It is despicable to ignore sex abuse because of race

In a world full of shades of grey, the line between right and wrong is often blurred. But the few circumstances where a clear line can be confidently drawn in order for justice to be served must surely include the protection of children against sexual predators. How is it, then, that for decades authorities that are entrusted and funded by taxpayers to care for the most vulnerable in our society have got away with distorting the universal rules of right and wrong?

Two years after eightyear-old Victoria Agoglia lost her mother to brain cancer, she ended up in care homes across Manchester. With her natural father never known to her and a stepfather not fit to look after her, Victoria was the very embodiment of the vulnerable child we expect the state to care for. Yet, a report published last week, looking at up to 100 members of an Asian paedophile gang operating in Manchester 16 years ago, catalogued a series of abysmal failures by almost every wing of the state entrusted with Victoria’s care, leading to her death at 15 of a drug overdose in 2003.

In keeping with the state’s abominable treatment of the child while she was alive, 50-year-old Mohammed Yaqoob, who admitted to injecting Victoria with heroin, was cleared of manslaughter and jailed for only three and a half years. Just two months before, Victoria had disclosed to social workers that an older man had been injecting her with heroin. She also reported rape and sexual assault.

Multiple failings were identified by the report, including a detective constable quoted as being told, in the name of race relations, to “get other ethnicities” as the “offending target group were predominantly Asian males”. This is exactly the attitude unearthed following a five-year investigation by the Independent Office for Police Conduct in Rotherham, where a senior police officer reportedly admitted that the sexual abuse of girls by Pakistani grooming gangs for decades was ignored by his force, for fear of increasing racial tensions.

What right-thinking human being looks at a sexually abused child and its abuser through the prism of race? How have our authorities allowed it to become a norm for “race relations” to be a factor to any extent in deciding whether to expose and prosecute child abuse?

In an age of policing microaggressions and non-criminal hate incidents, we appear to have forgotten the most basic principles of the rule of law and natural justice: equality under the law and protection of the most vulnerable in the society, children.

Ironically, many of us who choose to make this country our home – of whom, presumably, the deluded authorities fancy themselves saviours – are attracted to it precisely because of its commitment to those very principles. Believe me when I say that it horrifies us when the wellbeing of ethnic minorities is used as an excuse for authorities to turn a blind eye to crimes as heinous as child abuse. It does untold damage to “race relations” and, more importantly, grossly violates the laws of nature and the land.