Rotherham child rape gangs: At least 1400 victims

[ViolentPanda]

Public sector workers in 'couldn't give a flying fuck about doing my job, as long I collect my massively inflated pension' shock.

I've had the misfortune of working for a similar organization, in my dark days. The level of contempt for the people it was supposed to be looking after was mind boggling.

Go eat shit, you antipodean dog-fucker.

 

[krink]

I stayed up for hours last night reading that report. It's disgraceful how many people are framing the story as the fault of the "pc" brigade when that idea (fear of being called racist) seems to be a very minor part of the story. The discussion should be about the victims and how they were treated by their abusers but also people who were meant to protect them (the cops, the council, the state, the families and the wider community) so something can be done. But, having read the report, nothing will be done. They've been through the inspections and reports and inquiries time and time again and nothing changed. It's still happening now. If you haven't read the report, then you shouldn't really expect your views to be taken seriously.

The saddest part is it is still happening. Nobody is coming to the rescue. It's a fucking sick society we live in.

 

[SpookyFrank]

'update, my friend, a long time foster mother, was banned by the council there when she raised these issues, it was described as 'cultural', she is going ballistic now and thinking of going public.'

So dismissing systematic child abuse as 'cultural' is what people do when they don't want to appear racist?
Sounds pretty racist to me.

 

[articul8]

Wasn't the "racism" or otherwise of the claims that groups of (mostly) Pakistani men were systematically grooming and abusing white girls a main issue in the split of UAF from Searchlight, with the latter wanting to acknowledge there was a reality to the claims and the former arguing that was making concessions to fascist myths?

 

[ViolentPanda]

It's going to take a while for me to process all of this horrendous shit, and the implications fill me with foreboding.

There are ways that children's social care was structured (in Rotherham and everywhere else in the UK) that allowed this stuff to be downplayed. I'd love to find out how senior child protection officers downplayed the risks to individual children that appeared on their radar, as well as for the issue as a whole.

It would also be interesting to examine how the police assessment of risk/harm failed and whether anything of intelligence value was passed to social care, whether Education Welfare in the local authority had flagged concerns (and what action was taken), whether front-line social workers or police were part of this complacency or whether their reports downgraded the risks involved.

This "not wanting to be viewed as racist" shtick may have been a factor in some people's minds along the way, but doesn't explain the systemic failures. Transparency and accountability tends to sharpen up responses. Police "Merlins" and other reports should be scrutinised by social workers; social care disclosures should be scrutinised by the police. I note that many of the reforms Rotherham have made have in the last couple of years are in fact national reforms directed by individual Local Children's Safeguarding Boards across the country.

If anyone ever says that assumptions about race, class and gender are not a serious threat to us, just point them to this case. I think this scares me the most. Hundreds of people, from coppers and social workers to councillors and community leaders all refusing to see what was happening to children in their community in front of their eyes.

What frightens the fuck out of me is that so many systems that should have kicked in, failed. Case conferences alone are supposed to feature input from (at the very least) the police and social services, so the possibility of deliberate complicity is writ pretty fucking large.

 

[Pickman's model]

Wasn't the "racism" or otherwise of the claims that groups of (mostly) Pakistani men were systematically grooming and abusing white girls a main issue in the split of UAF from Searchlight, with the latter wanting to acknowledge there was a reality to the claims and the former arguing that was making concessions to fascist myths?

i would have thought you'd be keeping your head down given your foul party is up to its neck in this

 

[cesare]

Shaun Wright is still refusing to resign, tbh why don't they just sack the guy?



http://www.theguardian.com/society/...-child-abuse-police-commissioner-urged-resign

"They" might have learned something from the Sharon Shoosmith fiasco.

 

[Pickman's model]

"They" might have learned something from the Sharon Shoosmith fiasco.

apart from which shoesmith was a council employee whereas a police commissioner is an elected position and it's a short step from sacking a police commissioner to sacking an mp

 

[cesare]

apart from which shoesmith was a council employee whereas a police commissioner is an elected position and it's a short step from sacking a police commissioner to sacking an mp

Indeed.

 

[treelover]

Public sector workers in 'couldn't give a flying fuck about doing my job, as long I collect my massively inflated pension' shock.

I've had the misfortune of working for a similar organization, in my dark days. The level of contempt for the people it was supposed to be looking after was mind boggling.

There is evidence that social workers for instance actually use their own money to help out their clients, you are wrong in most cases.

 

[treelover]

I had already posted on this story on the other thread and as a Rotherham lad am sick to my stomach at this appalling dismissal of the children's accusations.
But once again it is SYP at the centre of it.
Just announced on radio Sheffield that Shaun Wright the PCC is expected to resign over his involvement and a senior police officer said 'this is not an historical enquiry, there are currently over 170 cases being looked at currently.'
Disgraceful.

I suspect this will be in Sheffield and with other communities

 

[hot air baboon]

Someone I'm acquainted with from another board, who's from Donny, reckons this sort of contempt for the working class is endemic in South Yorkshire, and he reckons it's due to the embedded nature of local politics and one-party dominance: The fact that councillors and council offers don't have to give a fuck about the working class, because voting is still pretty much tribal - people will vote Labour come Hell or high water.

.....do we read this across to the other areas where this happened aswell....Rochdale...well very possibly....Derby....OK....Peterborough....( wobbles hand horizontally )....Oxford...!?...High Wycombe..ffs....

I'm not sure we even *have* a word to describe the total collapse in responsibility exhibited by these authorities ...whatever "it" is its a twisted knot of something that's bigger and more complicated than just "...PC gone mad..." grown unchecked for a long time and metastasized and seems to generate frightening resistance to any medical intervention...

 

[treelover]

And Jimmy Savile? Did his Catholicism and ethnicity play its part in his grooming and raping of children? What about Peter Morrison? How about Sidney Cooke, who was at the head of a massive grooming gang? This is about male power; patriarchy, if you will.

Reports are saying the girls were 'passed around' to hundreds of nominally respectable men, it does seem to go deep

 

[butchersapron]

I suspect this will be in Sheffield and with other communities

It'll be everywhere with lost kids and a state that treats them as 'the scum off the estates' and where that sort of characterisation of ever wider groups of people (including the non-lost)is accepted as part of mainstream debate and culture (and yes, that means in the left as well, and on here):

 

[ViolentPanda]

the vast bulk of these kind of grooming gangs are Pakistani though; not Bangladeshi, not Somalian, not Hindu, not Arab, not Persian. and despite the fact that most members of the community may not explicitly support such circuits the severe attitudes towards those who fall into their category of 'prostitute'are really quite widespread. it's not a thousand miles away from the attitudes that are pretty well established across North West Pakistani communities (where i'm from and only direct experience is based) to tolerating or apologizing for the kind of behaviour shown in these groups.

So if such attitudes are so prevalent, why aren't there hundreds of thousands of Pakistani rapists?
Perhaps it's because "culture" is an excuse, rather than a reason for such behaviour?

 

[savoloysam]

Bangladesh isnt pakistan something seriously rotten in rotherham if loads of local men thought raping "white slags" acceptable behaviour

Consensual sex

In one of the most staggering passages in the report, Professor Jay revealed how a police officer dismissed the case of a 12-year-old girl who had been having sex with up to five Asian males, because he said she had been “100 per cent consensual in every incident”.
What the fuck!

South yorkshire police need to be fucking gutted along with every other agency.

This was a race and class issue.
Poor white girls targeted by pakistani men with fucked up ideas and authorties not doing anything because it was chavs and trying to avoid being called racist

12 year olds by law can't give consent and if they do it verbally an adult by law can't act on it. It's rape however they try to dress it up.

 

[krtek a houby]

thats because the comments section will be filled up with a)racists, and b) libel.

You're goddam right. But it's all over the shop regarding this horrific story. From another site:

The blame for this cover up lies firmly and solely with the left wing PC offended for everyone brigade. They should be tried along with the perpetrators. People like me have been saying things like this have been going on for years but were silenced by people more interested in trying to prove their own opinions and views were right.

Disgusting people.

 

[ViolentPanda]

.....do we read this across to the other areas where this happened aswell....Rochdale...well very possibly....Derby....OK....Peterborough....( wobbles hand horizontally )....Oxford...!?...High Wycombe..ffs....

What part of "single party dominance" are you having a problem with? In any situation of hegemony there's always going to be spaces where such attitudes as displayed in Rotherham become quasi-institutionalised.

I'm not sure we even *have* a word to describe the total collapse in responsibility exhibited by these authorities ...whatever "it" is its a twisted knot of something that's bigger and more complicated than just "...PC gone mad..." grown unchecked for a long time and metastasized and seems to generate frightening resistance to any medical intervention...

It's nothing to do with "PC gone mad". The failure within local authorities is everything to do with the desire for power and its trappings, without any of the concomitant responsibility, and the failure of the police in South Yorkshire is far more to do with an institutionalised culture of contempt for those who are to be policed, than it is to do with political correctness, understaffing or any of the other excuses that will be trotted out.

 

[hot air baboon]

So if such attitudes are so prevalent, why aren't there hundreds of thousands of Pakistani rapists?
Perhaps it's because "culture" is an excuse, rather than a reason for such behaviour?

...so...ergo...because not all people in poverty commit crime there is no correlation between poverty and crime...

 

[Pickman's model]

...so...ergo...because not all people in poverty commit crime there is no correlation between poverty and crime...

what sort of crime have you in mind? internet fraud? the long firm scam? hunting foxes with dogs? trespassing on the railway?

 

[Das Uberdog]

So if such attitudes are so prevalent, why aren't there hundreds of thousands of Pakistani rapists?
Perhaps it's because "culture" is an excuse, rather than a reason for such behaviour?

can't it be both? i don't think an individual is an island, even if they are still an individual. culture can impact predisposition. not everyone will respond in the same way but if the general culture presses a certain way then in general it will result in more of certain incidences.

in this case, the pattern is that these communal grooming gangs, as they exist in the UK, appear to be overwhelmingly Pakistani as opposed to being from any other cultural group - particularly when taking into account what a tiny minority of the overrall population Pakistanis constitute. there are barbaric and totally backwards attitudes towards women in general and in particular non-Muslim girls which run rife throughout many Pakistani communities in the North West. not only this, but as i've said before, if the testimony of the abused girls in the Rochdale case is anything to go by they were being used by huge numbers of men... a large scale operation which must have been tolerated by much larger circles of people than those actively involved. one of the most disturbing thing about the Rochdale allegations for me was that i remembered, years before, batting off accusations of exactly these crimes against Pakistani communities from locals in Blackburn, Bolton, Burnley and a whole bunch of places as racist myths. these crimes have been open secrets in these areas for years and they're only now being uncovered.

 

[SpookyFrank]

Public sector workers in 'couldn't give a flying fuck about doing my job, as long I collect my massively inflated pension' shock.

I've had the misfortune of working for a similar organization, in my dark days. The level of contempt for the people it was supposed to be looking after was mind boggling.

Nice use of the right-wing trope about 'massively inflated pensions' there. Subtle. If only you hadn't left out the implied third paragraph, the one about how the whole idea of a public sector is flawed and we should let murdering incompetents like G4S run everything instead, you'd basically have a daily mail leading article.

I get the same feedback from just about everyone I know in healthcare, social work and other caring professions; the amount of political meddling and terrible management practices they have to endure is making it nearly impossible for them to do their jobs properly. That and staffing cuts have increased everyone's workload and destroyed the morale of everyone who has survived them.

Social services is the eternal scapegoat, only ever spoken of when something terrible happens and never given any credit for the thousands of times they successfully prevent similar occurrences. Politicians, if they're not trying to make themselves look busy by tampering with services they don't remotely understand, are deliberately hampering those services in order to create a justification for privatising them or getting rid of them altogether.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Reports are saying the girls were 'passed around' to hundreds of nominally respectable men, it does seem to go deep

Rape, primarily, is about asserting power, but the dynamic also includes, for many rapists, opportunism rather than planning. I suspect that some of those hundreds were opportunists, and even that a subset of them were (or at least felt that they were) propelled into participation through peer pressure. Make no mistake though - they're still rapists.

 

[hot air baboon]

what sort of crime have you in mind? internet fraud? the long firm scam? hunting foxes with dogs? trespassing on the railway?

...well this sort apparently...Mr Crowley...

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jan/23/rise-female-shoplifters-benefit-cuts-police

 

[Sprocket.]

Yvette Cooper calling for Shaun Wright to step down later this afternoon.
Labour will be shitting bricks.

 

[hot air baboon]

What part of "single party dominance" are you having a problem with?

...no problem at all...if sweeping unevidenced generalisations are the order of the day I may even have a go myself later on...

 

[treelover]

can't it be both? i don't think an individual is an island, even if they are still an individual. culture can impact predisposition. not everyone will respond in the same way but if the general culture presses a certain way then in general it will result in more of certain incidences.

in this case, the pattern is that these communal grooming gangs, as they exist in the UK, appear to be overwhelmingly Pakistani as opposed to being from any other cultural group - particularly when taking into account what a tiny minority of the overrall population Pakistanis constitute. there are barbaric and totally backwards attitudes towards women in general and in particular non-Muslim girls which run rife throughout many Pakistani communities in the North West. not only this, but as i've said before, if the testimony of the abused girls in the Rochdale case is anything to go by they were being used by huge numbers of men... a large scale operation which must have been tolerated by much larger circles of people than those actively involved. one of the most disturbing thing about the Rochdale allegations for me was that i remembered, years before, batting off accusations of exactly these crimes against Pakistani communities from locals in Blackburn, Bolton, Burnley and a whole bunch of places as racist myths. these crimes have been open secrets in these areas for years and they're only now being uncovered.

How is this going to be resolved?, if its on this scale its dynamite on so many levels and could tear communities apart.

 

[Idris2002]

How is this going to be resolved?, if its on this scale its dynamite on so many levels and could tear communities apart.

A community that can tolerate this sort of thing - whatever the ethnicity of its members - could deserve to be torn apart. But I assume that by 'torn apart' you mean something that would destroy the community in its present form without leaving anything in its place.

 

[SpookyFrank]

many women and girls in these communities have their entire lives monitored and controlled to an extent which would quite commonly be seen as serious abuse in most of post-60s non-Pakistani Britain. the entire community is usually run by a blokes syndicate at the Mosque, which protects itself, mediates family disputes and helps protect the honour of 'respected' guys who may be falling into disrepute.

I believe this is the case in some British Pakistani communities, but certainly not everywhere. I've known communities in different parts of the same city where attitudes have been very different. I can easily believe that you've experienced some unpleasant things, particularly where treatment of women is concerned, but it's very dangerous to generalise.

 

[ViolentPanda]

...so...ergo...because not all people in poverty commit crime there is no correlation between poverty and crime...

If you're going to make comparisons, try and make them relevant.
If someone claims culture as the main cause of "Pakistani rape gangs", it's entirely legitimate to enquire as to the relative scarcity of Pakistani rape gangs compared to the size of the UK's Pakistani-derived population. That doesn't imply no correlation between "Pakistani culture" and "rape", it points out that the correlation is at best weak. Hundreds of British-Pakistani rapists as measured against hundreds of thousands of male British-Pakistanis.