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.

Anyway, it’s 3.44 am here and 2.44 there, so will pick up later.

I didn't accuse her of anything or jump to any conclusions, but I did say that I would question her motives if she was going to try and shut down any discussion that didn't make the whole thing about race. I stand by that.

If she had actually engaged with the content of my posts, it would have been abundantly clear that I wasn't trying to "protect rapists" in any shape or form. But I don't believe she actually thought that was my intention, she simply said it as a way of trying to shut me down. We can only guess at her reasons for this, but I don't personally see it as a reasonable response from someone who is genuinely motivated by concerns about the safety of women and girls.

If she thought I had jumped to the wrong conclusions, then she could have come back and explained what exactly it was in my posts which made her believe I wanted to protect racists when I had so clearly stated the opposite. She didn't, because there wasn't ever any substance to it.

And if people make claims without any foundation to them, then others will inevitably question why they might be doing that.

Tbh I’m very wary of anyone deciding what disinformation is for children. Pointing out that transwomen are men would have been treated as “disinformation” by public authorities a few years ago.

Safeguarding should really have clearly defined boundaries to the immediate wellbeing of children. So inoculating against on-line grooming, sharing of information and pictures.

It’s fucking Orwellian. I don’t trust anyone to decide what counts as disinformation or not, especially in light of the gingerbread twat and the handling of grooming gangs.

Forced marriage is illegal but arranged marriage is not.

If the girl is too petrified to actually protest, her illegal forced marriage is simply a legal arranged marriage.

We need to protect Muslim women and girls more.

Sorry, I don’t want to appear argumentative but could you explain how someone wanting to control the narrative of a rape because they wish to protect the reason the rapes were allowed to happen so openly and so systematically isn’t protecting rapists?

But if you want race to be the only part of the conversation, to the exclusion of other relevant factors, then that's when I start to question what your motives really are.

You keep repeating this insinuation which imo is unjustified as I haven’t seen anyone say that. Intentionally or not it serves to have a chilling effect as people start overthinking things and worrying about being called racist rather than being able to focus on the specifics of the problem which is that a large group of men targeted girls specifically because of their race and because of the men’s race and religion, the girls were silenced and their rapists are being enabled by those in power.

Your posts read a little bit like you think we have talked about this particular topic enough already and need to move onto wider issues. We haven’t.

I have been called a racist for THE most ridiculous things on these threads so I don’t care any more as I know I’m not and the people accusing are just high on their own self righteousness.

Your nasty accusation is unfounded.

I’m not sure why it has to be spelled out so many times.

We want the Pakistani Muslim men in grooming gangs to be subject to the same rules and laws as all other men and not be enabled and shielded by those in authority. Which seems to be happening even at government level right at the moment.

Those girls deserve justice, after so many years and being silenced by people crying ‘racist’.

Can I request that you read some of the survivors accounts before you consider whether that is too much to ask?

I just don’t think that protecting the rapists is the poster’s intention, whether or not attitudes like hers have contributed and are still contributing to a stifling of discussion which benefits these men. And I agree that they have and are.

She is much more reasonable about the need to fully investigate the grooming gangs than others on this board, who do think no one should be able to discuss the race/culture aspects at all.

This. Spot on.

You may be unaware of how your posts come across but you end pretty much every one with an unfounded insinuation about racism on a topic where perpetrators are being shielded by unfounded accusations of racism.

But it isn’t abundantly clear to her. I’m taking you both at face value here. You’ve concluded she’s doing it because she’s right wing and stirring, and she thinks you’re trying to suppress free discussion about something she has close personal experience of.

@BundleBoogie you explain the problem so well.

Anyone know why Knotty’s thread about a TiM teacher in her DD’s school has been hidden by MN? Didn’t seem particularly offensive and raised genuinely interesting points about how to respond to compelled speech.

I don’t know, but I imagine it will be due to mass reporting. If it meets talk guidelines, MN may unhide it if they’ve hidden it in error.

Suggest she emails them.

I'm not too sure if anybody has ansered you yet but in the case of Trump they edited his speech to make it appear that he was advocating for violence.

In the case of the Queen, they reversed two shots that were filmed in Buckingham Palace when the Queen was having her photo taken to make it look as though she stormed out in annoyance.

With Trump, the BBC edited his speech so that it appeared that he said:

"We're going to walk down to the Capitol, and I'll be there with you, and we fight, we fight like hell"

While he did say those actual words, that was actually from three different parts of his speech and the BBC just edited out the parts in between and swapped the order.

This is what he actually said in the first part:

"And after this, we're going to walk down, and I'll be there with you, we're going to walk down, we're going to walk down.

Anyone you want, but I think right here, we're going to walk down to the Capitol, and we're going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we're probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them.

Because you'll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated.

I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard."

Notice the last sentence in that quote? Where he talked about marching "peacefully"?

He then spoke for a further 50 minutes where he talked about fighting against a number of groups:

He talked a lot about fighting against "weak Republicans" in his own party.

He also talked about fighting with the media and went on to say:

"But our fight against the big donors, big media, big tech, and others is just getting started. This is the greatest in history. There's never been a movement like that."

Then at the end of the speech he did say the bit about fighting:

"As this enormous crowd shows, we have truth and justice on our side. We have a deep and enduring love for America in our hearts. We love our country.

We have overwhelming pride in this great country and we have it deep in our souls. Together, we are determined to defend and preserve government of the people, by the people and for the people.

Our brightest days are before us. Our greatest achievements, still away.

[a bit about how he will improve the security of election results]

And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore.

Our exciting adventures and boldest endeavors have not yet begun. My fellow Americans, for our movement, for our children, and for our beloved country.

And I say this despite all that's happened. The best is yet to come.

So we're going to, we're going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue. I love Pennsylvania Avenue. And we're going to the Capitol, and we're going to try and give.

The Democrats are hopeless — they never vote for anything. Not even one vote. But we're going to try and give our Republicans, the weak ones because the strong ones don't need any of our help. We're going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country."

This.

I find it interesting that the two of us on this thread who have done similar trainings ourselves, share the same POV on the article.

Thank you for that - someone did respond with a link and actually I had then seen that story after posting. Thank you for the useful rundown and it's good to see they're starting to be held to account. I used to love the BBC. I really feel at sea with have nobody to trust now.

I’ve done public sector Prevent training, which despite the intended focus of the Prevent programme on Islamist terrorism, focussed almost entirely on the lesser threat of right wing radicalisation. So I have done “similar training” ie one with an approved narrative.

I think you meant to address that to me. If so, please re-read my posts. I made it very clear that I wanted absolute transparency, accountability, justice and truth with regard to the grooming gangs, both in relation to the rapists themselves and in relation to those who were complicit because they failed to act. The fact that I want to acknowledge that these things occurred within a wider context of the abuse and exploitation of girls being allowed to continue in other situations does not mean that I want to cover up the specificity of the reasons in these particular cases. I want to look at the detail of these cases and the bigger picture. I do not believe that you could read and understand my posts and genuinely take from them that I wanted to "protect rapists", you just wanted to shut me down by trying to be deliberately inflammatory.

Prevent is supposed to focus on all forms of extremism, and not only Islamic terrorism. I'm surprised that the training didn't make that clear.

The prevent training that I've done has certainly addressed the dangers of all types of radicalisation, including extreme Islamist groups. It's hardly surprising that they address the far right threat as well, as I think that's the fastest growing source of referrals.

But if they had worded the question in a way that made the ‘new tactics’ sound completely outlandish and overtly racist, would anyone honestly have a problem with it?

Yes, I have a problem with governors being told that they must automatically assume that allegations are untrue (and, not just untrue, but 'disinformation'), rather than something to be investigated. 'Outlandish' is subjective.

I would agree, but to be clear, governors weren't actually being told by this training that they must automatically assume that allegations are untrue or disinformation. That wasn't the point being made at all.

I have already explained why I think the basic premise of the question was flawed and that the training was therefore inappropriate, so I won't repeat myself here, but it is a point of fact that governors were not being taught that allegations should be dismissed and not investigated.

That’s scope creep. It was set up to deal with the much larger Islamist terrorism threat. I read a recent report into it, it was quite damning that people didn’t really understand what it’s supposed to do.

It’s not supposed to tackle “hate crime” for example, that’s for the police.