Nordic Model Now article on Grooming Gangs

[IwantToRetire]

Its frightening to think that in 2025 and beyond unaccountable male egotists will be running the world, as so many seem to think what is on social media is reality.

In response to the shit stirring by Musk, Nordic Model Now have written this statement https://nordicmodelnow.org/2025/01/03/on-grooming-gangs/

anyone recall how happy the very same police forces were to provoke and fight the miners, back in the day?)

Yes, it was before my time but I watched an excellent documentary on this over Xmas, my DP and his family are from a mining town.

I dont care how it stops, it has to stop. "Sex work" has to stop, it is prostitution, rape, trafficking, grooming, paedophilia. Someone has to be the bigger person and make all our institutions see the shit for what it is. I am sick to death of women particularly, defending Only Fans. The women and girls are not in charge, the men paying them to do whatever it is they are paying for are in charge. Because if they don't do what the man wants they don't bloody get paid! How simple is that to understand?
I don't care what colour, religion or bloody shoe size the men are perpetuating this, it has to be stopped. Elon Musk is a prick and has made a target of our elected Government and Ministers. The shouting from outside has to stop, everyone knows how to stop it, no one in charge is prepared to grab the nettle. Just protect our girls and women, it is a simple task. First whiff of girls being raped, the police go in and arrest, it is their fucking job. Social Services need to pull their socks up, women are the ones who can call this out, men don't give a fuck, they don't see things the way women do, we all know that, and fuck off with not all men.
It really is simple, have people in charge who give a fuck about women and girls. And when women want to march against VAWG, fucking let them. How simple is that? It does not have to be fucking intersectional, it has to be for women only. Jesus, we have lost our collective minds.

An interview with Suzzan Blac for Feminist Current in 2017

www.feministcurrent.com/2017/06/06/suzzan-blac-art-trauma-child-exploitation/

I just think this country is addicted to very long, very expensive public inquiries, which (because of the legal structures around them and the complexity of the issues) take years to set up, run and publish the report. People love the drama and the witness testimonies.

Then the government generally TOTALLY IGNORES any of the recommendations for doing things differently, and there is very little pressure on them to take action. Setting up another public inquiry on this would just kick the can down the road for another five years. We should start changing things NOW.

I don't disagree. I just think the corruption and failings by so many people is a huge issue across many of these locations and a government level would be needed to get to the truth.

The authorities love a good long enquiry too, as long as they know they can control the agenda. Sure, some shit will come out that they probably rather didn’t, but it means they can tell people they’re doing something whilst actually kicking the can a very long way down the road.

An enquiry means people in authority / being criticised can say “we can’t discuss this until the report is published.” They can then delay on publishing the report for as long as they need to. Once the report is published (if ever) they can say “but that was the situation 4-5 years ago, of course we’re so much better than that now.”

Drag your heels long enough and nothing ever gets changed, but now it’s all so ‘historical’ that it would be ‘pointless’ to charge anyone in authority for anything criminal they did, with the added bonus that the group of people due compensation will be smaller, because some of them will have died in the meantime.

I agree; NMN do great work. I just disagree with some of the points made in the article in the OP.

All of this.

And I also agree that enquiries can be part of the problem and/or a delaying factor, rather than a useful process. They are also phenomenally expensive (see costs of recent Scotgov enquiries: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwy4nnynq28o)

But someone with power needs to do something. Now.

To whom would we usually look in a situation like this?

The PM?

Step up, mate. Do it now.

That Telegraph piece made for bleak reading. This has going on for years, and seems to be continuing unabated even now. But this:

The protection of offenders may have gone further still. In at least one case, when a victim found the courage to go to the police, their abuser appears to have been tipped off. While still in the police station, one child received a text from her abuser informing her that he had her 11-year-old sister, and that it was now “your choice…”. The child chose not to go through with the complaint.

What can you say about that? The police themselves have to take a big part of the blame obviously. And I'm very disappointed in Jess Phillips; isn't this supposed to be her area of expertise and responsibility?

I cannot believe the amount of people wanting to ignore the religious/racial aspect of these rape gangs.

Just like NAMALT, NAMMALT. But if you understand how the Pakistani muslim communities live in many of the towns affected by rape gangs, you’ll understand how close knit they are and how there is an omertà operating that stops anyone speaking out about criminality in the community. Throw sharia into the mix, and there’s the foundations for these men to operate openly for years without anyone, wives, families etc flagging up the abuse to the authorities because it’s just poor, white girls so who cares and the Koran allows it.

The stats involved are terrifying. In Rotherham, 1 in 73 men of Pakistani origin have been convicted. The authorities are ignoring this, just like they ignore the stats of the high percentage of trans identified men in prison for sexual crimes.

I find it particularly irksome when left wing leaning women who in everything else are citing "the patriarchy" as the reason for female oppression. This is an in your face example of patriarchal oppression.

I agree with those saying we don't need an enquiry. What we need is for the police and social workers/any relevant professionals to start doing their job. Investigation and prosecute anyone accused of child abuse/rape without fear or favour.

Take children's accusations seriously and start disrupting these gangs.

I would suggest a specific department in each police force to deal with it, but that would just create a specific group for abusers to infiltrate and subvert.

I know exactly how hard this will be because children caught up in this kind of abuse will often be the most unlikeable teenagers you will meet. That's not their fault obviously, but it makes it much easier for the rapists to get away with.

The police need some kind of incentive to make dealing with this stuff properly more appealing than ignoring it.

The stats involved are terrifying. In Rotherham, 1 in 73 men of Pakistani origin have been convicted.

Convicted of what?

Excellent article from Matthew Syed.

'We must be more rational; isn’t that the most glorious tradition of the post-Enlightenment epoch? And the hallmark of rationality, let me suggest, is the capacity to hold a number of ideas in our minds. Was Robinson right to call out child rape gangs? Yes. Does he deserve credit for it? Also yes. But should he be in prison for serial criminality? Damn right he should. Similarly, let us assert emphatically that those in the police and local government who looked the other way as young girls were scarred for life should be in prison too — one reason we need a fearless and cost-effective national inquiry.'

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/nc05syed-plvfdcxnz

https://archive.ph/TdgQL

Maggie Oliver wants another enquiry so I'm with her.

This exactly echoes my thoughts. Great article.

Here is Julie Bindel's 2007 article:
https://www.thetimes.com/article/mothers-of-prevention-v6wn7b8vrjc

In this article:
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/three-girls-drama-child-sexual-exploitation-rochdale-blackpool-pimping-a7739006.html
she says,
"... despite the quality of material I had amassed, it took me until 2007 to get my first piece published because some editors feared an accusation of racism."
(Bindel published three or four articles a month in the Guardian in 2007 so I suppose we could make a good guess which editors those were).

https://thecritic.co.uk/ipsos-grooming-gangs-mix-up/

'By comparing the number of prosecutions to the overall population, this study found that 1 in every 2,200 Muslim men over 16 in England and Wales had been prosecuted for group-localised child sex exploitation from 1997 to 2017.
When it came to Pakistanis it was 1 in 1,700. In Rochdale, 1 in 280 Muslim males over 16 were prosecuted. In Telford, it was 1 in 126. In Rotherham, it was 1 in 73.'

The study:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338984495_Group_Localised_Child_Sexual_Exploitation_Offenders_Who_and_Why

@PermanentTemporary I really agree with you about the class aspect. And the role of the social workers, and the theories that dominated social work training and practice at the time.
"So they saw girls who seemed to be 'making choices' which third wave 'feminism' promotes."
Social work was up to its eyeballs in "sex positive" "feminism" at the time. It probably still is, actually. Has there been any kind of accounting within the profession, does anyone know, in response to the scandals and the role social workers played in turning a blind eye?

Those who didn't safeguard those girls and do their jobs properly need to lose their jobs. It needs to happen quickly. At the moment it's those trying to safeguard effectively who gets pushed out of their jobs.

Starmer could make this happen if he wanted to. The safeguarding frameworks are there, they're just not enforced.

Those who didn't safeguard those girls and do their jobs properly need to lose their jobs. It needs to happen quickly. At the moment it's those trying to safeguard effectively who gets pushed out of their jobs.

Yes.

I know in various scandals years later a few people lost their jobs but it needs to be everyone all the way down who didn't speak up / do what was right / follow the law. And those who did speak up need to be put in charge to prevent it happening again and encourage a culture of speaking up for victims. But this never happens.

I'm afraid I cynically think the problem is far bigger than we know. It's the only possible explanation for why politicians and institutions carry on failing children. It's not rocket science. Make it more costly for any professional to stay silent than speak up and apply existing safeguarding guidance and the law.

Same reason for why rape - a crime - is effectively legal. Because he majority want it to be.

Arabella - thank you for those links (it cleared up the "prosecuted" vs "convicted" question for me in addition to being helpful in other ways. For me, Table 2 would have been useful with a "not guilty" column and some other data as the cold is making me reluctant to do even basic mental arithmetic).

I was struck by this observation in the study which, as so frequently argued on FWR, calls for the collection of accurate data:

Child abuse does not have any geographic, cultural or religious boundaries and more research is required on GLCSE across the world on national responses, and policy and practice. Jones and Florek (2015) confirm that countries may see GLCSE differently, but similar offences have triggered law and policy in the European Union, Australia and the USA. Authoritative data on the age, gender, occupation, ethnicity and religion of offenders needs to be collected for the UK from court records as a matter of urgency. The controversy related to GLCSE can be resolved through the availability of authoritative data on the identity of the offenders

As a general point (IPSO seems to have been misrepresented in their findings) I've a strong suspicion that IPSO, amongst other comparable bodies, should consider employing the services of people who are used to writing systematic reviews and meta-analyses when it comes to adjudicating matters such as this. At the very least, it would alert them to the need to be aware of checklists for assessing the quality of the studies and the relative weight of evidence and state that they've followed this in their assessments.

Maggie Oliver is brilliant on this and the abuse is still ongoing which is horrifying. Worth watching her interview.