Most documentaries about the grooming scandal are about dishonest reporting

[Justwrong68]

x.com/ripx4nutmeg/status/1875847368656167394?s=46

I saw something the other day about the Police failing to record ethnicity. I didn't give it too much thought then but a very quick Google found me this from August 2023

https://hmicfrs.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/news/news-feed/police-forces-still-failing-to-record-and-publish-data-on-ethnicity/

And this from last February

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/feb/06/police-failed-to-record-race-of-nearly-two-thirds-of-people-referred-to-prevent

Where it is recorded it is often by self reporting, the Police officer will take the person's self id.

If a person who was clearly Asian said they were British I don't believe a PC would write something different on an official log. If the person held a British passport, even if a recent immigrant then they are British even if that's not what was asked. I'm recalling the scandal that erupted when the Queen's elderly lady in waiting asked the black woman in the beautiful ethnic clothing where she was from. Just a rather tin earred way of asking her ethnicity. I can't see a lowly copper wanting to dip a toe in that water, perhaps that's one of the reasons why they don't bother 🤔

This applies across the board; victims of crime, missing people, stop and search. It obfuscates patterns that could be useful to know, not just grooming gangs but if particular communities are over or under policed, if a certain copper is targeting a particular race or avoiding dealing with them at all, for example.

I'm sorry if this is a bit of a derail, and I've nrtft so apologies again if it's already been posted about, but I think it's relevant and wanted to make a note of it somewhere.

Ethnic groups are complex, though.

The guidance recognises its means different things to different people at different times. And it has to be self declared were possible.

Police officers cannot just assume someones ethnicity by sight, practically and legally. Especially as lots of people arent just one single ethnicity.

I suspect the police recording is low because of the nature of the recording of crimes - people will only give out information they legally have to. Its not like healthcare were people are more likely to understand family history, including ethnicity, is important for their care.

articles published since 2011 on "grooming gangs" (there were none before that apparently)

That's a clue there's something wrong with his picture, because on this thread we've seen an article from 2004 about child sexual abuse by a gang of ethnically Asian men in Bradford.

Goodwin shows his working, and instead of searching for separate words "groom* " AND "gang" he has searched for a particular phrase: "grooming gang".

It's a common phrase, but using it as a search term doesn't catch the 2004 article – and doesn't even seem to catch Andrew Norfolk's seminal 2011 article which Goodwin is enthusing about. That says "grooming by gangs".

(Someone with a Times subscription might be able to check the whole article; I've only seen a poor image of the front page. "Scandal of the 1,400 Lost Girls", Times, 27 Aug 2014.)

I've now looked, and neither of the 2013 Guardian articles linked above on this thread contains the phrase "grooming gang"; Goodwin won't have found them.

Instead they say "child sex abuse ring" and "gang of abusers [...] child sexual exploitation" (in line with what posters say they find more useful).

Eg
"The woman spoke out as a jury at the Old Bailey convicted seven men responsible for running an underworld child sex abuse ring in the Cowley area of Oxford of 43 charges of rape, child prostitution, trafficking and procuring a backstreet abortion. Six victims gave harrowing evidence during the three-and-a-half month trial, but police believe the number of girls recruited by the gang and abused numbers more than 50."
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/may/14/oxford-abuse-ring-social-services

A gang of abusers who subjected vulnerable girls in Oxford to years of rape, torture and extreme sexual violence has been convicted at the Old Bailey in one of the biggest child sexual exploitation trials in recent years.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/may/14/oxford-gang-guilty-grooming-girls

Unfortunately I don't have access to Lexis, the nice database Goodwin used, so I can't repeat his exercise with better search terms.

I have been able to do a quick search using Google and search terms "Rochdale" AND "gang", and this language seems typical.

Clicked on these two at random to get a spread of dates, and turns out neither contains the search term "grooming gang".

Eg in 2012:
Rochdale gang jailed for sexually exploiting vulnerable girls
The men were convicted after a lengthy trial at Liverpool crown court on Tuesday of a variety of offences, including trafficking within the UK, rape, sexual assault and conspiracy to engage in sexual activity with a child. They were part of a gang who groomed vulnerable young girls in and around Rochdale, Greater Manchester, and they were given jail sentences ranging from four to 19 years.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/may/09/rochdale-gang-jailed-exploiting-girls

2018:
Eight members of Oxford grooming ring jailed for sexual assault
...The same victim said the men would take it in turns to have sex with her and gang rapes would take place after she was intoxicated with drink and drugs.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jun/13/eight-members-of-oxford-grooming-ring-jailed-for-sexual-assault

Not pulling any punches in the language, so again Goodwin missed out.

That's not to say Goodwin's exercise couldn't potentially be a useful one, if done better. It's always an issue, though, that messing up your choice of search terms means you end up not knowing that you don't know.

Yep, there's a thread on twitter linking to a bunch of reporting that he's clearly missed from the period.
https://x.com/sundersays/status/1876040897609294070

Someone with a Times subscription might be able to check the whole article; I've only seen a poor image of the front page. "Scandal of the 1,400 Lost Girls", Times, 27 Aug 2014.)

@PerkingFaintly why do you think it made such a splash when Norfolk published this, if everyone already knew about it from the Guardian's tip top coverage?

The Guardian publishes vast oceans of word count online all day every day and has done for at least 20 years. Which made it to the print edition? Which sections were the articles in? Were they the front page, or buried in "Guardian society" or similar?

Not sticking up for Goodwin, particularly, as I think he's a dick.

It is a truism oft and rightly repeated on MN that it is important to get our news from a variety of sources, and important to recognise that all sources are biased.

We can read a well-researched and important article in one column while recognising the one in the column next to it is junk – indeed actually harmful.

For some reason this most often seems to be repeated here WRT to the Daily Mail, but it obviously applies to almost all media. There are very few which have a BBC-like requirement to be balanced – and even if it's an aim, the BBC gets it wrong pretty frequently IMHO.

I'm baffled by anyone speaking as if there's going to be some Day of Judgement for the media at which an impartial judge will hold the titles accountable for biased reporting. WTF? Or perhaps only hold the Guardia, in which case WTF-WTF?

I don't think we can repeat too often that it is important to use a variety of sources, and to keep a healthy scepticism about sources.

That's part of I meant last night re "we always need to keep our wits about us."

I very much do recognise that all sources are biased.

I'm baffled by anyone speaking as if there's going to be some Day of Judgement for the media at which an impartial judge will hold the titles accountable for biased reporting. WTF? Or perhaps only hold the Guardia, in which case WTF-WTF?

Absolutely no idea what you are talking about here, is it directed at me? Please elaborate.

Again with the projecting stuff I haven't said.

I haven't even dimly suggested everybody already knew about it – certainly not that they'd taken it in. I said the media had reported it (and in fact been explicit that there was rape, assault and ethnically Asian gangs).

We've agreed on about the importance of using a variety of sources, but realistically I absolutely don't expect everyone to have read every source and properly absorbed every word.

Eg Someone mentioned above that they read about the torture of one of the girls (branded with a hairpin), but didn't join it up. That was reported in 2013, after Andrew Norfolk's Times article in 2011.

This is normal. People have busy lives and their own worries.

What this thread raises is that there's currently a trend where, when people don't pick stuff up, they claim it's because there was no one telling them.

Yeah, no.

@PerkingFaintly I don't agree with your characterisation of the media landscape around grooming gangs since 2010.

It's what you are saying that feels like gaslighting to me tbh. I don't agree that you can "prove" the coverage was thorough and prominent in the news by googling a few Guardian articles after the fact. That's why people are saying that the nature of these crimes wasn't clear. Because it wasn't, unless you sought out and read the case reports.

What this thread raises is that there's currently a trend where, when people don't pick stuff up, they claim it's because there was no one telling them

No there isn't. Stop assuming bad faith where there isn't any.

Oh.

I was willing to start by assuming Goodwin was in good faith, and had made an honest error because he just wasn't very good at using search.

But if Goodwin wrote a book about the BNP, it does seem less likely that he was unaware of the extensive 2004 media coverage of Annie Hall's Channel 4 film about grooming.

I've not been paying attention to what Musk has been saying, I'm vaguely aware that Starmer and others have been shutting down questions and criticisms at a press conference with 'far right' smears. Then I read this from the Spectator

https://archive.ph/EfBjp

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/tommy-robinson-isnt-the-story-here/

The BNP were talking about what would become known as grooming gangs in 2004. I actually feel a little sick. Twenty years later and the message is still being dismissed because of the, admittedly in 2004, pretty unsavoury nature of the messenger.

I don't care for Tommy Robinson or his ilk but they will take this ball and run with it.

From the article

If you want to encourage extremism, that is exactly how to do it: cover up something like the grooming gangs scandal, and by doing so gift the whole subject to the far-right. Refusing a public inquiry is perpetuating the problem. That is the main story. Musk’s rudeness is a side issue.

Eta cross post while I was typing

Yes, @lcakethereforeIam

"Grooming" is a euphemism for brutal, violent sexual assaults and abuse over time, in many of these cases. It's hardly surprising that people didn't really understand from headlines and news reports which skirted over the details that these crimes were not just about older men duping naive, vulnerable girls with family problems into underage "consensual" sexual relationships, but there was considerable brutality and violence and degradation involved as well.

As I said, they would often have to have sought out the details in distressing court reports.

There is a thread in 30 days only about a 13yo girl who was arrested for being drunk and disorderly while the 7 naked adult men with her were not questioned. It seems to have attracted a more "normal" group of posters who weren't following the drama (at least on the first few pages). Lightly paraphrasing some of the comments:

"Do we know this actually happened"

"X is full of fake news"

"Trump supporters and conspiracy theories"

"Not believing that for a second, fake news"

"Old news from 1997"

"Post from a well known grifter"

"Journalists twisting the narrative"

"Historical rather than current event, hopefully lessons learned"

"Sorry not believable"

"Probably arresting her for her own good to get her to safety and she kicked/bit them"

"It's not illegal to be naked in your own home even with a minor"

After that, people start posting links to the BBC and the tone shifts a bit. But is it so hard to believe that this was a very common understanding of "grooming gangs" even quite recently? That it was mostly a far right conspiracy built off the backs of a couple of regrettable but limited cases?

FYI I understand that this case was real, the officers were identified and it was referred in 2014 to the IPCC but I don't know what happened after that.

The prevalent message I recall at the time (anecdotally) was that while it was reported on, it was swallowed up by ‘We must not be Islamophobic’ think pieces.

And there was more outrage that e.g. the BNP were discussing it was happening, rather than outrage it was actually happening.

Seeing how the trans argument has been playing out, with the ‘everything's transphobic’, how genuine concerns about children are being twisted in bad faith to accusations of hatred and wanting trans people to not exists etc, it makes me wonder how many of these BNP members were potentially just concerned fathers/brothers/neighbours originally, and were essentially ignored and so leaned into it more/gravitated to the only people who will listen to them.

It gets to a point where if you’re constantly being accused of something, regardless of how you word things/what your true intentions are, you might think fuck it.

I do see a lot of parallels with this and the trans issue.

How many people have changed from being okay with ‘old school transvetites’ using women toilets, to thinking we don’t want any man in there?
Strongly believe this may have played out in the same way.

The prevalent message I recall at the time (anecdotally) was that while it was reported on, it was swallowed up by ‘We must not be Islamophobic’ think pieces.

And there was more outrage that e.g. the BNP were discussing it was happening, rather than outrage it was actually happening.

Yes. That's exactly how I remember it.

@GoldThumb I agree on the trans issue parallels. In particular I think there's an element which is, if you've never been on the wrong side of the media, you don't have any sense of how strong the force of engrained public opinion is. You have no idea what it's like to swim against the tide if you've always swum with it.

I can easily see how it drives some people literally mad.

There have always been pro women/gc article online on bbc and newspapers. But the overall I'd say the coverage is pro trans ideology.

In years to come, are people going to google and link to ten gc articles are say look all the facts were there - why didnt you know men were in womens prisons?

And there was more outrage that e.g. the BNP were discussing it was happening, rather than outrage it was actually happening.

I agree. Even now i get the impression that the worst thing about this is that it makes the good people look bad, and the bad people good.

In years to come, are people going to google and link to ten gc articles are say look all the facts were there - why didnt you know men were in womens prisons?

Exactly. It's like when people say "how were your concerns silenced when there were articles in national newspapers".

The documentary was shown in August 2004. The Guardian article is clear about why it wasn't aired in May.