Rotherham child rape gangs: At least 1400 victims

[butchersapron]

Clearly that is a complicating factor, in the same manner that only white girls of a particular socio-economic class might meet the requirements for such contempt, although I would argue that the push factors in that event would probably have origins in racial prejudice whereas the pull factors would serve to exclude those who are more privileged.

Is that the situation here then? Anti white racism directed solely at vulnerable young people because other white targets are not avaliable? Nonsense.

 

[Grandma Death]

yes but some cultures propogate ideas more comprehensively, reliably and severely than others. i also don't think that in all of these grooming cases it's as simple as comparing it to a paedo ring... as you say, vulnerability is a large part of the issue and i think some of the girls were picked up because they were vulnerable as a result of being young than because they were young. why i think it's important to acknowledge the communal issue is that as opposed to a paedo ring where they assorted weirdos and fuck ups find eachother and operate against the grain of their surroundings, my entire contention is that in some areas there are broadly common sentiments expressed on behalf of certain communities which essentially tolerate or apologise for this kind of behaviour.

that, with all the caveats noted by spanky longhorn on page 7 or whichever...

But I think misogynistic attitudes exist across all cultures. Such attitudes manifest themselves in many different ways. To suggest this is a cultural issue because they are Pakistanis is a mistake. Because it suggests this is a Pakistani issue when I don't think it is. Now that's not to say negative attitudes to women don't exist in the Pakistani community but that community is large with different attitudes contained within the community as a whole. So I'd say misogyny exists in some sections of the Pakistani community but it's not synonymous with the Pakistani community. Because they Pakistani community isn't one big homogenous group

 

[Grandma Death]

your first post quoted asks

a) 'why haven't they targeted young girls from stable homes?'
b) 'how many of these girls were from stable middle class backgrounds?'

the clear implication being that you feel that a) middle class homes more stable; b) working class girls more vulnerable; c) working class homes more chaotic. I'm not the only person to have so interpreted your post. perhaps there are implications and meanings in your post you did not intend. that doesn't mean they're not there.

I've already withdrawn the statement as above

 

[Diamond]

Is that the situation here then? Anti white racism directed solely at vulnerable young people because other white targets are not avaliable? Nonsense.

You are failing to understand the wider point about racism.

It is rare for racism to be overt - for it to be the principal motivating factor in people's behaviour.

Rather, it provides the environmental context for people's actions.

I would wager that these girls were in no way targeted to inflict damage on an imagined white threat. Instead, it seems likely to me, that their identity pointed the way towards their exploitation for the perpretrators' sexual gratification.

In that way, their ethnicity would not have been a cause of hatred but rather a signpost to rape.

 

[butchersapron]

You are failing to understand the wider point about racism.

It is rare for racism to be overt - for it to be the principal motivating factor in people's behaviour.

Rather, it provides the environmental context for people's actions.

I would wager that these girls were in no way targeted to inflict damage on an imagined white threat. Instead, it seems likely to me, that their identity pointed the way towards their exploitation for the perpretrators' sexual gratification.

In that way, their ethnicity would not have been a cause of hatred but rather a signpost to rape.

Given that I've already outlined such a situation I don't think I am. I'm just not falling for your crude brush strokes approach.

 

[Das Uberdog]

But I think misogynistic attitudes exist across all cultures. Such attitudes manifest themselves in many different ways. To suggest this is a cultural issue because they are Pakistanis is a mistake. Because it suggests this is a Pakistani issue when I don't think it is. Now that's not to say negative attitudes to women don't exist in the Pakistani community but that community is large with different attitudes contained within the community as a whole. So I'd say misogyny exists in some sections of the Pakistani community but it's not synonymous with the Pakistani community. Because they Pakistani community isn't one big homogenous group

they do, and yes there are differences within every community (and the realm of difference within communities is greater than the realm of differences between communities) but you can still see trends in different directions and with different levels of severity and regularity... otherwise you could say that there's no such thing as cultural difference at all. misogyny is not the sole preserve of Pakistani communities no, but comparatively there seems to be a lot of involvement from Pakistani communities in grooming gangs targeting non-Muslim girls - this is backed up by widespread attitudes towards non-Muslims which in some areas are quite profligate. that, specifically, is an issue of the Pakistani community - not rape or grooming or misogyny in abstract. but it's still something worth recognising, because if the left refuse to make the connection the rest of the population will make it for themselves, and the right will be given free reign to take the conclusions in their own racial/ethnic directions.

 

[seventh bullet]

Maybe if I rephrase that to stable backgrounds and omit the middle class. I can see how that can be misinterpreted but that wasn't my intention

I agree with you on the vulnerability of those girls being an important factor in their sexual exploitation, but like Pickman's said earlier (and with butchersapron's illustrative post as well) the openly expressed and mainstream anti-working class prejudice we have in our society can contribute to generalisations which aren't so helpful in understanding what went on (for one, the potential for victim blaming). The contempt for these girls and the class they come from is not just from the rapists but the authorities which stood by allowed it to happen.

 

[butchersapron]

Yes, other cultures also at fault here.

 

[Lurdan]

but comparatively there seems to be a lot of involvement from Pakistani communities in grooming gangs targeting non-Muslim girls

This is the sort of slippage I don't care for. There seems to be a lot of involvement of criminals from Pakistani communities. Why leave open the assumption that the actions of these criminals is simply determined by cultural attitudes within the Pakistani community ? Isn't it just as likely that they exploit those attitudes as part of exploiting their situation within that community ? That is what criminals do.

 

[Grandma Death]

they do, and yes there are differences within every community (and the realm of difference within communities is greater than the realm of differences between communities) but you can still see trends in different directions and with different levels of severity and regularity... otherwise you could say that there's no such thing as cultural difference at all. misogyny is not the sole preserve of Pakistani communities no, but comparatively there seems to be a lot of involvement from Pakistani communities in grooming gangs targeting non-Muslim girls - this is backed up by widespread attitudes towards non-Muslims which in some areas are quite profligate. that, specifically, is an issue of the Pakistani community - not rape or grooming or misogyny in abstract. but it's still something worth recognising, because if the left refuse to make the connection the rest of the population will make it for themselves, and the right will be given free reign to take the conclusions in their own racial/ethnic directions.

As I've already said the cultural aspect here is reflective of the tighter knit aspect of some of these communities. Extended families etc it's more about the MO rather than the culture itself. Many of these people know each other either through direct or indirect family connections. They are familiar to each other because they live, work and mix within their own communities. Add to that the secretive nature of some of those communities then this explains why there is a disproportionate amount of Pakistani offenders. Any community that is largely insular creates an environment where abuse is easily covered up and in this case shared within that community. I would wager more 'westernised' Pakistanis not residing in these communities were less likely if at all to be involved in these cases. I think these men were misogynistic rapists first and foremost. The possible cultural attitudes aren't the determining factor here. In the same way there isn't a white cultural problem with the high level peado rings. What unites these cases is abuse of power and manipulation. Common strands throughout group abuse. I will readily concede there may be more negative attitudes in some sections of the Pakistani community but I don't think that's the primary driver in the minds of these abusers.

 

[comrade spurski]

This issue has nothing to do with race. Asian perpetrators?
Surely the issue is that these children ... 1400 were abused beyond belief and abandoned.
why the fuck are the media making an issue of the race of the perpetrators? The perpetrators at the bbc were all white...most of the staff who said nothing were all white...is this relevant? Is it fuck!
Until people in power are held accountable this shit will keep on occurring...is it really a coincidence the the south yorkshire police are involved?
No one gave a shit cos these girls were not highly thought of...that is a crime in itself.
And with all this talk of race the issue of how to protect all children from all abusers is ignored

 

[comrade spurski]

the comparison doesn't wash - there is no real white community but there are many Pakistani communities, in a very real sense. they exist, with established hierarchies, organisations and decision making procedures and in many of these mass grooming cases there is a large degree of complicity. if this case is anything like Rochdale (which i can't imagine it not being) it was engaged in by a large section of the entire community with the complicit knowledge of much of the rest, reinforced by a culture which regarded the victims as whores for not being born and brought up a strict Muslim.

the institutional protection which money and power brings to pervert celebrities can't be ascribed to the cultural leanings of 'whites' or anyone, rather they're just privileges which come along with the social position. by contrast, in the Rochdale and Rotheram cases the perpetrators were people who were in no way particularly powerful on a social level yet were surrounded by a general culture which protected their activities. there is not a single other cultural group in the UK where these grooming gangs crop up with such regularity or scale.

6 men do not represent a community...these men were child abusers...that used power to horrifically abuse over a thousand children.
the white men at the bbc...stuart hall, saville, harris plus clifford with his links to bbc celebs abused hundreds upon hundreds...yet there race is irrelevant to everyone including you.
If we wish to protect all children we as a society need to look at why people abuse children and why people do not see the signs children give out when they are abused and why people do not listen to kids.
talking about race does none of these things as it is irrelevant.

 

[Lurdan]

I quoted this on the other thread but it's perhaps worth repeating here.

8.16 -One of the common threads running through child sexual exploitation across England has been the prominent role of taxi drivers in being directly linked to children who were abused. This was the case in Rotherham from a very early stage, when residential care home heads met in the nineties to share intelligence about taxis and other cars which picked up girls from outside their units. In the early 2000s some secondary school heads were reporting girls being picked up at lunchtime at the school gates and being taken away to provide oral sex to men in the lunch break.

8.17 - A diagram and backing papers supplied to the Police in 2001 by Risky Business
linked alleged perpetrators with victims, taxi companies and individual drivers.

8.21 -The Safeguarding Unit convened Strategy meetings from time to time on allegations involving taxi drivers. We read some of the most serious, from 2010, and were struck by the sense of exasperation, even hopelessness, recorded as the professionals in attendance tried to find ways of disrupting the suspected activity. Strategy meetings about one specific taxi firm had been held on four occasions in a seven week period. The minutes of one meeting record a total of ten girls and young women, three of whom were involved in three separate incidents of alleged attempted abduction by taxi drivers. The seven other girls had alleged that they were being sexually exploited in exchange for free taxi rides and goods. Two of the girls involved were looked after children. The Licensing Enforcement Officer took the step of formally writing to the Police following the incidents of alleged attempted abductions by drivers, complaining about the Police failure to act.

In one incident, a driver accosted a 13-year-old girl. She refused to do what he asked and reported this to her parents who followed the taxi through the town, where they managed to identify the driver and dialled 999 for assistance. According to the Licensing Enforcement Officer, the Police did not attend until later and took no action. In his email to the Police he stated that 'a simple check would have revealed that the driver had been arrested a week previously in Bradford for a successful kidnapping of a lone female.' (...)

8.22 - A further issue of safeguarding concerned those taxi firms which had a contract with the Council to transport some of the most vulnerable children to various resources within the authority. Some of the Council's difficulty was that they did not always have the drivers' names when allegations were made. Nor did they have a list of the drivers who transported children as part of the Council contract.

(It's not emphasised in the report but it's worth highlighting the words 'when allegations were made')

I certainly wouldn't want to suggest that it's true of all taxi, mini-cab or limousine hire drivers but my experience here in London is that among a lot of drivers there is not just involvement in illegal activity of different kinds (dealing, procuring etc.) but also of links to broader criminal networks. It's an occupation which lends itself to that. The section in the report about this suggests that this is also true in Rotherham. I'm a bit wary of the way the term 'gangs' is being thrown around but we are clearly talking about groups or networks of criminals. Why the assumption that the most significant determinant of their activity is their cultural background rather than the ethos of those shared criminal activities ?

 

[taffboy gwyrdd]

The glaring role of misogyny needs to be downplayed by the dominant reactionary forces scrabbling to make political capital from this horror. Citing misogyny is itself deemed "politically correct ".

 

[Das Uberdog]

6 men do not represent a community...these men were child abusers...that used power to horrifically abuse over a thousand children.
the white men at the bbc...stuart hall, saville, harris plus clifford with his links to bbc celebs abused hundreds upon hundreds...yet there race is irrelevant to everyone including you.
If we wish to protect all children we as a society need to look at why people abuse children and why people do not see the signs children give out when they are abused and why people do not listen to kids.
talking about race does none of these things as it is irrelevant.

race is irrelevant to me too - the structure and culture of the community is what i'm focussing on. in the Saville/BBC scandals money and institutional leverage within large social institutions was what enabled them to get away with their crimes, and quite rightly that was focussed upon. when Catholic priests were uncovered as having abused loads of children, quite rightly the Catholic church as an institution was focussed on as being the vehicle through which priests were enabled access to their victims and immunity from prosecution. now, i believe that part of what enabled these men to go about doing their deeds was the tacit cultural acceptance and general cover offered by their community. the scale of offences goes beyond the smaller numbers specifically prosecuted, and couldn't have happened on such a broad scale without a widespread knowledge within the community and an unwillingness or indifference to challenging it. like i said earlier, these groups have been an open secret in many northern towns for decades.

 

[weltweit]

Perpetrators should do time, and

Heads should roll......

But will they ?

 

[Citizen66]

These were vulnerable girls at the bottom of the pecking order and police and officials simply didn't give a fuck. Political correctness my arse. Since when has political correctness bothered the old fucking bill? Did they stop arresting black youths in the last ten years? Have I missed something?

 

[Citizen66]

This isn't a race thing. Jimmy Savile, Gary Glitter and Rolf Harris aren't Asian.

 

[Grandma Death]

I quoted this on the other thread but it's perhaps worth repeating here.










(It's not emphasised in the report but it's worth highlighting the words 'when allegations were made')

I certainly wouldn't want to suggest that it's true of all taxi, mini-cab or limousine hire drivers but my experience here in London is that among a lot of drivers there is not just involvement in illegal activity of different kinds (dealing, procuring etc.) but also of links to broader criminal networks. It's an occupation which lends itself to that. The section in the report about this suggests that this is also true in Rotherham. I'm a bit wary of the way the term 'gangs' is being thrown around but we are clearly talking about groups or networks of criminals. Why the assumption that the most significant determinant of their activity is their cultural background rather than the ethos of those shared criminal activities ?

I agree but we have to answers when faced with the statistics show a disproportionate amount of Pakistani men are involved in this type of crime. I have suggested why I think this is. If we ignore this then the right will have a field day with it.

 

[Treacle Toes]

This isn't a race thing. Jimmy Savile, Gary Glitter and Rolf Harris aren't Asian.

You are right of course. However, yet again, the subtext here is that sexual abuse by White/European men isn't as bad as sexual abuse by men of other ethnicities. It is as course, but racism is institutionalised and as such will show itself.

 

[Shirl]

This issue has nothing to do with race. Asian perpetrators?
Surely the issue is that these children ... 1400 were abused beyond belief and abandoned.
why the fuck are the media making an issue of the race of the perpetrators? The perpetrators at the bbc were all white...most of the staff who said nothing were all white...is this relevant? Is it fuck!
Until people in power are held accountable this shit will keep on occurring...is it really a coincidence the the south yorkshire police are involved?
No one gave a shit cos these girls were not highly thought of...that is a crime in itself.
And with all this talk of race the issue of how to protect all children from all abusers is ignored

I totally agree with you. So many attempts to sidetrack the real issues.

 

[comrade spurski]

[QUOTE"Grandma Death, post: 13363009, member: 10239"]I agree but we have to answers when faced with the statistics show a disproportionate amount of Pakistani men are involved in this type of crime. I have suggested why I think this is. If we ignore this then the right will have a field day with it.[/QUOTE]

Where is the evidence that show a disproportionate amount of pakistani men are involved in sexual abuse of children?
Mentioning this case and one or two others and then ignoring all other sexual abuse of children seems to be the only way to come to that conclusion.
Sexual abuse of any child by anyone is the issue...it is a crime where victims are often disbelieved by adults (neighbours, teachers, carers, other family members etc.) because the perpetrators are often seen as being 'not the sort' or because they are powerful people who instill fear (political or physical fear).
This is the great problem in child abuse cases...children are not heard...the warning signs in the childs behaviour are overlooked and children are disbelieved.
This insistance that there is a problem with pakistani men is a smoke screen used by the right wing for there own ends. The problem with the sexual abuse of children should not be used as a political toy...those child abuse cases have occured in equally horrific numbers else wgere and race is not mentioned...ie the catholic church, the saville case (thought to have abused over 600 by himself), stuart hall and rolf harris and max clifford (thought to have abused dozens each) plus many other cases such as cyril smith (thought to have abused hundreds).
The issue to deal with is the lack of power for children to be believed, the abuse of power by the child abusers and the lack of care by the agencies supposed to care for the children.

 

[Grandma Death]

[QUOTE"Grandma Death, post: 13363009, member: 10239"]I agree but we have to answers when faced with the statistics show a disproportionate amount of Pakistani men are involved in this type of crime. I have suggested why I think this is. If we ignore this then the right will have a field day with it.

Where is the evidence that show a disproportionate amount of pakistani men are involved in sexual abuse of children?
Mentioning this case and one or two others and then ignoring all other sexual abuse of children seems to be the only way to come to that conclusion.
Sexual abuse of any child by anyone is the issue...it is a crime where victims are often disbelieved by adults (neighbours, teachers, carers, other family members etc.) because the perpetrators are often seen as being 'not the sort' or because they are powerful people who instill fear (political or physical fear).
This is the great problem in child abuse cases...children are not heard...the warning signs in the childs behaviour are overlooked and children are disbelieved.
This insistance that there is a problem with pakistani men is a smoke screen used by the right wing for there own ends. The problem with the sexual abuse of children should not be used as a political toy...those child abuse cases have occured in equally horrific numbers else wgere and race is not mentioned...ie the catholic church, the saville case (thought to have abused over 600 by himself), stuart hall and rolf harris and max clifford (thought to have abused dozens each) plus many other cases such as cyril smith (thought to have abused hundreds).
The issue to deal with is the lack of power for children to be believed, the abuse of power by the child abusers and the lack of care by the agencies supposed to care for the children.[/QUOTE]
http://gu.com/p/3fpvy

I've read statistics that show despite the fact Asians are a minority they make up a disproportionate amount of offences of this nature. Now we can chew over and dispute those statistics but the right are having a field day with this and we need to have answers. It's not about ignoring other abuse. I'm certainly not that's for sure.

 

[likesfish]

Some dads attempted to get their daughters back from their abusers and were then arrested

Race was involved rapisits were pakistani and its been mentioned several times people were reluctant to investigate because being accused of racism is the end of your career and whistle blowing protection is worthless.
Plus people who mentioned this for years were accused of pedaling racist myths

 

[ViolentPanda]

Agreed, although I suspect we would come to different conclusions on the precise nature of the surrounding superstructure, but that is, as you identify, surely the key point?

1,400 girls over 16 years and those are conservative estimates.

Let's say each girl perhaps has a social circle of between 50 and 100 people, including friends and parents.

Then lets say that each girl perhaps lets on to maybe 5 people in her social circle, again a conservative estimate, about what may be happening to her.

So we come to an, admittedly back of a napkin, figure of maybe 7000 people who may have known to some degree about what was going on and did nothing out of a population of 250,000 odd.

And then, beyond that, there would surely have been talk of all of this that spread beyond people who knew more or less for sure that it was going on.

When you think through the mechanics of it, it is absolutely staggering. It's not difficult, for instance, to come to the conclusion that the majority of people in town would have known what was going on.

I'm not quite sure what the ramifications of that are but it certainly goes beyond a specific culture within an individual town.

You're making a series of assumptions about communication of information that aren't really borne out by what we know about the nature of reaction to violent sexual assault.
For example, a significant minority of victims suffer from peri- and post-traumatic dissasociation. In other words, they can't communicate to anyone what they've experienced, because their subconscious refuses to permit them to think about it.
There's also issues around post-violence coercion, which is another unfortunately-successful method of stopping victims communicating their victimhood.
Your "mechanics" are ragged and rusty, and arriving at the conclusion that "the majority of people in town would have known what was going on" is frankly crass sensationalism.

What this monstrous farago demonstrates isn't the silent complicity of a "majority of people in town", but the effectiveness of violence as a coercive tool, and the nature of local power and those that wield it.

 

[Lurdan]

From the 1930s and the arrival of the Messina family, to the end of the 1970s and the departure back to Malta of Frank Mifsud a significant part of the vice trade in London was controlled by men of Maltese origin. But that wasn't because there are aspects of Maltese culture which encourage involvement in such activities. Rather it had a lot to do with the 'service industries' that developed around the British garrison in Malta. (It gave Herbert Lom an acting career boost as the go-to vice lord in British films, although the reasons why that was the case are probably invisible to modern audiences).

Does anyone find it surprising that people from a shared background network on that basis ? It happens in every community and at every level of society and that includes criminals.

It's important to question the bases of that networking. Similarly it's important to question ingrained misogyny in specific communities. I just don't accept that we should jump to simplistic conclusions about the linkage between those things when there are other, and in my opinion more significant, things that should also be taken into account.

 

[ViolentPanda]

How does that analysis account then for the way that the perpetrators targeted the victims on the nature of their race, culture, gender and class?

The victimisation wasn't exclusive of British-Pakistani children. It's just that they formed only a small subset of the victims, and doesn't sell as well in the media as "Pakistanis rape white girls".

 

[Pickman's model]

Some dads attempted to get their daughters back from their abusers and were then arrested

Race was involved rapisits were pakistani and its been mentioned several times people were reluctant to investigate because being accused of racism is the end of your career and whistle blowing protection is worthless.
Plus people who mentioned this for years were accused of pedaling racist myths

peddling. not pedalling.

 

[Buckaroo]

peddling. not pedalling.

paedoling

 

[Shirl]

This may not be relevant but as a teenage girl growing up in Burnley in the 1960's there were a lot of pakistani men living all around where I lived. They had recently moved here and lived mostly in all male houses.
Walking home from pubs/clubs late at night and seeing a man walking towards me, I was always relieved if it was a pakistani man. They always felt safe to me, having been flashed at/propositioned by numerous white Burnley bastards
I'm really hating all this racist judgement
I've also heard young asian men talking about Rotherham on the radio saying that they too are appalled by what's gone on and in no way is it cultural.