School governors told to ‘dismiss’ grooming gangs concerns

[NoNever]

Article in the Telegraph.

Quote “ School governors have been encouraged to dismiss concerns about grooming gangs as “disinformation”, The Telegraph can disclose.
Thousands of governors undergoing safeguarding training this year were presented with a scenario involving rumours of “men belonging to a particular religion” committing “violent crimes against women”.
They were asked to identify the scenario as an “online safety risk” because children were spreading “disinformation”.”

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/11/04/school-governors-told-to-dismiss-grooming-gangs-concerns/

This is infuriating. For decades girls were told to shut up about grooming gangs and this is the training school governors are being provided in 2025.

I agree that the majority of the police and social workers in Rotherham, who betrayed 1,400 children who suffered gang rape and torture, would have been white British men and women.

This is also relevant. Fears of being accused of being racist, or of damaging social cohesion between local communities, or of weakening their relationship with key figures in Rotherham's Muslim community were significant contributing factors to the Police, Social Workers and other public officials choosing to look the other way.

1,400 girls. Raped and tortured by gangs of predominately British Pakistani men. That was the price they were willing to pay to protect social cohesion in Rotherham and to keep their jobs safe.

You are right they should also be in jail.

The complaint is not that only certain ethnic groups are committing these offences.

The complaint is that only certain ethnic groups are having their offences covered up and called "disinformation".

There's systemic racism going on, and it's very, very deep-rooted.

With a particularly nasty feedback loop - racism in one direction from one side is causing increased racism in the other direction from the other side. And round and round we go.

The state is going to have to defuse this, and tackling its own racism is going to be key to it.

But so many seem to want keep wanting to make the same mistakes - "I think Bad people are being more racist in this direction, so as a Good person I'm going to be even more racist in the other direction than I already have been."

Great work, guys.

BINGO!
The point you are spectacularly missing is no one knows because the data isn't clear.

"No one thinks only Pakistani men rape girls."

Lol, some one might need to let Reform, Tommy Robinson & their enablers in on the 'news'. But good luck with that given their incentives direct them otherwise.

Fear whilst certainly a factor wasn't the only reason.

"Why did officials fail to address grooming gangs properly?
There are a range of explanations, from lack of understanding and incompetence to snobbery, misogyny and fear of inflaming racial tensions.
Many of the victims came from care homes. Some police officers referred to them as “slags”, and to their abuse as a “lifestyle choice"; the issue was given a low priority. Prosecutors saw victims as poor witnesses. Social workers in Rotherham were often “overwhelmed”, Jay found. Another inquiry found that Rotherham Council was “in denial”.
And then there’s the issue of ethnicity. Early whistleblowers, including MP Ann Cryer, former police officer Maggie Oliver and journalists Andrew Norfolk and Julie Bindel, were dismissed as Islamophobic and racist and, in 2004, a Channel 4 documentary about Asian men grooming girls in Bradford was postponed over fears that it could lead to race riots. There is evidence that many officials feared being accused of racism: Jay found that councillors had fretted that discussion of the issue could harm “community cohesion”; Telford’s inquiry also identified a “nervousness about race”. A vast amount of evidence was ignored and there have been many claims of cover-ups."

https://theweek.com/crime/the-grooming-gangs-scandal-explained

Exactly.

No one said fear of racism was the only factor in the so called “grooming gangs” phenomenon, which is still happening today, it’s not simply historical. Many of us have been discussing this for years here. And it was a factor, whatever biased sources posters manage to dig up.

This.

@Howseitgoin

What is your experience of growing up and working with vulnerable groups in Rotherham?

Err, if experience in working with vulnerable groups is the standard for understanding them, then we know that isn't a high bar given the monumental incompetence involved by the authorities in Rotherham.

And then there’s the issue of ethnicity. Early whistleblowers, including MP Ann Cryer, former police officer Maggie Oliver and journalists Andrew Norfolk and Julie Bindel, were dismissed as Islamophobic and racist and, in 2004, a Channel 4 documentary about Asian men grooming girls in Bradford was postponed over fears that it could lead to race riots. There is evidence that many officials feared being accused of racism: Jay found that councillors had fretted that discussion of the issue could harm “community cohesion”; Telford’s inquiry also identified a “nervousness about race”. A vast amount of evidence was ignored and there have been many claims of cover-ups."

An earlier poster helpfully included a link ^^ confirming that fear of being called racist / inflaming racist tensions did indeed play a significant role in allowing the abuse to continue for years. This appears to continue to be playing out. And?

We live in a world where the truth has become inconvenient to any preferred narrative.
The left needs to accept that they frequently deny and minimise violence, including sexual violence and abuse, from ethnic minorities and the right needs to acknowledge that they frequently deny and minimise racism.

You’re poo pooing the research and experience of people who have lived there and actually gone through this.
I’m curious to know your own link with it as you’re more of an expert on the matter.

Howse doesn’t have a clue about any of this, he’s just googling stuff, so I won’t be engaging directly as it’s just disruptive.

Yes. Men from the other side of the world with an addiction to parading their misogyny on online forums where women communicate have nothing to offer to the discussions around this complex debate.
The fact that the session was removed from the training shows that the problem was recognised.

Tbh I'm wondering why so many pp are engaging with someone about safeguarding young girls considering they believe men are entitled to be in female spaces at all times.

Sorry OP. Thank you for making the thread.

Yes this, and also what @Thedevilhasfinallycaughtupwithhim and others said.

There is a fixation with what is going on in the UK, accompanied by a very basic understanding of the situations in reality and a very desperate grabbing at sources as "proof". The poster appears to dislike British "terfs" intensely. Which proves we must be doing something right.

I hadn't thought about training for school governors before. Do we know anything about the third party provider in this instance?

There's a mix of organisations - all of who can be vulnerable to capture by activists of all kinds. Safeguarding training should be as free as is possible from politics but we all know that's impossible to legislate for and having such a wealth of private providers for schools of different types makes it impossible to quality assure.

The problem is that in order to teach about disinformation they must find a false allegation that is not incredible and which an agitator would be motivated to make: a video about a threat from knife-wielding WI members would not fit the bill.

It's mischievous to interpret it as meaning 'allegations against (particular group) must always be ignored'.

When I was a child, rumours about 'coloured' white slave-traders and gypsies kidnapping small children were rife. And yes, it both whipped up race-hatred and created blind spots about the dangers from polite well-dressed white men. (If the example in the article had been about Travellers instead of Muslims, maybe the DT would not have run it, but our local Nextdoor regulars would have been all over it!)

Not all grooming gangs are Muslim. That doesn't mean Muslim grooming gangs don't exist!

The training scenario is a mess. It presupposes that the content of the video is already known to be "false". In real world safeguarding scenarios you don't know whether what you hear is false or not, and the whole thing is you're not supposed to just assume an allegation is false based on your own preconceptions!

The question should have said 'unsupported' rather than 'false', then. We should be teaching children to be critical thinkers and not to believe allegations without evidence.

Terf Island Rules OK 💚🤍💜 🇬🇧

However, critics said the training scenario suggested that the threat from grooming gangs was being downplayed rather than addressed - contradicting IICSA’s aims in the first place.

Sarah Champion, the Labour MP for Rotherham, said it was “concerning” that, rather than seeing the scenario as an opportunity to discuss child protection, governors are only given negative options to shut debate down”.

She said: “My bigger worry is it will lead to governors dismissing real cases of violence against women and girls.

It seems to me we need some sort of accreditation for trainers. How could any competent trainer be so irresponsible.
Please ignore our resident derailer. This is about lessons not being learned. If a trainer had said that at a course I was on I'd expect the school to withdraw their contract.

I didn't miss that. You were talking as if it disproved what people were saying. You have to ask yourself why things aren't being recorded or studied. It's like issues with trans people studies often get shut down. It's good when there isn't such a wealth of solid data as then people can claim ignorance. There, however, is some data to work with such as convictions. There's a good substack breaking down the stats that someone posted in another thread.

It's telling that the bbc article mentions a case of white people who abused 30 children over a decade ago that didn't get much coverage but doesn't mention the numbers involved in the scandals. As it's common sense that a scandal that involves thousands of children being covered up is going to get more attention than one with 30. All horrible of course regardless of who does it.