Labour rejects calls for Oldham grooming gang inquiry

[Signalbox]

Are Labour right to push the responsibility for carrying out a public inquiry back onto Oldham Council?

I don't understand how it is considered acceptable for local authorities to carry out their own inquiries when they are often part of the institutional failure that allowed these crimes to be carried out on such a large scale over decades. Councils, police and social services were/are all implicated in the failure to act (or to actively obstruct) in some way or another.

"Phillips’ letter to Oldham Council, seen by GB News, claims it is for the the local authority ‘alone to decide to commission an inquiry into child sexual exploitation locally, rather than for the government to intervene.’ Reports have previously been commissioned and produced in Rochdale, Rotherham and Telford; Oldham now plans to launch its own Telford-style inquiry. Given the strength of feeling – which Phillips acknowledges in her letter – it seems inevitable that there will be questions or debate in the Commons when parliament returns next week."

"Yet for the hundreds of victims and those invested in bringing perpetrators to justice, this will seem pitifully inadequate. In each town where grooming gangs operated, similar patterns emerged: victims were ignored, law enforcement complicit and political officials more concerned about reputational damage than lives affected. Local authorities can hold their own inquiries, of course. But given the scale of these crimes, the fact they took place over decades, in many towns, suggests a level of institutional complicity requiring the attention of central government."

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/labour-rejects-calls-for-oldham-grooming-gang-inquiry/

Archive...

https://archive.ph/3greC#selection-1667.0-1759.570

[ETA: this was meant to quote @ResisterOfTwaddleRex at Today 09:39 but somehow it dropped off]

Thanks for those very useful links to the 2022 reports of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, @ResisterOfTwaddleRex .

The links above were to the summaries of recommendations, so herewith links to the downloadable full reports for anyone who'll find that easier to navigate:

"Child sexual exploitation by organised networks: Investigation Report February 2022"
https://www.iicsa.org.uk/reports-recommendations/publications/investigation/cs-organised-networks.html

"The Report of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse October 2022"
https://www.iicsa.org.uk/reports-recommendations/publications/inquiry/final-report.html

(Authors for both: Alexis Jay, Sir Malcolm Evans, Ivor Frank, Drusilla Sharpling.)

I can see you've picked out a few words from the Contents pages of the summaries of recommendations, and you may not have had time to read the whole - long! – reports.

I've now managed to have a very quick look through, though not by any means cover-to-cover. Amongst other things, the reports give detailed accounts from survivors and a link to 1100 accounts from survivors recorded in the Inquiry's Truth Project; deal with organised abuse; and stress the importance of collecting and disaggregating data so patterns can be spotted.

Definitely not conflating "safeguarding your child from your creepy uncle at Christmas" with organised abuse, I'm relieved to say.

Obviously the reports are very long and not at all a pleasant read. The recommendations section of the October report is substantial, but there's an executive summary at part K for those who don't have time for the detail.

Obviously the reports are very long and not at all a pleasant read. The recommendations section of the October report is substantial, but there's an executive summary at part K for those who don't have time for the detail.

Which I've read. I don't think the report is adequate, for the reasons I've mentioned.

"Encouraging children in black Asian and other ethnicities to come forward..."

I'm not sure where to even start with this to be honest.

I would rather we put the money into our children and young people now as there simply isn't the resources to deal with the online current CSA threat in addition to county lines, and focus on encouraging children within black Asian and other ethnicities to come forward about rape and familial sexual abuse which is significantly under reported to authorities

I must say I was reflecting on what I'd posted earlier and came back to add that an inquiry cannot delay action for safeguarding reform now, based on what we already know.

The question is if we know enough about what happened? Is there enough joined up thinking? Have local governments and local police had enough investigation to provide the transparency needed to move in a safe guard children in this particular area of child sexuality abuse?

Really both should happen. There clearly isn't enough reassurance that all has been made public.

However, priority should be the safeguarding of all children. All resources (which isn't much) should go towards that. Inquiries can take a long time and we do not want a millisecond of delay there.

I must say that labour's initiative to have a unique number for each child that transcends all organisations will be helpful. (Without wanting to make 'it' political and contradicting myself, they were on the cusp of bringing it in before they lost power and the tories shelved it.)

It's becoming increasingly clear that safeguarding should be outwith govt control imo, to avoid politicisation, but I'm not sure if that's possible. Inquiries make that possible. But the expense is a problem.

I don't think any approach which subsumes this issue into CSA overall is sufficient to tackle the systemic nature of it.

Yes it's not their responsibility to safeguard themselves.

I agree - it can't be swallowed into csa.

I do find it interesting to compare this thread with discussions on Twitter and Reddit: "Are immediate deportations for all abusers and all their family members enough, or do we have a moral responsibility to hang them in the public square ourselves?"

I don't think the threads here on Mumsnet capture the full anger by (I assume mostly) men, at the idea of their/English children being raped and tortured like this. Perhaps men can better understand the depths of their depravity?

Regardless, this is where the Overton window includes - "toolkits" and "encouragement" aren't it.

I've also read the reports and agree about lack of adequacy.

Yep, just seen that on FB.
EXACTLY as predicted by @Signalbox

The bloke I know who is sharing it comes from exactly the sort of rural working class background that feels 100% ignored by Labour, but doesn't feel that the Tories did much for them either. Every single thing that Labour has done as regards the countryside so far has fucked them off still further. We're not talking knuckle-dragging shaven-headed knobbers here, either: Reform's appeal is expanding, which frankly fills me with dread.

But it's not as though the main parties haven't been warned.

"Encouraging children in black Asian and other ethnicities to come forward..."
I'm not sure where to even start with this to be honest

I'm confused. The issue at hand is specifically the abuse of predominantly white working class girls so how does this suggestion follow from that?

If there is to be a national investigation it needs to have authority to focus on the institutions which let the victims down. Police and Local Authorities. If the issue is lack of funding then maybe shining a light on that will help a reluctant public see the value in resourcing social work better than at present. I can't get my head round the lack of interest in going back and looking at Police turning a blind eye to abuse, labelling teenagers as "slags", etc. There must be a way to hold them to account. If a review could tackle that it may give girls and their families some confidence that future reporting will be taken seriously.

The other thing a national review could do is offer an apology and possibly redress to the victims let down by those responsible for their protection. You don't need individual girls to come forward for this if the findings are that the system failed them.

I think the Hillsborough enquiry is a good parallel to this. It was only through dogged examination of the facts that the blame for those deaths was attributed to individual senior officers and even if they were not prosecuted we now know who they are and what we think of them.

I don't believe that these men only raped the children who were in care homes and suspect familial abuse/rape will have gone on as well.

I am not victim blaming and it is NOT the child's responsibility to safeguard themselves but there needs to be building of trust and confidence by authorities so that if signs are spotted they have trust that something will be done, they will be believed and kept safe.

Badly wording in initial post - apologies

We already know how it happened - there've been inquiries.

The Far-Right (including Musk) have no interest in solving the problem and will label any further inquiry a whitewash anyway.

Musk should not be trying to dictate what a properly-elected government does.

This isn't just about Musk.

This may be because the monitors have done such sterling work in making sure it's hard for us to talk about safeguarding without being put on the naughty step.

This is, was and always will be a safeguarding issue. Like transing gay kids or insisting the bearded man in a skirt is a woman you bigot, we've been stopped from discussing very important things here.

I'll go one further and also say that there is such an insanely committed section of the Labour Party that they have stifled women talking about child rape and torture gangs. This is relevant because of the power structures in the areas most obviously affected. I'm sure people will pretend otherwise but it is the case.

However, some of them - and mostly these are women, not men - who've decided to tweet like they're still living in the past have had their arsed handed to them over this. Whether they will wake up and listen to others with safeguarding expertise, and our children's interests before their party remains to be seen.

Interestingly I follow some CSE survivors on twitter and most seem to want a local enquiry into their towns. I think theres a fear that a nationwide report would miss specific people and circumstances.

I think theres are a couple of things, local enquiries can be more detailed and focussed on failures locally. But I do think we need to look at institutional failures and a detailed look at how and why these gamgs arose and were able to arise. I regular thing in these conversations is the fact that men were often acting with family members, fathers, sons, brothers, uncles etc. this I think to most of us is one of the more curious elements really. We need to have an honest conversation about how some of these families are so toxic and dysfunctional that this could arise. I think there is a definate feeling of a reckoning not being had. A clear line on deportation of criminals has to also be drawn.

Mandate now on twitter wants statutory reporting legislation, a bill is slowly being dragged through the house of lords by Baroness Grey-Thompson. Mandatory reporting would have meant people (police, councillors, social workers) could have been prosecuted for turning a blind eye. I think thats well worth supporting.

I also think we need to look at victims from other ethnicities as well. Brown victims are just as much victims as the white girls, no child should be subjected to this.

It feels like we are on the precipice of a massive cultural shift as a direct consequence of progressivism (not left wing mind). I think theres a backlash coming (not violent) but definitely at the ballot box. I think people know whats infront of them, trans women aren’t women, Pakistani men are disproportionately involved in certain types of crimes against children, we are allowing the degradation of society because we keep championing the violators and not the victims.

I think the idea propagated that their will be some sort of right wing riot is bollocks. We have had numerous CSE trials, numerous terrorist attacks and yet the muslim community has not faced violence (rightly so). Jews are the most likely to face race hate incidents. I’m asian, I don’t see how ignoring this vile shit benefits me, I want scum in prison, I want rapists off the streets, I want people to be held to account when they turned away from children who desperately needed to be protected. I increasingly think it’s because politicians are more worried about keeping their seats. That sounds really conspiratorial to my own ears let alone anyone else but I think these people just don’t want to face muslim constituents and they are worried about muslims rioting.

I can fully understand how women in specific towns want specific people and incidents to be investigated. But I think it's also important to understand why this happened on an institutional level in so many places, and what we can learn about this specific form of child exploitation and sexual violence. That can build on what previous inquiries have done, but I don't think they have focussed enough on the common underlying factors.

Great post.

It also seems not likely that the local issues were literally local. The authorities seem to have a weird mindset that everything in their patch is contained. It can't be can it? It can't be the case that men in x location don't contact men in y location. We know girls were moved outside of the places which formed their first location of being groomed. They've said so.

Yes it was a business for many of them. Thats why I think a national look is still important. Mandatory reporting is really important. I encourage everyone to contact their MP’s and ask them to declare support for the bill. There should be no excuse for failure to report. None.

https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3743

It can't be the case that men in x location don't contact men in y location. We know girls were moved outside of the places which formed their first location of being groomed. They've said so.

Yes that's a really important point.

they are lying it almost nothing to with being afraid of being called racist everything to with thinking lower class children in care, runaways, drug addicted, asbo or survival sex young people are deserving of the harm due to “bad choices” I can’t believe people are letting them shirk responsibility by pretending they’re afraid of racism.

racism didn’t make them ignore lone children among groups of men obviously inebriated, that is how many institutions starting with police treat certain classes of people.

let alone the evidence of involvement of collusions of some units with these criminal gangs.

the racist stuff is a shield they’re using to dodge serious scrutiny.
these girls deserve justice and that won’t come from pretending there doesn’t need to be a massive change in how police treat troublesome victims

We pretty much have mandatory reporting if you look at Working Together and so on. What's happened might possibly prove be more serious - perverting the course of justice, helping an offender, concealing evidence? There are existing offences that can be considered now.

It's multifactorial @beAsensible1 - it's not just the police who were at fault, but social services and wider local authorities too, as well as obviously the perpetrators and any who covered for them or abetted them.