Rotherham child abuse scandal: 1,400 children exploited, report finds

[ambidex]

I am sorry to say, authorities have behaved like bunch of cowards. There no reason what so ever behind this but they have been 'out bullied'. I take no such excuse that they were being politically correct or feared allegation of racism etc.

Sorry, you have been bullied by these gangs, fairly supported by the crowds they can arrange faster than you think.

The whole Sharia Zones, Muslim rights, there protest against WOT is a smoke screen of raping your/our daughters. First they create instability, then they Ox around fearless on streets.

I always thought you (administration, law and enforcement and politics) people believe in method, even your madness have a method but I see nothing that sought of happening here.

I have no time to dig this issue out neither desire to prove it correct but the word of mouth I heard from my Indian friends in Sydney couple of years back was, the Police taught a good lesson to same kind of breed who was involved in such kind of crime against their girls. The message was well received by the community in question.

[Officer of Engineers]

I'm sorry but what does identifying these men as Pakistanis or Muslims accomplished? Does it add one single iota more evidence? Does it identify a Godfather Iman the Police can go after? Does it identify a Mosque that the police can bug to gather evidence?

If these men were controlled by a Mosque in Islambad, then yeah, identifying them as Pakistani Muslims answering to a Godfather in Pakistan makes sense. As such, this was a Pakistani Mafia. Just like any other Mafia.

[Mihais]

:

As such, this was a Pakistani Mafia. Just like any other Mafia.

Or a conquering tribe.

[commander]

I'm sorry but what does identifying these men as Pakistanis or Muslims accomplished? Does it add one single iota more evidence? Does it identify a Godfather Iman the Police can go after? Does it identify a Mosque that the police can bug to gather evidence?

If these men were controlled by a Mosque in Islambad, then yeah, identifying them as Pakistani Muslims answering to a Godfather in Pakistan makes sense. As such, this was a Pakistani Mafia. Just like any other Mafia.

But naming and shaming a community will help the future victims to be alert around these peadophiles and also any other community that indulges in these kind of activities, the fear that their entire family and their extended family will be shamed and be responsible for his actions. The mothers of these boys should be so ashamed to have birther these worms. These worms must be deported with their entire family to the same country they came from or take away their citizenship making them countryless nomads and send them back. Without naming and shaming few communities like these pakistani worms will continue to exist everywhere in the world.

[Officer of Engineers]

If they're like any Mafia families, not a chance. These moms are probably driving around in luxury.

[Double Edge]

But naming and shaming a community will help the future victims to be alert around these peadophiles and also any other community that indulges in these kind of activities, the fear that their entire family and their extended family will be shamed and be responsible for his actions.

Isn't this like blaming the victim ?

Going on about PC is blaming the good guys.

The bad guys are winning. Nobody can touch them.

The state is under attack and now the community. See how back to front things are.

[1980s]

In Torrent of Rapes in Britain, an Uncomfortable Focus on Race and Ethnicity
By KATRIN BENNHOLD
NOV. 1, 2014

ROCHDALE, England — Shabir Ahmed, a delivery driver for two takeout places, did not have to go looking for young girls. Runaways and rebellious teenagers would show up at the restaurants, often hungry and cold. He slipped them free drinks and chicken tikka masala. “Call me Daddy,” he would say.

But soon, Mr. Ahmed, a father of four, would demand payback. In a room above one of the restaurants, according to testimony and evidence in later legal proceedings against him, he would play a pornographic DVD and pass around shots of vodka. Then, on a floor mattress with crumpled blue sheets and kitchen smells wafting from below, he raped them, and later forced them into sex with co-workers and friends, too.

The girls were too scared of him to talk. And when they did, no one believed them. Once, a 15-year-old got so drunk and upset that she smashed a glass counter. Mr. Ahmed and his colleagues did not hesitate to call the police. After she was released, she was coerced into sex four or five times a week, sometimes with half a dozen men at a time, in apartments and taxis around Rochdale, a town in northwest England near Manchester.

The police and other agencies were alerted more than 100 times over six years to the possibility that something very wrong was happening before Mr. Ahmed, now 61, was arrested and charged as the leader of a sexual exploitation ring that involved eight men of Pakistani descent and one Afghan. In May 2012, he was given a 19-year prison sentence for raping and abetting rape in a case involving at least 47 girls, all of them white.

Mr. Ahmed showed no remorse. He called the judge a “racist bastard,” the girls “prostitutes” and blamed white Britons for “training” their daughters in drinking and sexual activity at a young age.

The recent revelations that at least 1,400 teenage and preteenage girls had been sexually exploited over 16 years by so-called grooming gangs in another northern English city, Rotherham, stunned the nation because of the sheer scale of the abuse. And it put an uncomfortable spotlight on issues of race, religion and ethnicity in an increasingly multicultural nation: Nearly all of the rape suspects are Pakistani men, and nearly all of the victims are white.

But the problem and the slow law-enforcement response are not limited to Rotherham, where evidence files are said to have gone missing and no charges have been filed since the release two months ago of an independent report documenting the widespread abuse. (Only one case in Rotherham, involving three teenage girls, had been prosecuted.) In nearby Sheffield, a local official has accused the police of ignoring data she passed along over the past decade, including addresses where she said abuse was taking place and names of those suspected of abuse.

The police and prosecutors say they are now pursuing cases more aggressively across the country, including in Manchester, where about 180 suspects are under investigation. Simon Bailey of the Association of Chief Police Officers last month spoke of “many more Rotherhams to come.”

Mr. Ahmed is a rare example in such a case of someone who has been charged, tried and convicted of rape. His case sheds light on how grooming gangs work and how they have contributed to a broader pattern of sexual abuse of children involving British celebrities, politicians, private schoolteachers and clergymen.

Mr. Ahmed’s case and a handful of others prosecuted since 2010, including in Rochdale and in Keighley in the north and in Oxford in the south, followed the same template: Mostly Asian men were found to have groomed mostly white British girls between the ages of 12 and 18, getting them to use alcohol or drugs and then forcing them to have sex, either for personal gratification or for trafficking and prostitution.

In a country already fiercely debating issues of immigration and national identity, the cases have prompted anti-Muslim demonstrations by far-right groups and some soul-searching generally. Why do British-Pakistani men figure so prominently? Were they deliberately targeting white girls and staying away from their own community? Did police and local officials turn a blind eye for fear of being accused of racism, losing votes among immigrant groups or stoking the kinds of tensions that have unleashed periodic rioting in other British towns?

Nazir Afzal, a Pakistani-Briton who is the chief crown prosecutor in charge of sexual crime, said the recent cases were not primarily about race. “It’s not the ethnicity or religion of the abusers that defines them; it’s their attitude toward women,” Mr. Afzal said in a recent interview. “These men will abuse the girls and women who are the most accessible to them, regardless of their religion or the color of their skin.”

Mr. Ahmed, he pointed out, was separately convicted of 30 counts of child rape of a Pakistani girl, a case that resulted in a 22-year prison sentence later in 2012 but that received much less media attention. Mr. Ahmed plans to appeal at the European Court of Justice, his lawyer, Naila Akhter, said.

Over the last two years alone, Mr. Afzal’s office has dealt with sex offenders from 25 countries and victims from 64. Nearly nine of every 10 convicted sexual abusers in Britain are white men, he said, and by far the most common pattern of child sexual abuse takes place not just within the same community but within the same home.

In online grooming, the fastest-growing form of abuse, with victims first contacted online, there appears to be no clear racial pattern, either.

But Mr. Afzal, who was the prosecutor in the Rochdale case after overturning a decision by his predecessor not to take the case to court, said that in the type of child sexual exploitation known as localized or on-street grooming, men of Pakistani heritage feature prominently.

White men are still the largest group at 49 percent of known offenders in this category, according to a 2012 study by the Office of the Children’s Commissioner, which identified 2,409 victims over a 14-month period across England even before the Rotherham report was published. But at 33 percent, “Asian men” — most commonly referring to Pakistanis, Indians, Bangladeshis and Afghans — were disproportionately represented, given that they represent just over 7 percent of the population.

One reason, officials, scholars and community workers suggest, is practical rather than cultural: Nighttime industries like taxi-driving and takeout restaurants have been at the heart of many grooming networks, offering points of contact with vulnerable girls far away from parental supervision.

Pakistanis work in disproportionate numbers in both. In the Rochdale case, eight of the nine perpetrators drove taxis or worked at two takeout restaurants. (One taxi company in Rochdale said it now provides white drivers on request.)

“The victims are often desperate for warmth, transport, food and sometimes drugs and alcohol,” said Ray McMorrow, a health specialist for the National Working Group, a charitable network based in Derby. “They gravitate toward these men who then take advantage of them.”

“There are anecdotes of the girls being racially stereotyped as white sluts or white trash, but it’s hard to say how much of that is racism and sectarianism and how much is classic sexual offender behavior belittling the victims,” he said.

Others suspect a cultural misogyny rooted in a very patriarchal Muslim society in which men exert high levels of control over women. “This could give rise to a culture in which it is more acceptable to treat women and girls with contempt,” said Sue Berelowitz, Britain’s deputy children’s commissioner.

Mr. Afzal recalls listening to Mr. Shabir in Rochdale during the trial. “He would ask: ‘What am I doing here? I have done nothing wrong,’ ” Mr. Afzal said. “He said he was doing what everyone else was doing.”

With the police looking the other way and more and more men getting involved in the abuse, there was a culture of permissibility, Mr. Afzal said.

A powerful culture of shame and honor surrounding premarital sex, including rape, among some Asian Muslims, may also have skewed the victim statistics. Honor and shame certainly proved an effective tool when Mr. Shabir blackmailed his Asian victim into silence during a decade of regular abuse. “You are damaged goods,” he would tell her, threatening to force her into marriage if she spoke up, Mr. Afzal recalled. Asian victims of sexual abuse are three times less likely to come forward than white victims, he said, citing Home Office data.

“They fear not just their rapists,” said Shaista Gohir, chairwoman of the Muslim Women’s Network U.K. “They fear their own community and their own family: They fear honor crime, forced marriage and being shunned and ostracized for bringing shame to their family.”

Taking the cultural dimension of grooming seriously without overstating it is difficult, said Ms. Berelowitz, the deputy children’s commissioner.

“We shouldn’t ignore patterns that could alert us to victims and perpetrators that might otherwise be hidden and that might be linked to faith and ethnicity,” Ms. Berelowitz said. “But if we think the stereotype of the Asian abuser and the white victim is all that’s going on, it’s very dangerous.”

[Parihaka]

The final nail in the coffin as far as I'm concerned was the recent elections, where the good people of Rotheram overwhelmingly voted in the same party machine and in many cases the same people responsible for covering up the abuse in the first place.
As Daniel Hannan put it, can you blame politicians when they treat their constituencies with contempt.

A few things about this case. Yes it was a predominantly Muslim gang that groomed these girls, but in most girls cases they were then hired out as prostitutes and most of those clients were English.
It's very likely, given the offending rates throughout the police force that some of those clients were police.
Where were the parents. I'm aware of one father trying to do something and getting arrested, does this then absolve the parents of the other 13999 girls.

"Muslim gangs" seems like nothing but a convenient excuse to me, so a thoroughly rotten community who was happy for these crimes to be suppressed and happy to re-elect that group most involved in the suppression can point the blame elsewhere, away from their own true corruption.

[tankie]

[QUOTE=Parihaka;981320]The final nail in the coffin as far as I'm concerned was the recent elections, where the good people of Rotheram overwhelmingly voted in the same party machine and in many cases the same people responsible for covering up the abuse in the first place.
!
[quote]



Pari, Not when you realise only 15% of the populace turned up and voted. They only got 50% of that vote so actually they have been voted in by just 7.5% of the local population. This is how labour win seats VOTER APPATHY needs to stop or it will happen all over the country with both labour and the conservatives!!!!


By Becky Johnson, North of England Correspondent

A victim of child abuse in Rotherham has told Sky News she believes Police and Crime Commissioners should be scrapped.

The woman, who was groomed as a teenager, has spoken out as people in South Yorkshire prepare to elect a replacement for Shaun Wright.

He reluctantly stood down from the role after a report revealed 1,400 children were abused in Rotherham over a 16-year period.

Mr Wright had been in charge of children's services in the town between 2005 and 2010 when he was a Labour councillor.

Speaking anonymously, the victim, who wants only to be known as Jessica, revealed she would not be voting for any of the four candidates on 30 October.


"They're on a very high salary which could be used for more useful things, especially in Rotherham with what's happened."

UKIP sees the election as an opportunity to get its first elected Police and Crime Commissioner.

The party has used its campaign to attack Labour, which runs the local council.

But one poster with the slogan "1,400 reasons why you should not trust Labour" has led to accusations of exploiting victims' suffering for political gain.


UKIP's candidate, Jack Clarkson, denies that's the case.

"That poster is a hard-hitting poster and I make no apologies for that," he said.

"It is the truth of what's happened in Rotherham."

The Labour candidate, Alan Billings, says it's unfair of UKIP but accepts there are questions for some in the Labour-led council.

He said: "I understand the anger around the council and those who were involved at that time have to take the consequences for their action or inaction, but this began as a crime and that was a police matter."


All the candidates accept public trust in the authorities will need to be won back.

Ian Walker, who is standing for the Conservatives, told Sky News: "The Home Affairs Select Committee report that came out only a couple of weeks ago identified that there's a public perception of an organised cover up.

"We absolutely need someone who is untainted by association with councils in the past, who is not a recycled politician, to be able to get to the bottom of this."

The English Democrats candidate David Allen added: "Political correctness, if you want to call it that, has prevented people from doing their jobs because they're frightened of being called racist."

But out in the streets in Rotherham most people have no intention of voting.


Turnout is expected to be low - perhaps even lower than in 2012 when just 15% of people voted.

Anger with the authorities has left many questioning whether promises of change will be kept.

[troung]

"At least" 1.2k girls in this town of 250k without parents?

[Monash]

[QUOTE=tankie;981353]

Pari, Not when you realise only 15% of the populace turned up and voted. They only got 50% of that vote so actually they have been voted in by just 7.5% of the local population. This is how labour win seats VOTER APPATHY needs to stop or it will happen all over the country with both labour and the conservatives!!!!

So move to compulsory voting like we have. For a start the politicians hate it - so it must be good. Secondly there is that old dictum that says something along the lines of 'there might not be anyone you want to vote for, but there is always someone or something you want to vote against!'

Voting is a bit like diet and exercise, unless people are forced to do it by someone else all to many people just give up - no matter what the long term benefits. Over here we force people to vote and donkey votes notwithstanding (those people forfeit the right to complain about their elected officials) by doing so we force our politicians to pay attention to the needs of all their voters. No banking on a few party 'sheep' to vote you into office - you have to work for every vote, even if you secretly despise half the voting population of your electorate you have to take their needs, desires and want's into consideration when formulating policy. I feel so sad for my elected officials sometimes -not. :)

[Double Edge]

So move to compulsory voting like we have. For a start the politicians hate it - so it must be good. Secondly there is that old dictum that says something along the lines of 'there might not be anyone you want to vote for, but there is always someone or something you want to vote against!'

Was about to mention that and i have mixed thoughts.

Exercise your franchise or pay a fine.

What brought the aussies to make voting compulsory ? had to be chronic voter apathy over a period of time. How long a period needs to elapse before the conclusion is reached that voting is to be made compulsory and needs to remain so to this day.

australia is an exception in this regard. Unless the Kiwis also have it.

[tankie]

"At least" 1.2k girls in this town of 250k without parents?

Post 7 on page 1 troung .

[troung]

Two men allegedly show up to stop the alleged abuse of their daughters and end up in jail themselves. Even assuming there isn't more to that story, which there must be, that still leaves 1398 sets of parents in a town of 250k.

[Parihaka]

Was about to mention that and i have mixed thoughts.

Exercise your franchise or pay a fine.

What brought the aussies to make voting compulsory ? had to be chronic voter apathy over a period of time. How long a period needs to elapse before the conclusion is reached that voting is to be made compulsory and needs to remain so to this day.

australia is an exception in this regard. Unless the Kiwis also have it.

Nope, though I do agree with it. With freedom comes responsibility. The very notion of 'I didn't vote because they are all the same' is utter bullshit. There are always differences, and at the least you vote for the lesser of evils. The contempt with which non voters treat one of the few rights they have, fought for over 500 years, appals me. Truly the non voters get the representation they deserve.