choices, or worrying they aren't old enough to know what they are doing, they are just writing them a bc prescription.

I have a friend who was "groomed" as a 15 year old. Except the boy was only just 17, so not actually considered too old as such, and not sharing her around. Just abusive. She's now in her 40s very skeptical about much of the received wisdom around medical access for teen girls - she strongly feels that had her parents known she had two abortions that year, and eventually was on bc, they might have realized what was going on and intervened.

Of course this will probably be immediately rejected by many as anti-feminist thinking, as medical access for minors is considered something of a dogma, but I think when you look at how authorities treated these girls in terms of supposedly being in control of their sexual behavior, it's not so different in kind to how they are taught to treat sexual behavior in other younger teens.

Julie Bindel's article about "Amber" whose story was used for Three Girls. The police tried to prosecute 16 year old Amber, a grooming victim, for being a pimp.

Rochdale victim: ‘I was groomed at 14, then the courts came for my children’ | Rochdale child sex abuse ring | The Guardian

The report on Newsnight tonight was jaw-dropping.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001vgkh/newsnight-who-wins-the-first-race-to-become-the-us-2024-republican-candidate

20:44 in

I don't think this follows at all.

Different kinds of crime operate differently and are policed really differently. In this case, it's not sexual assaults by an individual, it's basically organized crime.

It's not at all unique for organized crime groups to be based on ethnicity, on the contrary it's very common, and understanding that is an important part of how police can move against these groups, because a lot of it has to do with establishing how the criminal enterprise is operating, the relationships and roles of the different people involved.

It is fraught now though, at a social level, to identify certain minority groups as having certain kinds of criminal gangs associated with the group. People know it is the case, but there are some real complications with the public face of it. Because it's not just about moving against individuals who happen to be whatever race, it's seen as targeting based on race, and also as implying that somehow members of that group are inherently immoral.

It's also worth considering that there may have been places where this was a factor in the failure to act, and other cases where it isn't really. There are people involved in trying to get the girls in Rochdale help who said that it was an issue there. But that doesn't mean it was part of what was going on in the next town necessarily.

Just watched. Maggie certainly didn't hold back, did she? 👏

@duc748 She was brilliant.

Call me cynical but something tells me this is coming back in to the headlines simply because these grooming gangs are based in Labour ran towns.

Of course it’s all still been going on, it always will do as well simply because those men genuinely believe they can do whatever they want to those girls. If there was any genuine will to eradicate such heinous crimes then swift tough far reaching action would have been taken years ago.

There’s a woman called Ella who’s written articles and podcasts. She’s now a medical doctor and she speaks with quite a posh accent so whilst her family may well have been dysfunctional (not seen them mentioned) I would wager she certainly hasn’t had the typical adverse childhood experiences that many of the girls did. Her view is that it was raced based violence and she believes she was ignored because the police were insistent that white people can’t experience racism.

Omg. Just watched the new night interview with Maggie Oliver. What they did to Amber. Absolutely mind blowing. Trying to recover her own children after THEY had framed her as a pedophile. Where was the most basic humanity?

These kinds of reports make me think the only thing that will ever change this is a long hard campaign of direct action and violence by women against men.

And how many of these rapists have been given rights in the basis of their ‘family life’ in the U.K. and allowed to stay with wife and kids?

Many or most will be U.K. nationals. But I often think about the fact that most were likely to have wives and children at home whilst they were out all night gang raping children.

Call me cynical but something tells me this is coming back in to the headlines simply because these grooming gangs are based in Labour ran towns.

That's why we need to talk about it though.

I don't agree entirely. The police and Council in Rochdale were long accustomed to ignoring the organised abuse of children in the town. There is something rotten to the core in the town, and it is not about Asian men - it is about men and the child abuse of both boys and girls over many, many decades.

https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/establishment-knew-cyril-smith-abusing-17811996

I grew up in Rochdale in the 60's and 70's. As a teenager I knew all about Cyril Smith and his friends - it was such common knowledge in the town that even teenagers growing up in a time when such things were not usually spoken about knew all about it. The local alternative newspaper, RAP, regularly headlined stories about him and his friends and the abuse of children. Most newsagents in the town carried RAP.

If a teenage girl knew what was going on in a time when sexual abuse was simp0ly not a "talking point" in society, then how couild the police and the council not have known?

There is a rotten culture in the town, and there is no evidence that it has gone away. In fact, if you were of a suspicious nature, you might wonder why the only people to have been caught for child abuse in Rochdale are Asian, and what still lurks beneath the surface. Cyril Smith wasn't alone...

What do you mean?

That’s appalling @Neriah , I had no idea!

There’s this underlying narrative that men desire young girls and girls flirt and tempt men because they like being desired. Men have no control over their baser urges. Girls should know better than to provoke men.

Until the narrative changes, it’s fecking hard to stop.

We need a cold, humourless, children have never consented, do not consent and cannot consent to being sexualised by adults. Men who view children as sexual are deviant predators. No jokes. No tolerance. Grow the fuck up and stop passively allowing it.

That’s for the men who are not directly involved but think the girls are collaborating in their own abuse.

The criminals who trade children’s bodies need to be prosecuted and punished far more severely for trafficking, rape, drug dealing and coercion.

Indeed.

Everyone knows this in the NW don't they? It's so fucking commonplace.

What do you mean?

That I don't think "because it's political" is an excuse for being thorough in rooting out corruption and failing to act on mass sexual abuse of girls.

What, you think it shouldn't be addressed just now because of the GE and it might hurt Labour's share of the vote? Really? REALLY??

The report was commissioned by a Labour Mayor, so not sure I follow this

Is it hinting at the vote base I guess. I note that the comments are about the south Asian origin of many of the offenders. It's actually far more specific than that. They are not just Pakistani but from the Mirpur/ Azad Kashmir region. Most of them are related. It's a learned pattern of behaviours. The account from the woman on another thread mentioned her groomer also being abused by other relatives. It's all bound up with honour culture which is all about policing your females (getting a Talking To if you are seen out talking to Other Boys) because you don't want to end up like those girls. Because what are those girls ever good for except getting an income from?

I was working in a local council which had a similarly high profile scandal, also with racial overtones, in a different city, several years back. My role was minuting child protection case conferences. At the time I had young children. I remember being horrified by the attitude towards the victims that I observed and I doubt it's changed.

Now I have teenage daughters and it horrifies me that grown men are doubtless sexualising them when they see them even though they aren't themselves yet at the stage where they're particularly interested in sex.