Betrayal of girls is one of our biggest scandals
Recently, I was asked if I would take part in a project to try to count the number of girls who have been victims of Pakistani grooming gangs. You know what, let’s stop using the word “grooming”. At least we can honour the young women who have been through that grotesque ordeal by using the correct term. Rape gangs is what they were, and still are.
The ex-policeman who contacted me said that preliminary findings suggest we could be looking at a figure as high as 40,000. “Don’t be ridiculous,” said Himself. “That’s the size of a small town. If that many girls had been the victims of mass rape, it would be…”
“The biggest scandal in post-war British history?”
Well, that’s what I believe it will eventually turn out to be.
The Betrayed Girls on BBC One, on Monday night, showed us how child sexual abuse on an unimaginable scale was allowed to continue unchallenged for years. Following the devastating drama Three Girls, the programme talked to women whose youthful testimony was ignored or traduced by police and social services.
Sara Rowbotham, a doughty heroine who managed the Rochdale Crisis Intervention Team, fought furiously to get police protection for her frightened teenage clients. She was ignored. So was Ann Cryer, then Labour MP for Keighley. When Cryer approached Muslim leaders with a list of perpetrators, they admitted they knew the men but “it’s got nothing to do with us”. Some of her Labour colleagues found it more comfortable to whisper that Cryer was a racist than address the despicable attitudes towards white females in the Labour-voting Pakistani community. “I was rocking the multicultural boat,” said Cryer.
Detective Constable Maggie Oliver, formerly of Greater Manchester Police, explained that Operation Augusta gathered evidence to bring one Pakistani gang to trial. Maggie was aghast when she discovered that Augusta had “died a death”. After the terrorist attacks of July 7, did the forces of law and order really conclude that turning a blind eye to the rape of 13-yearold girls was a price worth paying for “community cohesion”? If so, it’s as big a cover-up as Hillsborough and we need a public inquiry.
I’m sorry to say that the shocking denial still goes on. When the Government made a pact last week with the DUP, feminists were quick to call on “Neanderthal” Ulster protestants to accept UK standards on reproductive rights. Where is the finger wagging at “Neanderthal” Muslims who fail to accept UK standards of sexual equality?
Meanwhile, the latest “grooming” cases come to trial in Oxford in September. And the counting of victims goes on.