Rotherham & other City/Town child abuse scandals

[ADK]

I thought the general consensus was that higher black crime was due to more black poverty. 

 

I don't like the generalisation of people based on skin colour though. It's ridiculous. Nobody cares about the number of blondes in prison or people with small penises.

[MooseBreath]

I imagine that's because there aren't clear stats that show a higher proportion of blondes or Welshmen in prison.

[Raj]

I thought the general consensus was that higher black crime was due to more black poverty.

I don't like the generalisation of people based on skin colour though. It's ridiculous. Nobody cares about the number of blondes in prison or people with small penises.

so we cant state facts about anything based on skin colour???

thats one of the stupidest things ive heard

[Rincewind]

The bloke I know has said some sentences are too short for the prisoner to have a chance of rehabilitation. The waiting list in some prisons for education and training course can be up to 18 months. Not much use to  a young teen who is given 6 months for a minor offence and wants to change. Few employers will take people on with a record even minor ones. If on an application form you are asked if you have one it is best not to put too much detail and put disclosure at interview. So says the chap I know. It has worked for him.

[ADK]

so we cant state facts about anything based on skin colour???

thats one of the stupidest things ive heard

 

You can, but I don't see the relevance unless it's literally got something to do with their skin. There's hundreds of countries where the majority of people are black, there's also a growing number of black people who are culturally very British and black people from other European countries and North America.

 

In the same way describing people as "Asian" is pointless as that encompasses a diverse range of cultures and religions. Sikhs, Pakistani Muslims, Japanese, even Russians could be classed as "Asian".

[Koke]

Vote UKIP.

[Guest MattP]

I presume you're implying that this is what the Labour council did, Matt?

If so, could you quote some evidence?

It's clear that, whatever the reasons, at the very least the Labour council was guilty of shameful gross negligence. Any Labour councillor who had senior responsibility or specific responsibility for children's services should resign or be sacked (and be prosecuted, if their misconduct extends that far). However, I think you need to back up an implied claim like the one you've made above. I'm not discounting that such evidence might exist; if it does, then anyone who ignored child gang rape or instructed others to do so really should be

It was printed in last week's times in a very apologetic article by Denis Skinner.

[Strokes]

Welshmen

[Guest MattP]

You can't just go blaming left or liberal politics that's for sure.

I can't think of anyone liberal that would like British children to be subjected to abuse.

You can't ask the "muslim" community to sort it out. That didn't work with the catholic priest scandal and this isn't as much about religion but culture.

You certainly can. It's the aggressive attitude and ludicrous accusations of racism that have came from a lot of you lot that has allowed this to happen on such a scale with no scrutiny. I don't for one minute expect you to take any responsibility as you never do but to suggest overt liberalism isn't somewhat to blame is quite frankly ludicrous.

[PAPA LAZAROU]

but until the muslim community say they DO have an issue nothing will change.

Their leaders need to grow some balls and speak up

 

Their leaders have grown some balls and they have been sticking them into children.

[Koke]

As much as I despise religion, I cant get on board with the "guilty by association" rhetoric thats going on here. 

 

That said, there's a strong element of brutal misogyny in the Pakistani/Arab culture which needs to be combated. Cultures from less developed countries (South Asia, Middle East, Africa, South-East Asia, Latin America) tend to have poor attitudes to women. 

[Alf Bentley]

Do you genuinely believe a UKIP council would have instructed authority to ignore child gang rape because they didn't want to upset the 'guardian reading elite' as Skinner put it?

 

 

I presume you're implying that this is what the Labour council did, Matt?

If so, could you quote some evidence?

 

 

It was printed in last week's times in a very apologetic article by Denis Skinner.

 

I'm sure Skinner did badmouth the "Guardian-reading elite" or similar - and I'd largely agree with him.

 

But did he say that the Labour council "instructed authority to ignore child rape" and, if so, what evidence did he or anyone else present for this?

 

I'm not for a minute disputing the fact that elected councillors, the police and some council employees acted with shameful negligence. I also don't doubt that there were people suggesting that the racial angle to schoolgirls going off with (mainly) Pakistani men should be hushed up.

 

But is there any evidence, as you clearly imply, that the Labour council "instructed authority to ignore child gang rape"? If so, could you provide a link?

Edited 4 September 2014 by Alf Bentley

[midland_red]

More scary than when Reagan was president of America?

 

correct...Reagan and his Mrs were in hock both to astrolgers and the type of fundamentalist christians who thought the the end of the world was a good thing and just maybe he had a Christian duty to edge it along a bit!

[Carl the Llama]

Dunno if it's been mentioned, but according to a piece in the Private Eye, some fathers actively sought out their daughters to rescue them from sexual abuse, only for the police to arrest them. I'm sure I can find the specific article if anyone cares enough to read it.

[Guest MattP]

I'm sure Skinner did badmouth the "Guardian-reading elite" or similar - and I'd largely agree with him.

 

But did he say that the Labour council "instructed authority to ignore child rape" and, if so, what evidence did he or anyone else present for this?

 

I'm not for a minute disputing the fact that elected councillors, the police and some council employees acted with shameful negligence. I also don't doubt that there were people suggesting that the racial angle to schoolgirls going off with (mainly) Pakistani men should be hushed up.

 

But is there any evidence, as you clearly imply, that the Labour council "instructed authority to ignore child gang rape"? If so, could you provide a link?

 

 

I'm sure Skinner did badmouth the "Guardian-reading elite" or similar - and I'd largely agree with him.

 

But did he say that the Labour council "instructed authority to ignore child rape" and, if so, what evidence did he or anyone else present for this?

 

I'm not for a minute disputing the fact that elected councillors, the police and some council employees acted with shameful negligence. I also don't doubt that there were people suggesting that the racial angle to schoolgirls going off with (mainly) Pakistani men should be hushed up.

 

But is there any evidence, as you clearly imply, that the Labour council "instructed authority to ignore child gang rape"? If so, could you provide a link?

 

The word authority is the key so i suppose no, although it's been proven beyond doubt i think that Labour councillors were prepared to ignore accusations of child rape as not to upset community relations and the people who vote for them, to me that's as bad anyway and I think to try and defend it in any way shape or form is fairly dangerous and could lead to similar situations in the future.

 

With this and the PIE scandal last year I think it's clear the party has some issues to address with it's links to paedophilia and it's tolerance in a lot of cases of it. Let's not forget the Police Chief in charge of this was a high ranking Labour party member as well so I think it's fair to say a lot of close contact would have been . It's quite sickening.

 

Here's the article with Sinner's comments in, given he was an MP for Rotherham when you read things like it it's very easy to see how these things did actually happen.

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/11059138/Rotherham-In-the-face-of-such-evil-who-is-the-racist-now.html

 

Let’s start with a riddle. If South Yorkshire Police can mount a raid on Sir Cliff Richard’s home in pursuit of evidence linked to a single allegation of child sex abuse 30 years ago, why were South Yorkshire Police incapable of pursuing multiple allegations against multiple men who raped 1,400 children over 16 years?

One thousand four hundred. Consider the weight of that number, feel its tragic heft. Picture 50 junior-school classes of little girls in Rotherham, once a respectable northern town, now a byword for depravity. We have seen child-grooming cases before, but the disgusting stories revealed in the report by Professor Alexis Jay amount to evidence of abuse on an industrial scale.

 

Men of Pakistani heritage treated white girls like toilet paper. They picked children up from schools and care homes and trafficked them across northern cities for other men to join in the fun. They doused a 15-year-old in petrol and threatened to set her alight should she dare to report them. They menaced entire families and made young girls watch as they raped other children.

These truly horrible things happened in our country – not in the distant, cruel past, but as recently as last year. All but one of the perpetrators were Muslims of Pakistani heritage who would have related to Cliff’s hit, Living Doll.

 

The living dolls of Rotherham were bent and twisted to their masters’ will. There was no escape. As the sterling Professor Jay observes, South Yorkshire Police “regarded many child victims with contempt”.

One 11-year-old known as Child H told police that she and another girl had been sexually assaulted by grown men. Nothing was done. When she was 12, Child H was found in the back of a taxi with a man who had indecent pictures of her on his phone. Despite the full co-operation of her father, who insisted his daughter was being abused, police failed to act. Four months later, Child H was found in a house alone with a group of Pakistani men. What did the police do? They arrested the child for being drunk and disorderly and ignored her abusers. As President Obama said about the fiends who beheaded the journalist James Foley: “No just God would stand for what they did.”

My, what the British people would give to hear such ringing moral condemnation from our own political leaders.

The Labour Party, in particular, is mired in shame over “cultural sensitivity” in Rotherham. Especially, cynics might point out, a sensitivity to the culture of Muslims whose votes they don’t want to lose. Denis MacShane, MP for Rotherham from 1994 to 2012, actually admitted to the BBC’s World At One that “there was a culture of not wanting to rock the multicultural community boat, if I may put it like that. Perhaps, yes, as a true Guardian reader and liberal Leftie, I suppose I didn’t want to raise that too hard.” Much better to hang on to your impeccable liberal credentials than save a few girls from being raped, eh, Denis?

Equally horrifying is the suggestion that certain Pakistani councillors asked social workers to reveal the addresses of the shelters where some of the abused girls were hiding. The former deputy leader of the council, Jahangir Akhtar, is accused of “ignoring a politically inconvenient truth” by insisting there was not a deep-rooted problem of Pakistani-heritage perpetrators targeting young white girls. The inquiry was told that influential Pakistani councillors acted as “barriers to communication” on grooming issues.

Front-line youth workers who submitted reports in 2002, 2003 and 2006 expressing their alarm at the scale of the child sex-offending say the town hall told them to keep quiet about the ethnicity of the perpetrators in the interests of “community cohesion”.

Fear of appearing racist trumped fears of more children being abused. Not only were negligent officials not prosecuted, they prospered. Shaun Wright, a former Labour councillor who was in charge of Rotherham children’s services during a five-year period when a blind eye was turned to the worst case of mass child abuse in British history, is now South Yorkshire’s Police and Crime Commissioner. Oh, Jonathan Swift, thou shouldst be writing at this hour!

Jane Collins, the Ukip MEP for Yorkshire and Humber, has called for Mr Wright to stand down, a demand that has been echoed by Labour as it realises the full horror of what was done – or not done – by its councillors. “To cover up something of this scale, it is evil,” says Mrs Collins.

It’s impossible not to share that incredulous fury. Powerless white working-class girls were caught between a hateful, imported culture of vicious misogyny on the one hand, and on the other a culture of chauvinism among the police, who regarded them as worthless slags. Officials trained up in diversity and political correctness failed to acknowledge what was effectively white slavery on their doorstep. Much too embarrassing to concede that it wasn’t white people who were committing racist hate crimes in this instance.

The whole thing is like a real-life episode of Prime Suspect, in which councillors, the police and child-protection staff collude to give a bunch of sadistic thugs licence to pimp a town’s most vulnerable children. As they say in Yorkshire: “They want shooting, the lot of them.”

This will come as no comfort to the 1,400 brutalised girls, many of whom have self-harmed or committed suicide, but I reckon Rotherham may be the final nail in the coffin of multiculturalism. Far from discouraging racism, the Labour policy of withholding the ethnic identity of men who preyed on white girls backfired spectacularly. Criminally, it endangered hundreds of children who might otherwise have been spared. A recent poll showed that 44 per cent of young Britons believe that Muslims do not share the same values as the rest of the population, while 28 per cent said they felt Britain would be “better off” with fewer Muslims.

Attitudes are even more negative among older people. A recent Radio 4 item about how junior jihadists spending their gap year massacring people in Iraq could be “reintegrated” into British society produced hoots of derision on social media and spilt tea across the breakfast tables of England. (Hands up anyone who wants the blighters back?) The period of giving the benefit of the doubt to young Muslims who go on “camping holidays” to Syria is over. Undoubtedly, the fact that “Jihadi John”, the hooded man who was party to the beheading of James Foley, spoke with a London accent has provoked further despair about the widespread failure of Muslims to integrate. Has it really come to this? A child raised with all the freedoms and blessings of a British upbringing behaving like a natural-born barbarian.

My colleague Boris Johnson’s excellent suggestion that any Britons who travel to Syria and Iraq without informing the authorities should be presumed to be potential terrorists until proven innocent produced howls of outrage from the human rights brigade – but it struck an entire symphony of chords with Britons of all creeds and colours who are sick of being taken for mugs.

 

 

There are other hopeful signs. The Rotherham scandal seems temporarily to have silenced those who insist, every time a child-grooming case is exposed, that most paedophiles are white. Indeed they are; but the Rotherham abusers were not paedophiles. They were men of Pakistani heritage slaking their lust on young girls they regarded as white trash because they knew they could get away with it. It grieves me to say they were right. Like South Yorkshire Police, they treated 1,400 defenceless children “with contempt”.

On Channel 4 News on Tuesday, Javed Khan, the chief executive of Barnardo’s, refused to give a straight answer to a question about the part that “ethnicity” played in the abuse of girls in Rotherham. As the presenter Jackie Long persisted, Mr Khan insisted that we should not be focusing on the identity of the perpetrators because it “distracted attention” from the children who were their victims.

On the contrary. It is of the utmost importance that wider society wakes up to the fact that there is what the inquiry found to be a “deep-rooted problem of Pakistani-heritage perpetrators targeting young white girls”. Many of us who have been saying this for a long time have been shouted down as racist. Thanks to Prof Jay, it has been stated publicly for the first time that the fear of appearing racist was more pressing in official minds than enforcing the law of the land or rescuing terrified children. It is one of the great scandals of our lifetime.

The Labour council of Rotherham stands accused of ignoring child sex abuse on an unimaginable scale for 16 years. There can be no more serious charge against a public body. Former councillors who dismissed evidence or otherwise attempted to pervert the course of justice should be arrested. Officers who snubbed appeals from desperate children and their families have no place in our police force.

Thus far, a mere five men have been jailed in connection with the disgusting crimes in Rotherham. A further 30 are under investigation. We need a campaign to get other abused children to come forward and receive the appropriate help. We need them to identify the perpetrators. Shame and name, and shame again. Above all, we need those girls to know that what was done to them was criminal, and the way those crimes were ignored and suppressed by powerful men with a political agenda was despicable as well as criminal. To avoid rocking the multicultural boat, they fed 1,400 children to the sharks. No just God would stand for what they did.

 

I've highlighted some of the comments I find most shocking.

 

The story about the police barging in on a house full of them with a drunk young teenager in the middle of them is the most disgusting, I don't think even Captain Pancake Face would have sought to blame the young girl for that situation and arrest her. As we sit here now the people responsible stil haven't resigned, the public should be hanging them from nooses and instead I'm actually fearing they won't only get away with it but actually keep their jobs as well!

 

Dunno if it's been mentioned, but according to a piece in the Private Eye, some fathers actively sought out their daughters to rescue them from sexual abuse, only for the police to arrest them. I'm sure I can find the specific article if anyone cares enough to read it.

 

Yep, I can't even begin to imagine what it must have been like to have to know your child was being drugged and gang raped but there was nothing you could do about it due to people wanting to be 'politically correct'.

 

The Sikhs down here had the right idea, that's the real way to nip it in the bud, white people have become so pathetic in dealing with these sort of actions these days sometimes I think we deserve what we have created anyway.

[Rincewind]

I doubt it was the Labour council as a whole involved. Individuals yes. Individual perpertraters, individual police, individual council and social workers. There is more than one department at in council HQ's and the road planning officer does not get to see social services documents Not all Tory Councillors and MP's are squeaky clean and how do we know that some of those involved in the abuse were not Tory voters?

It is not about politics. It is about crimes against children and using it for political points is rather tasteless.

[Guest MattP]

I doubt it was the Labour council as a whole involved. Individuals yes. Individual perpertraters, individual police, individual council and social workers. There is more than one department at in council HQ's and the road planning officer does not get to see social services documents Not all Tory Councillors and MP's are squeaky clean and how do we know that some of those involved in the abuse were not Tory voters?

It is not about politics. It is about crimes against children and using it for political points is rather tasteless.

 

lol

 

****ing Hell.

 

The Muslim grooming gangs were probably Tory voters, even in the World of Rincewind that's an outrageous Kentribution.

Edited 4 September 2014 by MattP

[Rincewind]

lol

 

****ing Hell.

 

The Muslim grooming gangs were probably Tory voters, even in the World of Rincewind that's an outrageous Kentribution.

So you think scoring political points is more important than punishing those responsible?

I never said ALL I said SOME. We do not know. Ny main point was that politics should be left out of it.

It distracts from the purpose of punishing those responsible and ensuring it does not happen again.

Edited 4 September 2014 by Rincewind

[Guest MattP]

So you think scoring political points is more important than punishing those responsible?

 

No Ken, I fail to see how you have come to that conclusion either.

 

Do you think it's right people can behave like this and then use silly cliches like 'political points' etc to try and avoid public condemnation for their evil actions?

 

The irony of you quoting that scoring political points is wrong yet bringing the Tories who have nothing to do with anything about that into it is quite brilliant as well.

Edited 4 September 2014 by MattP

[ADK]

It does come across as political points scoring to me. I've never voted Labour. I do know some Muslims who vote Tory. There's some pretty strong accusations being thrown around without the evidence to back them up.

[DennisNedry]

Just the word Kentribution has me in tears.

[Rincewind]

Well we'll just have to differ then. You think the Labour party are responsible and I think individuals are.

[Rincewind]

It does come across as political points scoring to me. I've never voted Labour. I do know some Muslims who vote Tory. There's some pretty strong accusations being thrown around without the evidence to back them up.

Thank you.

[Guest MattP]

Well we'll just have to differ then. You think the Labour party are responsible and I think individuals are.

 

You have taken a pretty incredible position on the high horse here considering around a year ago you were one of the people denying this was even happening and trying to blame it all on the lies of the right or the Daily Mail type mainstream media. Why should anyone take your opinion seriously given your previous?

 

You do now admit this has happened and it wasn't a made up fabrication?

 

It's a start at least.

[Alf Bentley]

The word authority is the key so i suppose no, although it's been proven beyond doubt i think that Labour councillors were prepared to ignore accusations of child rape as not to upset community relations and the people who vote for them, to me that's as bad anyway and I think to try and defend it in any way shape or form is fairly dangerous and could lead to similar situations in the future.

 

With this and the PIE scandal last year I think it's clear the party has some issues to address with it's links to paedophilia and it's tolerance in a lot of cases of it. Let's not forget the Police Chief in charge of this was a high ranking Labour party member as well so I think it's fair to say a lot of close contact would have been . It's quite sickening.

 

Here's the article with Sinner's comments in, given he was an MP for Rotherham when you read things like it it's very easy to see how these things did actually happen.

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/11059138/Rotherham-In-the-face-of-such-evil-who-is-the-racist-now.html

 

 

I quite agree that the Labour Party in Rotherham and elsewhere has serious issues to address. Heads should roll, cultures should change and people should be prosecuted, if their guilt extends that far. The same applies in other places where similar outrages have been perpetrated, albeit on a smaller scale: e.g. in Rochdale (under Labour again) - and in Derby, which was under Tory-Lib Dem control until recently.... Did you raise that one and imply that the Tories had "instructed authority to ignore child gang rape"?

 

I'm glad to see you withdraw from your initial accusation, even if your withdrawal is partial and grudging. It is not only the word "authority" that is key, but the words "instructed....to ignore child rape". Rotherham council and the police rightly stand condemned for gross negligence and a "don't rock the racial boat" culture. If you have evidence that Labour councillors actively "instructed" someone to ignore what was going on in the knowledge that it was "child gang rape", then you should quote your source. If not, you should withdraw your accusation. What they are all clearly guilty of is quite bad enough without indulging in party political mud-slinging that could easily amount to defamation if unfounded.

 

Some other points:

- The Denis you quote seems to be MacShane, not Skinner (though "Sinner" is entirely appropriate as he's just been in jail for fiddling expenses); MacShane was MP for Rotherham, whereas Skinner is "the Beast of Bolsover". MacShane's comments support the idea that race relations were put ahead of child safety, which is shameful - and sickening, as you rightly say.

- The Police Chief was not only a "high-ranking Labour Party member", as you say, he was head of Children's Services for 5 years while this was going on! So, even if none of this happened since he became Police Chief (which was only in 2012), he should resign as he's not clearly not fit for public office.

- I appreciate that by having sex with (very) under-age girls these blokes were committing rape under the law, even if it was consensual. Anyone who knew that was happening should have reported it, but there's a difference of scale between knowing that consensual under-age sex is going on and "instructing [authority] to ignore child gang rape".

- I'm glad to see you highlighting several instances in which the police failed to do their job to a scandalous extent. Even if elected or appointed officials allow such outrages to happen (and they certainly shouldn't), the police should step in. They clearly failed abysmally for years on end.

 

I'm not defending what went on in the slightest, just contesting your misinformation. Everyone from the Labour Party (and other parties elsewhere) to Rotherham Council and the police should change their cultures and processes to prevent this happening again. Any individuals whose guilt extends to criminality should be prosecuted, alongside those who perpetrated these crimes. But your decision to make exaggerated (if not fabricated) accusations so as to use this outrage to indulge in party political smears is itself pretty sickening. Nowhere as sickening as the "blind eye" / "prioritise race relations" culture of Labour Rotherham, though, not to mention the blokes who actually committed these upsetting crimes.