Sikh girls were groomed by gangs for years Community was forced to turn vigilante to halt perpetrators when police ‘failed to act’
SIKH girls in Birmingham and the West Midlands were subjected to decades of abuse by grooming gangs despite pleas for help, a shocking report claims.
And members of the Sikh community turned vigilante when the police and other authorities failed to act on their concerns, the authors of the study allege.
Entitled The Religiously Aggravated Sexual Exploitation of Young Sikh Women Across the UK, the report has echoes of the Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal.
The West Midlands girls are said to have been targeted by “fashionablydressed, adult Pakistani men” before being isolated from their families and mistreated by one or more abusers. The authors say the research is not a “witch-hunt against any individual, community, culture or faith” but an attempt to understand the root causes of the issue, which they feel deserves the same national spotlight as the Rotherham scandal.
The study has been produced by the independent Sikh Mediation and Rehabilitation Team – SMART for short – in conjunction with Birmingham-based Sikh Youth UK.
Deepa Singh, a co-ordinator for Sikh Youth, says: “This is a victory for silent victims within the Sikh community who have been silenced by Government bodies whose cries for help were ignored.
“The truth is evidenced and it will now be for central government and local authorities to address the grow- ing concern of continued abuse of Sikh girls.”
Concerns among the Sikh community about sexual abuse and exploitation go back more than 50 years, with victims continuing to surface, the report says.
It adds: “The Sikh predicament is stated to involve perpetrators of principally Pakistani heritage targeting young female victims for abuse in both Sikh-dominated areas as well as locations with a scattered Sikh presence. Taking advantage of parallels between Sikh and Pakistani cultures, offenders are alleged to have repeatedly exploited known cultural sensitivities to ostracise victims from their family and community.”
The authors accept sexual abuse is a taboo issue in the Sikh community but claim attempts to report the con- targeted cerns to the police have “been met with cynicism and largely ignored”.
Tensions are said to have flared in Birmingham and Leicester as vigilantes took matters into their own hands, with a number of flashpoints over a period of at least 20 years.
In the West Midlands, the report refers to a group called Shere Punjab, founded with the stated aim of protecting schoolchildren and rescuing girls who had fallen victim to child sexual exploitation.
Grooming gangs based in Birmingham and Walsall operated across the West Midlands while those in Dudley targeted Sandwell and the Black Country, according to the report.
The authors describe the modus operandi of the perpetrators, who are said to have mainly targeted victims in areas with schools.
“The pattern of offending would typically involve fashionably dressed adult Pakistani men travelling in flamboyant vehicles to predominantly Sikh-dominated areas and schools,” they say. “One of the younger men would selectively approach girls using flattery, presents and intoxicants to form a relationship.
“Once snared, the victim would be systematically coerced into conflict with her family, strengthening the perpetrators’ hold over her.”
Superintendent Paul Drover from West Midlands Police’s Public Protection Unit, said: “We have invested a significant amount of resources into tackling sexual offences against children in recent years. We continue to raise the awareness of all of our staff to spot the signs and deal with the issues of child sexual exploitation.”