Telling the truth about grooming gangs isn’t racist

‘Asian men who target white teenagers do so on the basis of their vulnerability’

In what circumstances should you apologise for telling the truth? Back in August, Sarah Champion, the Labour MP for Rotherham, wrote an article for The Sun that began: “Britain has a problem with British Pakistani men raping and exploiting white girls. There. I said it. Does that make me a racist? Or am I just prepared to call out this horrifying problem for what it is?”

Champions’s willingness to “call out this horrifying problem” lasted all of five days before she issued an apology for her “extremely poor choice of words”. She went further and resigned as shadow secretary of state for women and equalities, saying it “would distract from the crucial issues around child protection which I have campaigned on my entire political career”.

That was a mistake, wasn’t it, Sarah? The white girls who had been raped and pimped by British Pakistani men – campaigners estimate there may be as many as 40,000 victims – really need a fearless, high-profile advocate. Champion betrayed both her name and those girls when she succumbed to the overwhelming pressure to apologise for speaking the truth about what I believe to be the biggest scandal in modern British history.

You can see that pressure at work every time the topic of “grooming gangs” comes up on a discussion programme. I actually screamed abuse at the TV during one Question Time when each member of the panel, regardless of sex or political affiliation, trotted out the approved, politicallycorrect formula. “The vast majority of paedophiles are white men.” Nothing to see here, let’s move on from this ghastly topic which fuels racism and vilifies “our communities”.

Except that the British Pakistani men who have raped and pimped thousands upon thousands of white girls are not paedophiles. As a hugely important new report from the Quilliam think tank spells out, the “Asian men” who target white teenagers and young adults do so “on the basis of their vulnerability, rather than as a result of a preferential sexual interest in children”. Citing the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Command, Quilliam says there are two types of CSE offenders.

Type two target youngsters as the result of a specific sexual interest in children and tend to operate alone. Type one go after kids because they are easy meat; easier to indoctrinate, coerce and groom. Members of type one, the report states, are more likely to operate via some association whether that be a looser acquaintance or a more formal network of a criminal or business nature. In many of the case studies looked at, members of gangs were often related by “blood or community” and when Quilliam analysed 58 grooming gangs they found that 84per cent of their members were Asian and 70per cent of those were of Pakistani heritage.

Islamophobia! Up goes the cry to quickly shut down debate. Sorry, but that won’t wash on this occasion. The Quilliam report is written by Haris Rafi and Muna Zainab, both of Pakistani heritage, so it’s pretty hard to accuse them of demonising Muslims.

What they found was, indeed, racist. Perpetrators viewed their young victims as “white trash available for sex”. The whiteness of the girls repeatedly came up in the trials of grooming gangs, their mini skirts, their loathsome availability. Quilliam traces this contempt to cultural norms still prevalent in some communities in South Asia where women are viewed as commodities instead of human beings. British Pakistani men who have failed to integrate have retained “a dysfunctional view of women, relationships and sex”. Only last year a bill to ban child marriage in Pakistan was withdrawn after it was described as “blasphemous”. Such attitudes are being taught right here in the UK. The report cites a case in 2013 when Adil Rashid raped a 13-year-old girl but was spared jail because he claimed his Islamic education had left him “ignorant of British law”. White women, he was told at school, “are no more worthy than a lollipop that has been dropped on the ground”.

Cultural sensitivity and “an attitude of extreme political correctness of those in positions of authority” led to abhorrent views being brushed under the carpet for years until the scandal was no longer containable. The Quilliam report blames what it calls the “Regressive Left”, which not only denies that a problem exists but vilifies those who challenge its blinkered vision.

People like me who have told the truth about this subject for years get called a lot of bad names. That’s of no importance. Not compared to the suffering both of young white girls and of Pakistani and Bangladeshi heritage women, 57.2 per cent of whom are economically inactive and who often don’t get a chance to learn English because it suits men to keep them ignorant of a tolerant, equal society.

“In an attempt to protect the sentiments of the British Pakistani community, we have failed the vulnerable young girls who have suffered years of irreversible damage,” concludes the devastating Quilliam report. It calls for honest debate and greater support to increase the integration of British Pakistanis into modern society.

It can’t come soon enough. To that list, I would add closing down immediately any Islamic school found to be teaching views which are anathema to British people.

Dame Louise Casey, one of the few figures in public life with the guts to speak out, has talked about “securing women’s emancipation in communities where they are being held back by regressive cultural practices”. Political correctness has become the enemy of the most vulnerable women and girls in our country.

Next time some bien pensant appears on TV saying there is no problem with British Pakistani men raping white girls, just look at them and think, “You are defending misogynists who see nothing wrong with marrying a nine-year-old child if she is showing signs of puberty, and who believe that white women are no better than a lollipop in the gutter.”

Never apologise for telling the truth. Never.