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1,400 Rotherham children 'sexually exploited over 16-year period'

Started by soraya, August 26, 2014, 09:20:04 PM

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Leepal

Quote from: Danger Man on August 26, 2014, 10:53:36 PM
Let's not have some type of Nazi witch-hunt over this.

The people involved are in their 30's and 40's now and are too old to be held responsible.

:)
yeah, with the recent Cliff Richard house search I was just waiting for the words "witch hunt".


Treguard of Dunshelm


thraxx

Quote from: Treguard of Dunshelm on August 26, 2014, 11:01:08 PM
Sometimes I feel like I just don't get people, y'know?

You need to move to Rotherham, they got 1400 of them.

soraya

This thread must be deleted.  If word of this story gets out community cohesion could be ineluctably damaged.

Dusty Gozongas

#34
I've grown to be ashamed of some quarters of the left on this issue. Whilst people from all sides have been ultimately responsible for letting children down at a political/policing/social services level there have been a huge number of ordinary left leaners who have been too quick to shout "racist" at anybody who tried to raise awareness of how widespread such abuse has been.

So now we're going to have the BNP et al wallowing in their own righteousness at being the ones who fucking told us so for all these years. Okay, the BNP are pretty much a spent force (not that they amounted to much under Griffin anyway) and a large number of the families who suffered didn't want racists championing their cause but it has to be said that the far right did their fair share of the groundwork to bring this to a wider audience.

Yeah. Have a good old laugh at idiots with ugly slogans such as "Islamic Rape Gangs" by turning them into catchy little YouTube ditties but there was more than a little truth to their protestations as it turned out, wasn't there? Woohoo! Great going TheLeft™, great job letting your eye off the ball just because you don't want to be in agreement with TheRight™. I spent far to much time angry about this but meh. Fuck it. Seems both camps are full of arseholes on some issues.

Anyway, during that press conference earlier, did I get a hint that the police were being defended for their inaction? Could be wrong about that as I was distracted by important domestic affairs here, but if it is the case I can recall many a copper on the likes of Inspector Gadget's blog who were angered by Chief Constables who anticipated more accusations of institutionalised racism and wouldn't allow any investigations into an alarming number of accusations. It's fucked up mate. Fucked right up.

Hank Venture

What the fuck is wrong with the UK? You should be cut off from Europe and sent over to live with your spiritual brethren in the USA, where you can be merry, have sordid sexual hang-ups and practice incest and paedophilia together. Bring Ireland, the church can fuck off too.

Steven

Urgh, so this is a Left vs Right thing now is it? Which for some reason always does seem to become involved in any supposed discussion of racial/racist subjects. It's a nice distraction, get everyone into a nice froth about race or left and right politics, now we can get lots of racial provocation and marches/attacks from both sides to fill up more column inches, expect a few individual cunts on the old goverment pay-roll to turn up to various nationalist-tinged meetings to stir up twats into vandalism and beatings to keep the whole thing going while compromising files on various VIPs and politicians are shot into the sun. Business as usual.

Mister Six


Puce Moment


Milverton

Good morning PC Brigade! How are you this morning? Sleep well?

Rhetorical.

Dusty Gozongas

Quote from: Steven on August 27, 2014, 03:51:32 AM
Urgh, so this is a Left vs Right thing now is it?

A misguided one, yes. Has been for ages.

What we've had is various small (and quite insignificant in the bigger picture) left wing groups protesting against the rising interest in various small (yet growing) right wing rallying calls while the coalition and New Labour watch on. This, by the way, is the New Labour that happily funds those small left wing groups but at the same time shows no interest in any sort of meaningful Labour movement in any real sense. It's doing just as much to keep the left divided as Thatcher did at the height of her madness. What we're left with is "useful idiots" from both sides unable to see that they're being distracted from the fact that their interests aren't being taken care of by any of the politicians line managers they vote for.

Pit-Pat

Quote from: Milverton on August 27, 2014, 07:48:47 AM
Good morning PC Brigade! How are you this morning? Sleep well?

Rhetorical.

Friends, Romans, countrymen, from the wellspring of blessed joy inform that I and bosom comrade, Sgt Liberal-Lefty, slept a sleep dark, deep and dreamless, confin'd in happy wedding chamber yea 'til light from yonder window broke.

With Rhetoric. 

shiftwork2

I want in on one of these brigades.  The Fire Brigade is out because I'm a coward and anyway they're now called Scope.  The PC Brigade is out because I quite like my racism externally validated in a 1970s way.  Wogs!  There, I said it.  What you gonna do?  So that just leaves the Bring Back National Service Brigade or the Hang 'Em And Flog 'Em Brigade.

Quincey

The Guardian has an article titled "Rotherham abuse report: protection is what matters, not blame", calling on people to avoid racial stereotyping. It criticises the notion that "The authorities' failure to act, it is suggested, was conditioned by nervousness about being branded racist", but fails to explain why the author this the notion is wrong. Surely blame does matter in this case, despite the views of the article author.

Surely people should be able to oppose racism, stereotyping AND not acting on reports of sexual offences because the alleged perpetrators are Asian. People on the Guardian are saying "what about all the cases with white men" - but the issue is not that these people were Asian but that the authorities may have failed to act properly because they were worried about being called racist.

I do feel that Dusty Gozongas has a point on the failure of some of the left on this.

Leepal

Quote from: Quincey on August 27, 2014, 11:05:45 AM
The Guardian has an article titled "Rotherham abuse report: protection is what matters, not blame", calling on people to avoid racial stereotyping. It criticises the notion that "The authorities' failure to act, it is suggested, was conditioned by nervousness about being branded racist", but fails to explain why the author this the notion is wrong. Surely blame does matter in this case, despite the views of the article author.

Surely people should be able to oppose racism, stereotyping AND not acting on reports of sexual offences because the alleged perpetrators are Asian. People on the Guardian are saying "what about all the cases with white men" - but the issue is not that these people were Asian but that the authorities may have failed to act properly because they were worried about being called racist.

I do feel that Dusty Gozongas has a point on the failure of some of the left on this.


If it were the other way round, ie. white males raping thousands of Asian girls, I think the Guardian would have no problem apportioning blame.


Quincey

Exactly. The blame for abuse should always lie with the abuser and those who enable it, regardless of their ethnicity.

Of course, fear of being called racist doesn't seem to have been the only factor in this case - contempt for those being sexually abused, the continued dominance of rape culture and myths about rape also appear to be factors. But it does seem, from the report, that fear of being called racist was a factor.

Funcrusher

Quote from: Quincey on August 27, 2014, 11:38:57 AM
Exactly. The blame for abuse should always lie with the abuser and those who enable it, regardless of their ethnicity.

Of course, fear of being called racist doesn't seem to have been the only factor in this case - contempt for those being sexually abused, the continued dominance of rape culture and myths about rape also appear to be factors. But it does seem, from the report, that fear of being called racist was a factor.

I don't personally think that cases like this prove that our society is dominated by a rape culture.

Danger Man

I was going to say there's no such thing as rape culture but then, I can't remember ever hearing of anywhere in the world where thousands of women were raped over such a long period of time.

Berlin during WWII, I suppose, but nothing like this in peacetime.

Why isn't Rotherham Town Hall in flames? Is there nothing that will make the British people angry?


Neville Chamberlain

Quote from: Danger Man on August 27, 2014, 12:03:41 PM
Is there nothing that will make the British people angry?

A lukewarm cup of tea might elicit an angry 'tut'.


Funcrusher

Quote from: Danger Man on August 27, 2014, 12:03:41 PM
I was going to say there's no such thing as rape culture but then, I can't remember ever hearing of anywhere in the world where thousands of women were raped over such a long period of time.

Berlin during WWII, I suppose, but nothing like this in peacetime.

Why isn't Rotherham Town Hall in flames? Is there nothing that will make the British people angry?

From what I understand, the phrase rape culture was coined to talk about prison rape, where rape is widespread and systematic. But it's now been appropriated, and seems to mean any depiction of women that's deemed sexist.

Pijlstaart

1400 children, 16 years, but how many paedophiles? It would be nice to gauge the efficiency of these guys, because it could be four very motivated people in a van, could be the entire adult population of Rotherham, which would explain the lack of rioting. Part-time hobby, or full-time business?

doppelkorn

Quote from: Milverton on August 27, 2014, 07:48:47 AM
Good morning PC Brigade! How are you this morning? Sleep well?

Rhetorical.

Congratulations! You won! Right wing politics turned out to the The Right Answer because of this raping that happened.

Fucking prick.

Danger Man

Quote from: Funcrusher on August 27, 2014, 12:11:05 PM
From what I understand, the phrase rape culture was coined to talk about prison rape, where rape is widespread and systematic. But it's now been appropriated, and seems to mean any depiction of women that's deemed sexist.

Having now skimmed through the report online, I'd suggest the term 'Taxi Culture' should be used, as it seems the girls were ferried around in taxis a lot of the time to make it less obvious what was going on.[nb]I'd say that a lot of taxi drivers are Pakistani but I'm scared to appear racist.[/nb]

It also seems that Rotherham council had a 1970's attitude towards sexism, with male councillors often making smutty comments to female staff.

It seems a lot of them genuinely believed that the girls hadn't been groomed, but were just low-class 'slags' using their bodies for profit. It makes for grim reading.

And you have to wonder what the police were really up to in all of this. Just lazy?

Ignatius_S

Quote from: Quincey on August 27, 2014, 11:38:57 AM... But it does seem, from the report, that fear of being called racist was a factor.

Although that was a factor, there were others ones at play. Quite a few years ago, I remember watching a C4 documentary that alleged such grooming and abuse was occurring and at the end, my overwhelming impression that the authorities were reluctant to take robust action because it was going to open a whole can of worms for a number of factors.

As the Rotherham report said, and we've seen this in similar cases elsewhere such as in Oxford, victims were simply not believed by police and rape dismissed as 'consensual sex'. Not only is that appalling in itself, but it helps obscure the scale of the problem. With the Oxford case, IIRC, the turning point was when one detective became concerned about the number of reports about girls disappearing and reappearing, often the same girls – which was exactly what was being mentioned in the above documentary – and investigating further, which led him discovering similar patterns and the (right) conclusion that this was a result of something organised.

With other cases, we've seen that there are different ethnicities for the abusers and although the methods of the abusers and the people they target are eerily similar, from the various reporting, there's been nothing to indicate that race was a predominant factor the allegations not being followed through. With both the police and social services, there appeared too much a willingness to pooh-pooh what the victims (and in the documentary, I mentioned, parents) were saying –victims not being seen as victims, but as troublesome individuals who were the architects of their own misfortune.

Additionally, I suspect people would have had trouble getting their head around the idea that abuse could be on such a large scale or children being trafficked. The idea that cases were isolated would have been more attractive.

Quote from: Danger Man on August 27, 2014, 12:03:41 PM...Why isn't Rotherham Town Hall in flames? Is there nothing that will make the British people angry?

Because in many ways a lot of what the reports says was already known?

Quote from: Pijlstaart on August 27, 2014, 12:12:21 PM
1400 children, 16 years, but how many paedophiles? It would be nice to gauge the efficiency of these guys...

Would this help you gauge it?

QuoteOne victim, who had been groomed from the age of 12 and was raped for the first time when she was 13, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme her harrowing story.

She says she was raped "once a week, every week" until she was 15, that police "lost" clothing she had given them as evidence and that she had feared for her family's safety.

"Emma" [not her real name], now aged 24, says she was 12 when she was first approached by a group of young men in an arcade in Rotherham. The boys, who she said were of "school age", began talking to her and struck up a friendship with her.
What she did not realise at the time was that she was being groomed for sexual abuse, she says.

Emma told the Today programme how the grooming went on for about a year, during which time she began going to Rotherham town centre where she was introduced to "grown men".

"They started introducing alcohol and soft drugs to me and then, when I was 13, I was sexually exploited by them," she said.
"Up until this point they had never tried to touch me, they had not made me ever feel uncomfortable or ever feel unsafe or that they could harm me.

"I trusted them, they were my friends as I saw it, until one night my main perpetrator raped me, quite brutally as well, in front of a number of people.

"From then on I would get raped once a week, every week."

She described how her abusers began to force Emma to have sex with "whoever wanted to come and have sex with me".

She says she reported her abuse to the police "three months after my sexual exploitation started".

Emma had saved the clothes she had been wearing during the attacks and handed the items to police as evidence.
"They lost the clothing, so there was no evidence," she said.

After that, Emma said she was told it was "my word against his" and that the case "probably wouldn't result in a conviction, or even get to court".

At the same time, she said, her family were being threatened and intimidated.

"The men were parking outside my house, they were threatening my family, they were ringing my house phone - and they were quite dangerous men as well.

"The police said they couldn't offer any protection, so because of that I decided to drop the charges," she added.
"I was 13 at that point and my sexual exploitation went on until I was 15," Emma said.

She said her mum was the first person she had told what was happening. But even her family were unable to stop the abuse.

"My parents went to the relevant services, they went to the people who should have been there to help and protect (me), because as a family we couldn't stop these people," she said.

Emma said her parents even locked her up - "as many other parents" of victims had done - but said threats from the men left her fearing for her family's safety.

"I had no choice really, because they used to threaten to get my mum and rape my mum. So in my mind, as a 13 or 14-year-old, it was 'well if I didn't go out and see them they are going to get my mum and are going to rape her'.

"They gang raped me, so what stops them from doing that to my mum?" Emma said.
She added: "They used to follow my mum because they used to know when she went shopping, what time she had been shopping, where she had gone.

"They made it quite clear to me that if they wanted to harm somebody I loved to get to me in any way they would do that, if that's what it took."

In the end she says her parents decided the only way to stop the abuse was to move her "out of the country".

In the meanwhile, Emma says her perpetrators were able to "walk the streets and were left unpunished".

"I look back at it now, I was a child, these were adult men who were very, very dangerous, very nasty, they knew everything about me because in the grooming process I had told them everything.

"So they knew all about my family, they knew where we lived, they knew everything.

"I knew nothing about them apart from their nicknames."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-28949188

Ignatius_S

Quote from: Danger Man on August 27, 2014, 12:31:01 PM...And you have to wonder what the police were really up to in all of this. Just lazy?

As we've seen in other cases, police just didn't take allegations very seriously. Also, as I mentioned above, in the Oxford case, a police detective became concerned by the number of reports about young girls disappearing and then turning up a few days later, often the same girls being involved. IIRC, the girls weren't making any allegations about what happened to them. There, the attitude, I suspect, was 'well, they've turned up, no harm done', particularly if they had gone missing (acting up before). It appears there were no systems in place for the cases or the pattern to be reviewed and it was down to one officer's initiative for something to happen.

Something that needs to be kept in mind that child protection has changed quite a lot fairly recently and I doubt that the mindset that some officers had was unique to the police.

great_badir

I was surprised to come into this thread and be faced with a race argument going on.  Fuck's sake.

Anyway, all this is really starting to depress me.

It also confirms my general philosophy - that people are cunts.

Steven

When I lived in Oxford in the early 2000s there used to be a number I got off a mate that you rang and stated your address and within 5 minutes a taxi would turn up and the bloke driving would deliver you skunk at the door, possibly part of this same taxi network? They didn't operate after about 8 or 9 at night so I wonder if they were ferrying around girls later in the evening?

Dusty Gozongas

Quote from: Danger Man on August 27, 2014, 12:03:41 PM
Why isn't Rotherham Town Hall in flames? Is there nothing that will make the British people angry?

The least caring members of our society have certainly been angry while the usually more compassionate ones have been too busy shouting at the messengers.

Danger Man

Quote from: Ignatius_S on August 27, 2014, 12:36:35 PM
Because in many ways a lot of what the reports says was already known?

I meant angry at the fact nobody is going to be punished for what happened.

This is just so textbook....

Fake shock over something, lessons have been learned, everyone was to blame but nobody is guilty....

In a month or two we'll learn that the one person who has resigned has been given a billion pounds for PTSD and/or has taken up the exact same job at a nearby council.