For example the oft-cited "were scared of seeming racist": I think people assume that this was just a general fear of "PC gone mad", but did anyone run up against, say, some specific policy or implementation of equality law? Did this prevent accusing any specific non-white person, or did it prevent types of profiling and general analysis that might have helped, and if so what types? etc
I posted some quotes from the Telford Inquiry earlier in the thread.
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5355023-5355023-keir-starmer-to-launch-grooming-gangs-inquiry-that-will-make-witnesses-testify?reply=145012913
There is more evidence in the Telford Report, citing minutes of meetings, correspondence and interviews, showing that council employees, social workers, schools and police shied away from dealing with known perps and evidence of "street grooming" due to concerns about "racial tensions".
eg. (there are other examples)
Report of the Independent Inquiry Telford Child Sexual Exploitation
Chaired by Tom Crowther QC
VOLUME ONE OF FOUR
page 111-113 (bolding as in the original)
Race and Racial tensions
-
One particularly sensitive issue that has been raised within the community concerns the extent to which race and/or racial tensions has, or has not, played a role in relation to CSE in Telford.
-
As to the suggestion, raised by witnesses, that Telford’s CSE issues are specifically centred around the Pakistani or South Asian community:
614.1 It would in my judgment be wholly wrong, and undoubtedly racist, to equate membership of a particular racial group with propensity to commit CSE
614.2 That said, on the papers disclosed by key stakeholders, it is an undeniable fact that a high proportion of those cases involved perpetrators that were described by victims/survivors and others as being “Asian” or, often, “Pakistani”. The Inquiry has itself also heard such accounts from victims/survivors. In considering the evidence, and in particular the disclosed material, I have been cautious not to infer too much from names, which may indicate wider geographical background and indeed religious heritage, but are wholly unreliable indicators of national background and (in particular) religious belief. Even bearing that in mind, however, the evidence plainly shows that the majority of CSE suspects in Telford during my Terms of Reference were men of southern Asian heritage, including all the men convicted in Chalice, and Operations Delta and Epsilon.
-
No perpetrator of CSE has volunteered evidence to the Inquiry; there is no evidence to assist me in determining why they committed acts of sexual exploitation. But I regard it as important to consider whether there were any circumstances which might have led perpetrators within the Asian community to feel they could act, as I consider they did, essentially with impunity.
-
In that regard, I have no doubt that there was a background of nervousness around race in Telford from the earliest days of my Terms of Reference. The following features of the evidence are relevant in my view:
616.1 First, there were significant events which caused tensions between WMP and the wider community and concerns over race, which I detail in Chapter 9: Attitudes and Impact;
616.2 Second, I heard evidence that during the 1990s teachers and parents were reluctant to address potential CSE issues for concerns that they would be labelled racist;
616.3 Third, I heard evidence from a number of witnesses who suggested that certain areas of Wellington were not approachable by the police:
“a group of men were being allowed to get away with breaking the law, Regent Street at the time was seen as a no-go area, it was creating lots of problems and as a result there were young people who were feeling that, young Pakistani boys were feeling they were above the law and they could do what the hell they wanted, and nothing else mattered. And if you were not known in that area and you came to that area, you would be intimidated. There was a gang mentality that ‘this is our patch and you stay off the patch’.” 507
-
I have no doubt that concern about racism, and being seen to be racist, permeated the mind of WMP, and indeed of the Council and the minds of some of its employees, given the apparent tensions at the time. That is not a bad thing: there should be a culture of equality of treatment and fairness in delivery in government. But I am satisfied that this nervousness led to a reluctance to act.
-
So far as the Council is concerned, I have seen evidence that:
618.1 In relation to the early 2000s, there was a feeling that certain individuals in the Asian community were not targeted for investigation into child exploitation because it would have been too “politically incorrect”;508
618.2 At a multi-agency meeting at which inappropriate behaviour by an Asian male towards a child was discussed, no action was taken forward: “It seemed to be ... it was because of the ethnicity of the people involved they felt as if the police were frightened to question or challenge because they didn’t want to have the finger pointed at them, saying they were being racist”; 509
618.3 Between 2006 to 2008, senior management within the Council were concerned that allegations about Asian male involvement with CSE in Wellington had the potential to start a “race riot”;510
618.4 In around 2007, sexual exploitation meeting notes suggest that exploitation by Asian men had been “going on for years”, suggesting knowledge and inaction;511 and
618.5 As I have noted elsewhere, with regard to the Council’s response to complaints of racism in the field of taxi licensing, there was an immediate, almost reflexive, complete retreat which undermined enforcement – a basic public protection programme - for some years.
-
In the same way, I am satisfied that in some cases the decisions of WMP officers about whether or not to investigate a particular piece of intelligence or complaint were influenced by assumptions about race: whether because of ideas of difficulties investigating what was seen as a closed and hostile community, because of fear of complaint, or because of concern about the impact an investigation might have had on racial tensions, I cannot determine. One witness told the Inquiry that on being approached to join the Chalice team, they were reluctant: “I said no, and that was because of the Asian element, you know, we’re going to be on to a loser.”512
-
It would, of course, be nonsense to suggest that considerations of race and ethnicity should play no part in policing a community with a large population of a particular racial or ethnic group; but for those considerations to lead to a situation where certain streets are not patrolled, or where certain crimes are not investigated, is a dereliction of the police’s most basic duty.
-
It is impossible, sadly, not to wonder how history might have been different had the culture in the 1990s and early 2000s within the Council and WMP not been overly concerned with questions of race and placed a greater focus on child protection.
----
The other aspect of this racism is that the sexual abuse, sexual exploitation and trafficking of children (mostly girls) and young women from minority ethnic communities by men within those communities is even less well recognised and investigated than the "on street" grooming gangs.
UNHEARD VOICES - Sexual Exploitation of Asian Girls and Young Women
September 2013
These children suffer the same gang-based rape and torture that has become horrifying familiar from court cases but they are even less likely to get support and justice, whether from the authorities or from within their own communities.
https://www.mwnuk.co.uk/resourcesDetail.php?id=97