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

Trevor Phillips has a very powerful article in the Times today about why the grooming gang enquiry should not be expanded to cover other issues / groups. He points out that ..."the grooming gangs are the only group of abusers who can and do count on political protection from local authorities, from social workers, from police, often based on ethnic affinity"

Those in power have reasons for expanding the enquiry in order to obscure the findings and avoid accountability:

https://www.thetimes.com/comment/columnists/article/grooming-inquiry-must-stay-true-to-victims-qlxrj3hbd

Archive link:

https://archive.ph/FG6sX

Ethnic affinity? What is he trying to say, these people collaborate with one another because they share a common heritage/religion? Isn’t that a bit racist to suggest? It’s like when people claim that grooming gangs were targeting young girls because they were white, trying to add an extra dynamic to the equation in order to stir up tensions between communities. I don’t like where that is going…

Fantastic article by Trevor Philips.

Fourth, the vast majority of abused children know their abusers. They are relatives, teachers, religious and community leaders, even friends of their parents. By contrast, the grooming gangs’ victims do not know their rapists and may never see them more than once. Many are taken to other towns to be raped by dozens of strangers.And finally, the grooming gangs are the only group of abusers who can and do count on political protection from local authorities, from social workers, from police, often based on ethnic affinity.
This, of course, is the real reason that no one in politics wants to know. The few victims who speak out are heroines. But the villains they can identify are only part of the awful story. The worst moral stench is attached to those who know the truth and turn a blind eye. They should stink to high heaven. But identifying and exposing them will be a painstaking, detailed, filthy task that needs to be pursued without distraction or complication.

Trevor Phillips has cut to the core of this here, and identified the major problem. He is a very intelligent and incisive journalist, I've found.

yes, I highlighted that section too

it's an excellent article and very clear about the issues at hand here

the Overton window is shifting on this I think

‘It’s like when people claim that grooming gangs were targeting young girls because they were white, trying to add an extra dynamic to the equation in order to stir up tensions between communities‘

People like the victims themselves?

Yep, I’m sure the main motives of these victims, who have stated repeatedly that they were targeted for being white, was solely to stir up tensions.

This attitude is exactly why it was allowed to happen, and indeed continues to happen.

But you carry on calling victims liars, and continue turning a blind eye, if that’s what it takes to make you feel morally superior.

What a ‘good’ person you are.

Gold fucking star. ⭐

@Swiftasthewind Philips is not trying to say anything, you are the one desperately trying to cling on to a disproven rhetoric.

He IS clearly saying that these people collaborate in groups linked by family ties and that it was no secret in the community. Philips has been investigating this issue fro 20 years. What is in your mind that makes you an expert and drives you to protect rapists in this way? It is disturbing that your concern is for male rapists not the children they have raped. You seem to really struggle with facts and this is a major issue on the left, that has left children in the clutches of rapists whilst the Police and social care protect the rapists.

You need to think what is driving your bigotry here. Why do you think 99% of sexual violence is carried out by white men? Why is your instinct to brand Trevor Philips a racist? Why do you not believe the rapists themselves who in court said they wanted "to fuck white girls and fuck the government" and many similar comments?

Please try and explain because it will help me understand why these children have been treated so horrifically for so long.

Seriously?
Read up on these grooming gangs and exactly what went on. You will perhaps then understand what crimes went on, and the attitudes to the victims.
These girls and women were not listened to, nor suported and many have not received justice and we need to ask why.

Jaswinder Sanghera who is mentioned in that article, is a very impressive woman.She ran away from home at age 16 to avoid a forced marriage. She wrote a book about it called ' Shame' and formed ' Karma Nivana', a charity which helps young pp facing forced marriage and ' honour ' based violence. In fact, she would be an excellent person to run this inquiry as she knows a lot about the issues involved. And couldn't be accused of racism...

@Swiftasthewind

I suggest you read this:

https://x.com/ellieannre71927/status/1980293976365437203?s=46&t=ALGAiHxwK3XXeRoDQylnWA

In particular:

’ The final turning point for me was the push to change the remit, to widen it in ways that downplay the racial and religious motivations behind our abuse. For many of us, these were not incidental factors, they were central to why we were targeted and why institutions failed to act. To erase that truth is to rewrite history’

Thanks for that, @GoldThumb

If you listen to Jess Philips equivocating and dodging in the HoC the other day it’s all the more despicable.

I used to like JP, and thought she truly cared about victims.

But I’m beginning to feel like she just wants to be seen as someone who cares about VAWG, but when push comes to shove she’s just the same as the rest.

I saw an interview, think it was GMB, with a women named Jade who was less than impressed with her.

The thing that stuck out to me was she said JP was ‘smirking’ at her, which is how she comes to me now.

That passive aggressive, ‘You’re too stupid to know what’s good for you’ attitude.

While Jess Philips might care about victims, unfortunately it’s just not as much as she cares about Jess Philips.

And that has been the whole problem.
Oh, we have this issue... it seems to be race based... it might make some Palistani-origin people look bad which could reflect on the whole community and cause a stir.
I know! Let's cover it up and accuse anyone trying to publicise it of being a racist!
Fab idea!
<cover up ensues, with side order of accusations of racism of anyone trying to publicise the issue, as girls continue to be raped>

Thus guaranteeing that when, as was always inevitable, the matter finally flies into the wider public consciousness, all hell breaks loose, since it looks as if 'the Muslims' have been protected by the police and the political class while 'our white girls' have been left exposed to predatory men.

Don't you see what a massive gift the cover-up has been to just the sort of people who want to stir up ethnic tension, allowing them to frame it as 'the authorities' pandering to 'the Muslims', leaving 'white people as second class citizens in their own country'?

If you can't see that, there is no helping you.

I agree with all of that. I’ve met her, and thought she was ok. Another MN regular will tell you she signed our copies of her book with “keep up the fight” or similar after we asked her in the Q&A about trans stuff (I don’t have it where I’m living at the moment so can’t check the actual wording). But she’s not a highly principled woman, I don’t think.

Why is it the assumption that the motive of stirring up tensions is the basis of people’s problem with this?

Why are people worrying more about ‘gifting’ racists reasons to be racist, than they are with the fact people are seeing crimes committed by Muslim men against white girls being covered up?

Why is that the focus?

I should say the brilliant MNer I was with was brave enough to stand up and ask her, in a very “woke” (for want of a better word) venue to comment on it. I wasn’t!

Because it’s worked so far to shut it down, for the last few decades. That ship has most definitely sailed.

I have enormous respect for Trevor Phillips. He is a man of huge intelligence and integrity. The labour party have treated him very badly, which, I think, tells us everything we need to know.

It’s like people seriously can’t understand that seeing crimes against thousands and thousands of young girls being covered up, on its own, is enough for people to get angry over.

The narrative people must inherently be racist to see an issue with it in the first place is thread thin now.

Even the passive language like ‘it seems like it’s being covered up’

It ‘seems’ like it because that’s exactly what’s happening!

You’re definitely right that ship has sailed, for a lot of people.

People don’t give a shit about being called transphobic/islamaphobic/racist/‘insert insult of the day’ any more.

But unfortunately, among the bad actors, there are still those absolute idiots who won’t believe it, and still think it’s a racist dog whistle or whatever else to point it out.
And they genuinely think they’re the ‘good guys’ 🤯

I agree.

Yes I know what you’re saying but I just cannot shake the idea that we are somehow responsible for this in some way. I have lived and breathed left wing institutions for my entire adult life, my father was a Professor and expert in the field of racial activism, then later critical race theory. All oppression and prejudice can be traced back to white supremacy, that is what was drilled into me by everybody I’ve known.

Because of this topic I’ve started to read a few accounts now of the girls and started reading about a brave woman who goes by the name Sammy Woodhouse (not sure if that’s her real name or an alias but that’s irrelevant) and of course her accounts are harrowing. I don’t understand though, if they are so afraid of us, then why would they seek out and target white girls for exploitation?

There’s just so much to make sense of, I cannot wrap my head around this at all. This wasn’t how multiculturalism was supposed to go.

Yes and we should keep a very close eye on those in government, especially in the HoL trying to keep this covered up.

100% all of this.

This is the soft bigotry of low expectations.

Everything comes down to white supremacy, because apparently only the ‘white man’ has any fucking agency, and all non-white people are just bumbling NPCs, too stupid to understand they are doing the ‘white mans’ bidding?

’We’ must be responsible somehow?

No idea how or why, but ‘we’ simply just ‘must’ be?

How? Why? Where’s the fucking logic?

And you want to talk about racism?
It’d be laughable if it wasn’t so dangerous.