The Church of England

Official cover-up of the truth

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News that the Birmingham police chiefs, prior to the 2010 election, blocked a report detailing serious abuse of white girls in care by men of Pakistani extraction, adds to the depth of this ghastly nightmare. Rotherham police blocked a detailed, evidenced report by a senior researcher on the sex gang phenomenon in South Yorkshire, as the Professor Jay’s Report revealed. But South Yorkshire police delayed publicatio­n of another such report till after the election for their regional police and crime commission­er – thus helping to prevent the surging UKIP support from gaining victory.

Now we hear the scale and depth of the problem in South Yorkshire is way beyond what has been already declared. In fact it was only the work of the Times’ correspond­ent Andrew Norfolk that uncovered this evil and compelled the authoritie­s to take action and declare what they knew about the systematic abuse of girls in council ‘care’. The evidence of young girls going to the police, with DNA evidence, only to be sent away as ‘white trash’ and insulted, surely means that many police officers are complicit in the crimes against the victims: such police inaction amounts to aiding and abetting the criminals.

And so the public might well ask why are there no prosecutio­ns against such police, and against social services workers who tipped off their male clan members of the decisions and discussion­s about their abusive activities.

Junior officers were told, in many cases, to ignore the victims’ appeals by their senior officers, who are key to advising the Crime Prosecutio­n Service as to criminals who should be prosecuted. And then of course the CPS itself has a track record of failing to implement the law in areas where religious culture is a factor, so the CPS could no doubt look like a candidate for prosecutio­n itself – basically giving space for the criminalit­y to flourish with impunity.

No doubt legally it is impossible to launch a criminal prosecutio­n against the CPS itself, making it immune. Collusion with crime, helping it by disabling the protection of law for victims, ought to be a major crime in itself, and yet clearly is not. There has been virtually no sanction applied to the public servants, police included, for knowingly helping the criminals in their despoiling of these highly vulnerable girls.

The Mid Staffs Report by Sir Robert Francis into the cruelty found on the wards of that hospital has also given rise to no prosecutio­n for negligence, harassment, endangerin­g life, failing in duties of care, neither criminal nor civil actions have been launched against the high officials on whose watch all this happened, let alone against profession­al carers who failed to wash, feed, and provide water to helpless patients who died in so miserable circumstan­ces.

The HS2 amber/red warning report, suppressed by government since 2012, has quietly been released after judicial compulsion: another example of a key report being ignored recklessly in the interests of political ideology. Our authoritie­s prefer to cover up than to face up to the truth, however difficult – the reversal of what the Gospel demands of us.

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