Tim Dieppe comments on the continued questioning of the government over grooming gangs.
Earlier this week, Lord Pearson continued his questioning of the government over the recent report on police and local authorities’ failures to tackle grooming gangs. The answer revealed that the government has not even estimated the number of victims over the years.
Written Question
Lord Pearson asked the government a written question about the numbers of victims of grooming gangs:
“To ask Her Majesty’s Government what estimate they have made of the number of women and girls raped by Muslim men involved in grooming gangs since 1997.”
Baroness Williams replied for the government this week:
“The Government has estimated that there were approximately 6,850 victims of organised child sexual exploitation in the UK in 2015. This estimate includes all forms of child sexual exploitation and does not distinguish between rape and other sexual offences. It includes organised child sexual exploitation committed by groups and gangs within a range of contexts.
“In early 2020 the Government will publish a national strategy, the first of its kind, to tackle all forms of child sexual abuse.
“Our new strategy will set out our whole system response to tackling child sexual abuse and how we will work across government, law enforcement, safeguarding partners and industry to root out offending, protect victims and help victims and survivors rebuild their lives. Their will be no no-go areas.”
No official estimate
What this reply makes clear is that the government has no idea how many victims of grooming gangs there have been over the years. The government has made an estimate of the number of victims of child sexual exploitation in general for just one year. In 2015 it estimates approximately 7,000 victims. The government has therefore made no attempt to estimate or calculate how many girls have been victims of grooming gangs over the 40 years that these gangs have been operating.
But the numbers are huge
The government answer makes no reference to the more than 18,700 suspected victims of child sexual exploitation that were identified by local authorities in 2018-19. In Rotherham alone the number of victims is over 1,500.
It is clear from these simple stats that the number of victims of grooming gangs over the last 40 years stretches well into the tens of thousands, and possibly hundreds of thousands. With no official estimates from the government it appears that the government is not taking this appalling issue seriously.
The government continues to refuse to publish a review it commissioned into the characteristics of grooming gangs. We await the publication of a national strategy for all kinds of child sexual abuse. I hope it makes specific reference to grooming gangs and what they are doing to tackle them. I wrote last week in more detail about how political correctness is perpetuating the problem and causing more girls to be horrifically abused. We need the government to be open and honest about this and to agree to take it seriously.
Hate Crimes?
Rochdale grooming gang victim Ella Hill is calling on the government to change police guidance so that racial and religious grooming crimes can be recorded as hate crimes. She explains that the rapists frequently used racist terms like “white whores” or “white slags”, and would also refer to the girls as ‘kafir’ or ‘non-Muslim’ indicating that the abuse was racial and religious against the girls for being both white and non-Muslim. She also says that the Qur’an was used to justify the abuse partly on the basis that the victims are unbelievers. (I have explained what texts are used to justify this abuse before.) Nevertheless, there is no category for anti-western or non-Muslim offences in hate crime guidance. Consequently, these crimes are not recorded as hate crimes.
A hate crime is defined as:
“Any criminal offence which is perceived by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by hostility or prejudice, based on a person’s disability or perceived disability; race or perceived race; or religion or perceived religion; or sexual orientation or perceived sexual orientation or transgender identity or perceived transgender identity.”
I disagree with the concept of hate crime because it is based entirely on perception. We now have the absurd situation where some people’s perception is worth more than others. White girls’ perception of crimes against them being hate crimes somehow doesn’t count even though the definition says anyone’s perception counts – victim or not. This serves to show just how ridiculous the whole hate crime idea is. It appears that crimes are not counted as hate crimes unless they fit politically correct narratives.
A national inquiry
Author, broadcaster, and formed radical Muslim, Maajid Nawaz has called for a national inquiry into grooming gangs. This is exactly what should be done. The Macpherson report helped to change the culture and raise awareness of issues that had been hidden below the surface. A similar level of inquiry should be conducted into the industrial scale grooming gang phenomenon.
Grooming gangs have been operating for 40 years in dozens of cities up and down the country, with multiple thousands of victims. An independently run national inquiry is urgently needed to fully investigate what has happened and what the causes and motivations were. This would also serve to hold the police and council employees to account. How many more victims do we need before the government decides that this is something it should take seriously?
