Met Police set to reopen 9,000 cases in major London grooming gangs probe

[IwantToRetire]

In some incidences, children as young as 11 who reported being raped saw trials against their attackers collapse and were left to become victims of further abuse.

Suspected grooming gang and child exploitation cases from the last 15 years will be reviewed as part of the investigation, Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said in letter to Mayor of London Sir Sadiq Khan on Friday evening.

A government-ordered audit into the grooming gangs scandal earlier this year found there is “mismatch” in the way the Met and London local authorities record child abuse.

Baroness Louise Casey’s report said the force logged 2.77 contact child sexual abuse cases per 1,000 children, while boroughs recorded just 1.3 child-in-need assessments for child sexual exploitation and 1.79 for child sexual abuse.

There also appears to be a significant overlap between child sexual abuse and county lines drug trafficking gangs.

Full article here https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/met-police-london-reopen-grooming-gangs-probe-b1254846.html

I agree. And naturally, given our demographic, we are focusing our outrage on grievously let down female children. Let’s ponder the number if vulnerable male children were also scoped into the numbers.

Oh yes, and some of the language that was used about the victims. Disgusting.

yes

If you are a police officer and you find that someone is having sex with a child you arrest them

even if you perceive the child as 'white trash'
even if the child says she consented
even if the child is a pain in the arse who mucks you around and causes no end of paperwork

you still arrest the fucker having sex with her because she cannot consent

I know life is not always simple, but none the less I'm at a loss as to why arresting these men isn't the first thing that happens

I’m doing numbers again. 9000 cases is 25 a day in a year. Just for the Met. There are 36 police stations in the Met.

Thank. You. 👏
Why didn't the police have this approach?

I'll answer my own question.
Because the girl was not their priority, or even concern.

This is a diagrace

Shameful. Sadiq Khan should go. How can he say there is no issue with these gangs in london??? Sack him

You must understand, Mayor Khan had many priorities. Imposing 20mph speed limits all round the North and South Circulars and extending the ULEZ zones have been super high priority. Now, as MN always says, we can worry about more than one problem at a time. This is true. Nevertheless, the real question is in the list of priorities where does to rape of children and the investigation and conviction of that crime rank?

I happened to be in hospital recently with a woman who was probably the last person I expected to speak positively of Mayor Johnson. She spoke at length about his commitment to children in London and trying to avert their fate at the hands of gangs.

She quit her job several months into Khan’s tenure because he had no level of commitment to this vital program.

Now, I’m no fan of either Mayor and this was one woman’s account. But I’m pondering that conversation today and have to ask where Mayorial priorities lie today.

Quite. My feeling is that unless he can prove he had very good reason to believe the child was old enough (i.e. they showed him a convincing fake ID), any man having sex with someone under the age of consent should automatically be arrested for raping a minor and imprisoned. They should then be placed on the sex offenders list for life. And any police officer who does not immediately arrest a paedophile caught assaulting a child should be charged with aiding and abetting, and should face the same or even longer sentence. This should be also be applied retrospectively. I would think the rapes would start to decrease fairly quickly. Best of all, as I understand it, this is actually already the law so we wouldn't even need to faff about writing a new one. Just tell the police to do their fking jobs and start protecting the victims, rather than the criminals.

yes. given that there is convincing evidence that many men will commit rape if they feel they can get away with it, the most simple solution to preventing men from raping children where their identities are well known would seem to be to arrest them and put them in prison as a matter of routine, because what they are doing is against the fucking law, even if everyone involved thought it was all sunshine and kittens

I'd love someone to explain why this approach was not taken in Rochdale for example

Ah, Rochdale. Where those girls were treated like pieces of meat and no one in authority thought to stop it.

Posted on the Sadiq Khan thread just now by @SidewaysOtter

From this evening’s Times (share token) - it’s the headline: https://www.thetimes.com/article/f9cc0cc0-826a-4b03-8b33-dfb8ea27fed7?shareToken=6b60f4463e735b046509b8448b04c730

I haven't got time to read all the comments since yesterday but at not time did I say Muslim Grooming Gangs were an invetion of the gutter press.

I was making the point that the slanting of articles by the press to imply that grooming of young girls by men was only because of Muslim men are the problem.

And those who react to that as a fact are showing totally disrespect for all women and girls who have been abused by men.

By siloing it be about only some men shows that for some the issue of child and women abuse is not as important as venting their attitudes towards men of a particular back ground.

And in doing that they excuse every other man who have abused a women or a child.

And it is this monocular view of the issue that has caused the problems in the inquire where, whether some like it or not, women who have experience abuse by non Muslim men were invited to be part of it.

And they have every right to be.

All women and children who have been abused have a right to be listened to and to arrogantly presume to say the issue can only be looked at in one way makes a nonsense.

It is disgusting that on a feminist forum, some contributors endlessly turn up to to turn every thread into a tedious repetition of their personal obsession.

The whole point of starting this thread, and bothering to provide the information about the sadly wide ranging instances of abuse and exploitation was to try and have one thread where there is a sane women focused discussion.

The reason people are disagreeing with you is the fact that Casey raised as an issue. The survivors have also said it was a factor and they were told to try not to mention it.She also said a narrow scope into this specific type of offending needed dto be looked at due to the particular institutional failures. Now the offender demographics in London may be different. We don’t know. But the idea of widening and widening what is a very specific focused look at a very specific problem means we dilute the meaning of this.

Well, thats no accident.

Anyone claiming that Muslim grooming gangs are a racist myth needs to read this paper. It's no myth.

Paedophiles seek each other out and form gangs. I still remember the terrible case of Jason Swift. But they need to identify each other, which is risky.

OTOH if it's common for men in a specific cultural community to believe white girls in care are fair game and many men who share that view are in the night time economy it creates a perfect storm.

Looking at those men of Pakistani origin convicted of child rape, it was striking how many were related to each other. Forgive me if I'm wrong but I don't think this is a common feature in white paedophiles.

I agree we have to focus on victims but part of that is giving full justice to victims and full accountability. We know that in a lot of cases the ethnicity of the offenders was provided as a reason for why people were not brought to book. We know that institutions prioritised what they saw as racial harmony over children. The Met have basically admitted that when it came to grooming in london they were more interested in drug offences so they basically weren’t fussed about child abuse.

It’s not about stigmatisation of the Pakistani community, it’s about understanding the scale of the problem and how our institutions failed to take action for decades even though they knew. We can’t protect women and girls if we refuse to confront issues truthfully and honestly, we end up back at square one.

Look how much damage TRA’s did because so many struggled to articulate the simple truth that anyone who has or has ever had a penis is a man. Sometimes someones cultural background will inform their attitude to women.

When I read about what was done to these children I literally stopped caring about anything else to do with the cases. We must centre the victims and listen to them without prejudice and without a veneer of “don’t be sounding like a racist now”. I have to keep qualifying my posts with “oh and I’m brown” just to make it clear that this is not coming from a place of racism. It’s coming from a place of concern that we have a system that will sacrifice children, just kids to make sure that everything ticks over and people continue voting for the right people and no-one gets upset. It makes me feel sick that our society is so corrupt that this could happen.

Yes absolutely, this is one of the problems with cousin marriage. I think some families normalise the despicable. I remember one story where a girl was regularly raped by a man and then his own son who would show up in his school uniform.

I don’t think a lot of white women understand the utter contempt they are held in by some men from ethnic minorities. I’m sorry but it’s true.

What because we're stupid?
We can acknowledge there is an issue with Pakistani gangs of men grooming children. And that culturally some have little respect for women and girls. That is undeniable. What we're suggesting is that it has become the sole focus for many people when discussing child sex exploitation in this country. Which allows the powers that be to claim that the issue is just racist rhetoric. Frankly Pakistani grooming gangs are just the tip of the iceberg. Our Governments and institutions are failing vulnerable children from all predators. Mainly girls and young women...but boys too.
If we have MP's who believe that girls are trash and are basically asking for it then we've got to go back to basics.
What are we going to do about the deeply ingrained misogyny (and classism) rooted in this country?

The answer to your question is nothing. People will just hand wave it all away by blaming Pakistani immigrants and not looking at how British culture specifically is so fundamentally broken that it sees young girls as ripe for sexual abuse. This kind of things doesn’t happen in other countries, we like to think we are so civilised in comparison to places like the Middle East but the truth is we just try to hide our barbarism better.

You think this doesn't happen in the Middle East or any other country?
Really?!

I admit I don’t follow world news all that religiously but I haven’t heard of a country that has a multitude of sexual scandals involving the exploitation of children across pretty much every sector from the highest of the high to the everyday working class Joe.

This kind of things doesn’t happen in other countries

Oh please. It happens worldwide.
But I would agree we seem to operate under the delusion that our nation's attitude towards women is beyond reproach. With an underlying suggestion that it's only 'johnny foreigner' that abuses/disrespects women and girls. Which is patently absurd.

Well, let me tell you - it absolutely does happen in other countries.
Tragically.

It’s the “sole focus” because there’s been a massive fucking cover up.