Friends of Rape: How Feminist Liberals Help Sex-Crime to Flourish

Some vibrant rapists from Telford

Labour MPs: Left ignored sex abuse

A culture of Left-wing political correctness led politicians and officials to ignore the plight of young girls who were being sexually abused by Asian men, Labour figures have warned. Ann Cryer, an MP from 1997 until 2010, told The Sunday Telegraph how she had feared being called “racist” when, in 2002, she exposed a sex-abuse scandal involving Pakistani men in her constituency of Keighley, West Yorkshire. A “politically correct Left just saw it as racism”, she said.

At the same time, Simon Danczuk, the Labour MP for Rochdale, revealed that even now some of his colleagues disapproved of his efforts to uncover child abuse, because some were “obsessing about multiculturalism”. It follows the exposure last week of the scale of child sexual abuse in Rotherham. An inquiry estimated that at least 1,400 girls as young as 11 were assaulted and raped by gangs of Asian men over a period of 16 years. Some had guns pointed at them or were doused in petrol and threatened with being set alight. Mrs Cryer recalled how there was a politically correct Left that saw her fight as racism. “At the time I was dealing with this, 2002-04, political correctness was playing a big part. The Guardian at that time hardly mentioned these things… because it was so politically correct.” (Labour MPs: Left ignored sex abuse, The Daily Telegraph, 30th Aug 2014)

Rotherham: Sorry isn’t good enough. When will Britain learn to protect its children?

… Denis MacShane, who was Labour MP for Rotherham at the time, also says he didn’t know. Can it be the case that he was blinkered to the plight of his desperate constituents: parents fighting to get the authorities to do something about the abuse happening to their daughters? Could the disconnect between him and the community he represented have been so great? Was he so far removed from the business of the council that he didn’t know about the presentations to councillors on child sexual exploitation as long ago as 2004? His plea that his “liberal leftie” Guardian-reading tendencies prevented him from digging deeper for fear of upsetting cultural sensitivities smacks of a post-hoc justification of his abject failure to do anything: an excuse hardly befitting a parliamentarian of 18 years. If he was so unable or unwilling to exercise proper scrutiny and inquiry in his constituency (that being his job, after all) then he should have resigned long before he was forced to – in 2012 – when he was charged, and later convicted, of fraud while serving as an MP. Politics failed the young children of Rotherham too. (Rotherham: Sorry isn’t good enough. When will Britain learn to protect its children?, The Guardian, 31st August 2014)

Some vibrant rapists from London

Yes, that Guardian editorial has a long list of guilty parties: “the police, social services and the state failed the children; so, too, did local councillors.” Conspicuous by their absence are some folk much closer to home: editors and journalists at the Guardian (and its Sunday version the Observer). The Guardian cares so deeply about victims and the vulnerable that its website has special sections devoted to women, children, child protection, rape and domestic violence. But it was the right-wing Times “whose estimable reporting sparked the inquiry” into what was happening in Rotherham. It seems that pious posturing isn’t enough to protect the vulnerable. But the Guardian isn’t going to break the habit of a lifetime just yet:

White racists vs harmless ethnic: a Guardian cartoon

The Guardian view on the Rotherham child abuse scandal: no excuse. Nothing should stand in the way of protecting the vulnerable. Those who fail should take responsibility

Shaun Wright, Labour’s South Yorkshire police and crime commissioner, who was Rotherham’s cabinet member for children and young people’s services from 2005 until 2010, is refusing to resign. He apologises unreservedly for the grotesque abuse that 1,400 children or more may have endured on his watch, but he says the scale of the abuse has come as a surprise to him. … His lack of leadership, his reluctance to ask difficult questions or to intervene proactively, allowed the exploitation itemised in Professor Alexis Jay’s grim report on Tuesday to grow from what an earlier investigator called gang abuse for personal gratification into “financial and career opportunities” for young, mainly Asian, men. His failure to take responsibility now, in the face of the evidence, suggests a dangerous reluctance to address what went so damagingly wrong for so many vulnerable young women.

Rotherham is not alone in experiencing colossal institutional failure in child protection. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, and a pattern of abuse that has now resulted in convictions in towns from Torbay to Rochdale is very likely to be happening in other places not yet identified. … Then there was a misguided reluctance to consider whether there was an issue of race involved. Finally, they lacked any kind of institutional data-sharing that might have allowed police, schools, hospitals and social workers to understand what was happening.

The question of ethnicity is particularly contentious. Rotherham is a very white, poor, working-class town with a growing but still small – less than 10% – black and minority ethnic population of which less than a third is Muslim. In last May’s local elections, Ukip won most votes and became the official opposition on the council. A march by the English Defence League during the campaign drew 500 supporters. On Tuesday, one of the first on Twitter with a gloating tweet was Nick Griffin of the BNP. In that context it is understandable that the Labour council was sensitive to the reputation of its Muslim community. But it led to a terrible misjudgment: the subordination of the safeguarding of abused and exploited children – who were mainly, but not only, white – to the protection of the standing of one particular community. When the then Labour MP Ann Cryer, the anti-forced-marriage campaigner, began reporting accounts of young Pakistani-heritage men hanging about school gates in 2003, she was bitterly criticised. (The Guardian view on the Rotherham child abuse scandal: no excuse, The Guardian, 27th August 2014)

Keith Vaz says child sex ring case ‘not race issue’

Leading MP Keith Vaz has insisted the case of an Asian paedophile gang that exploited dozens of vulnerable white teenagers is not a “race issue”. Mr Vaz, chairman of the Commons home affairs committee, said the “appalling” offences of the kind carried out by the gang needed to be looked into but it was important not to “stigmatise a whole community”.

He made the remarks after nine men from Rochdale were convicted for their role in a child sex ring. Police and social workers have been accused of failing to investigate the gang for fear of being perceived as racist, allowing them to prey on up to 50 young white girls.

Mr Vaz told [the BBC radio programme] Today the offences committed by the gang were “absolutely appalling crimes”. But he added: “Right at the start of this trial the BNP were outside demonstrating saying that this was a race issue. I do not believe it is a race issue.” He said his view was backed by the police and children’s experts. (Keith Vaz says child sex ring case ‘not race issue’, The Telegraph, 9th May 2012)

See No Ethnic Evil: Keith Vaz

Sex gangs report ‘will play down threat of Pakistani men targeting white girls’

An official inquiry into child sex gangs will fail to highlight the targeting of white girls by Pakistani men. Instead the year-long Government-backed investigation will say that child sex abuse is a problem caused by men of all backgrounds in towns and cities across the country. The findings of the inquiry by Sue Berelowitz, the Deputy Children’s Commissioner for England, are likely to anger ministers and provoke disbelief among those who have observed and investigated cases of abuse of teenage girls in towns in Lancashire and Yorkshire. …

Education Secretary Michael Gove said in May that Miss Berelowitz should not let her inquiries be swayed by questions of prejudice and should instead ‘ask tough questions about cultural background’. However her first report, to be published next week, will argue that the problem lies with men from all ethnic backgrounds. … A spokesman for Miss Berelowitz said there would be no comment on the report until it is published next week. But a senior political figure with long experience of trying to combat sex gangs said there is a specific problem with groups of young Pakistani men, and that Miss Berelowitz would be wrong to ignore it. (Sex gangs report ‘will play down threat of Pakistani men targeting white girls’, The Daily Mail, 16th November 2012)

See No Ethnic Evil: Sue Berelowitz

How the hell have what are arguably the two most important positions for preventing child abuse been awarded to members of the ethno-religious ‘community’ that specialises in this very crime? It goes without saying that there were many native British applicants for these posts. But in each case they appointed those from a community notorious for its treatment of and attitude to child sex abuse as well as a byword for corruption, extremism, filth and incompetence. (Monkeys and bananas, Irish Savant, 5th September 2014)

See No Ethnic Evil: Nazir Afzal