Storm as Lily claims that Rochdale victims ‘would have been raped anyway’
LILY ALLEN has been forced to apologise after claiming the victims of the Rochdale grooming gangs would have been raped regardless of whether their attackers had been in the UK.
In 2012 nine Asian men were convicted of grooming and abusing young white girls between the ages of 13 and 15 from vulnerable backgrounds.
Discussing race on social media, the 32-year- old singer tweeted sarcastically: ‘ We should stop immigration because some brown men raped some white girls in Rochdale.’
When asked by someone what would have happened to the girls who were systematically abused by men in grooming rings had the offenders not been able to move to the UK, she replied that they would have been ‘raped or abused’ by someone else. She tweeted: ‘Actually, there’s a strong possibility they would have been raped or abused by somebody else at some point. That’s kind of the issue.’
Last month a study by the Quilliam think-tank revealed that four out of five men convicted of grooming girls for sex are Asian. Researchers examined 58 sex gang cases from the past 12 years.
Of the 264 offenders, 84 per cent were Asian, mostly Pakistani, 8 per cent were black and 7 per cent were white.
Miss Allen was attacked by users for her ‘vile’, ‘sick’ and ‘repugnant’ comments about the harrowing cases of child abuse, before writing: ‘For the life of me I cannot think what about this countries [sic] attitude towards women would attract people of a predatory nature to want to settle here.’
The mother of two later issued an apology to anyone she ‘negatively impacted’. She wrote: ‘If there are any victims of abuse and particularly any girls or women from Rochdale who saw my tweet and were negatively impacted, I apologize, of course. Being able to accept responsibility and apologize is a strength, not weakness.’
She later described what she called ‘type two rapists’ which she claimed were made of 100 per cent British white men who ‘have sex with their stepdaughters twice a week for years at a time’, adding: ‘The neighbors, uncles, gardeners, priests, fast food restaurant managers that do it over and over again.’
Miss Allen has caused controversy before, accusing the media last year of downplaying the death toll in the Grenfell Tower fire disaster which she claimed was close to 150. Police have since said that 71 died.
She also once said she would ‘100 per cent’ take in a child refugee. But last month it emerged she had been renting out her £1million Notting Hill flat.