Tim Dieppe comments on a new documentary investigating the existence of Islamic grooming gangs.
A new 45-minute documentary about grooming gangs was released by GB News last weekend. The investigative journalist, Charlie Peters, interviewed whistle-blowers and victims.
The documentary provides a helpful narrative of how the story developed and what we know about grooming gangs. What is most disturbing, though, is that the abuse continues to this day on a huge scale. There is no evidence that lessons have been learned. Quite the contrary, all the evidence is that there has been no learning and no attempt to properly deal with these gangs.
Police whistle-blower
Maggie Oliver worked as a police officer with Greater Manchester Police. She was asked to investigate grooming gangs in Rochdale, and she prepared an extensive report with details of names of over 100 offenders and dozens of victims. She then went on compassionate leave to look after her sick husband. When she returned she found that the investigation had been closed. They claimed that there was not enough evidence to prosecute, but she knew very well that that was not the case. Very senior officers decided to close the investigation, leaving vulnerable girls to suffer. Oliver became the only police officer to resign over the scandal and blew the whistle on police inaction.
‘This is not a historical problem’
Today, Oliver runs The Maggie Oliver Foundation which seeks to help victims of grooming gangs. Towards the end of the documentary she says:
“This is going on today. We’ve been approached by 60 victims in the last three days who are currently being failed by the police.
“It is not a historical problem. Very little has changed. We have seen trials. But all too often these children are still being judged, and fobbed off and that is not good enough.”
GB News reports that the charity has supported over 1,000 survivors of sexual abuse and exploitation since 2000. Some 400 survivors contacted the Foundation in 2022 alone. The average age for abuse to start is just 12 years old. Perpetrators are regularly contacting, threatening and exploiting their victims through Snapchat and other apps that enable messages to disappear.
Police inaction continues
Police officers are continuing to avoid helping grooming gang victims, describing them as making ‘lifestyle choices’. One victim was abused from the age of 13. She is now 28, but her abuse has continued into adulthood, with a recent gang rape and attempted strangulation. Perpetrators have sent her photographs of her family members and their homes threatening to harm them if she does not comply. In spite of extensive abuse over many years, police have taken no action to protect her, even calling her a ‘prostitute’ although she has never received any money for sex.
Reports not good enough
There have been a series of reports into this. Most notably the Jay report into child sexual abuse in Rotherham in 2014 which forced most of the Council to resign. This was followed by the Casey Report, also focused on Rotherham, which stated that that council was in denial and that political correctness was to blame.
In 2018, then Home Secretary Sajid Javid commissioned a report into the characteristics of grooming gangs. As Charlie Peters says, this “report was a whitewash.” The government first tried to hide it, and then under pressure in 2020 were forced to release a report which basically just said the data is inadequate. I wrote about it at the time, showing just how inadequate, and how even the headline reporting was wrong. It was a case of political correctness continuing to obstruct proper investigation of the problem.
Then last year, the long-awaited inquiry into Child Sexual Exploitation in Telford was published. This showed the scale of the problem in Telford – over 1,000 victims. It also exposed the inaction of the police. Once again, the ugly hand of political correctness was evident in the studious avoiding of mentioning anything to do with Islam.
So, there have been reports into grooming gangs in Rotherham and Telford, and a completely useless national report into the characteristics of these gangs. But there are dozens of other towns where grooming gangs have flourished, and the abuse continues to this day. But there are not dozens of reports. Furthermore, not a single police officer has been disciplined for inaction or failure to prosecute.
Girls still suffering
Meanwhile, those that have been convicted of grooming gang offences are usually out of prison in a couple of years, and back on the streets where victims see them and continue to be tormented. Generations of girls have been failed. Youth worker, and whistle blower, Jayne Senior talks of how many girls are still suffering from the trauma of no-one believing them. They were commonly told that they were lying because authorities did not want to believe the full horror of what was actually going on in their own locality.
The stories are heart-breaking. Many girls have been raped over 1,000 times by more men than they can count. Even when raped under the age of 16, police have still failed to prosecute or protect them. In one case, the police seized the foetus of a thirteen-year-old girl and were able to prove fatherhood with DNA tests, but still did not prosecute the rapist.
Maggie Oliver wants to see a full national investigation by the National Crime Agency into all places where there are credible allegations of grooming gangs. She also wants the police to be held to account for failing to record ethnicities of perpetrators and failing to prosecute criminals. There also needs to be much stronger prison sentences for perpetrators. No victim should see their abuser walk out of prison after only a few years.
Sacrificing girls to political correctness
I first wrote about this in 2018 when I said that we are sacrificing girls to political correctness. In that article, I explained what no journalist is prepared to say for fear of being politically incorrect. The fact is that the perpetrators are very largely Pakistani Muslim men. But it is the Islamic connection specifically that no-one will talk about. Islamic teaching about sex slaves is used by the perpetrators to justify their actions. Victims are frequently told that they are “white slags” and there are multiple reports of them being given Asian names, and even told to read the Qur’an, or agree to an Islamic marriage.
Sadly, we continue to sacrifice girls to political correctness today. A generation of girls has been failed. In fact, multiple generations, since this has been going on for over 40 years and continues to this day. Fear of being accused of racism or Islamophobia usually overrides the desire to protect young girls. No-one in authority is properly held to account. There is not enough of an outcry to force any serious action, so the abuse continues.
We are talking about many thousands of victims, many of whom have been raped hundreds of times. It is quite easy to calculate that well over a million rapes have been committed by these gangs. How many more girls, and how many more rapes will it take to force national action that is not hampered by political correctness?
