To ask why the police took no action?

It was a pointless thing to say.

Where does the commissioner say that it is not Pakistani men who are targeting girls?

I thought he said that here are other men who are not Pakistani also targeting girls. Not the same thing.

When I worked in Rochdale before retiring the number of white girls being targeted by elderly white paedophiles was also a massive problem being ignored by the police, despite frequent information being phoned in by myself and other local professionals. These Asian offenders are a small minority within a massive problem that crosses all races and cultures.

You cannot escape the fact that it is Pakistani men targetting young white girls and anyone who says otherwise, including the deputy Children's Commissioner, has their head in the sand.

These poor girls are vulnerable because they have no self-esteem - they do not know that they deserve better.

Here are some stats from six years ago, charting the number of sex offenders in prison, compared with the ethnic profile of the population. They should be updated soon. Probation and prisons collect race and ethnicity data on every offender. From experience, I supervised and treated many, many more white British paedophiles than from other racial backgrounds, and organised paedophile rings, pimps, gang members abusing and attacking girlfriends of rivals, priests, teachers, scout leaders and individual sex offenders, were more often white.

Taking into account the willingness of police to investigate black alleged sex offenders in the time period on this table, one would expect to see a disproportionately high number of black sex offenders to white sex offenders, who were more likely to go undetected, but the overwhelmng majority are white. However, it's still white paedophiles who are more likely to avoid prosecution so far.

Ethnic Profile of the number of male sex offenders in Prisons of England and Wales – May 2007 (H. M. Prison Service 2007)

Ethnic Group and number of prisoners as a percentage of sex offender population

White
6635
81.9%

Black
806
9.9%

Asian
456
5.6%

Mixed/Other
180
2.2%

Population of England and Wales by Ethnicity (National Statistics 2003)
Ethnicity and Percentage of population England and Wales
White
87.5%

Mixed
1.4%

Asian or Asian British
4.4%

Black or Black British
2.2%

Chinese
0.4

Other ethnic groups
0.4

When one racial group targets another that is racism. Abuse in children's homes is truly disgusting, but not the same as cruising the streets looking for vulnerable white girls - only white girls.

I didn't see anything in your apologia about extremely well organised white gangs cruising around looking for vulnerable girls to exploit.

noodles
The race of the children or the perpetrators is irrelevant to preventing abuse. It has occurred in plenty in the UK for years. Look at all the sexual abuse we know about now, that was going on in children's homes in the 60s, 70s and 80s. These children were being passed about for exploitation by white staff in the homes to other persons not working in the care system.

Look at the abuse in the homes and schools run by the Christian Brothers and the Roman Catholic and other churches.
They were proclaimed Christians, they were not Muslim's but they still committed sexual abuse. More and more cases of sexual abuse by these nice harmless White Christian people keeps being revealed.

Just run your eyes down this list and read the reports if you can face them.

www.google.co.uk/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&q=sexual+abuse+in+childrens+homes&btnG=Google+Search.

I stopped counting at 4Google pages citing such abuse in different parts of the UK.

Proper efforts at detection of the patterns of this abuse and ways of informing and strengthening children to resist grooming and report what is going on is what is needed. It is by no means a situation just for foreigners.

Most of the abuse in children's homes was done by brute force and misuse of power and not even grooming was involved.

The leaders of the Pakistani community do need to address these issues, and perhaps be more alert to the problems and possibilities of this happening, but so do all the leaders of the churches, Heads of schools, care services etc etc in any country. It's not behaviour unique to any group.

Good article Butty.

petra I would hardly describe your theory as "the elephant in the room" as this suggestion has come up on many occasions.

Even if there were a cultural element in some of these cases, there are overwhelmingly more examples of white men - and often supposed pillars of the community - abusing girls and young women.

nellie As you say, this isn't just a problem for "vulnerable" young women. Young people are continually being exposed to the commercialisation of sex, which involves young women being portrayed as sexual commodities. It's difficult to know how to protect them from this without major changes in marketing practices.

Nellismoser Do you have any idea how many gangs of white paedophiles are operating in these areas and using only young white girls? As they have had a headstart on Muslim men, I'd expect there to be lots, and that they would be well organised.

I agree with petra that the 'elephant in the room' could potentially have had an influence on the steps taken to progress matters in this case.

I have personal experience of being 'strongly advised' by local authority middle management about the stance I was planning to take at a multi-agency meeting about a young adolescent girl from a family of Asian heritage.

This was in the 1980s.

I also agree that men who behave with such evil depravity come from all backgrounds, cultures and walks of life.

What worries me is the sheer vulnerability of these girls to being taken in by the men they encounter. A number have had trauma and sufficiently poor parenting experiences that they do not know what a normal loving family relationship should be, but it seems it is not just that group that get involved.

Is it something in the culture we push out, that they must have a boyfriend, have sex to please a boy friend, indulge in sexting on their mobile phones?
The abuse ring is at the extreme end of this sort of risky behaviour.

Even girls who would not normally be regarded as being in the vulnerable to exploitation group, do this sexting etc (sending photos of themselves semi naked etc.) have sexualised conversations and get over involved with strangers in chat rooms and such like.

Do they not get any enough information or advice about "how to keep yourself safe" from this behaviour. They need to be taught to recognise the signs of grooming activity, and to be wary of approaches by older men. Perhaps these children need these messages more graphically presented to them in their primary schools.

It must be said though, that peodophile groups have been active in Britain for many generations before the influx of identifiable foreigners.

Meant to say thank you to Butty for signposting that excellent article. Its comments about Sharia Law compared with ours are particularly pertinent.

No Petra, they are not all of Pakistani origin. Two are from a north Africa. And Stuart Hazell is English. And there is a gang of Russians arrested today for trafficking young eastern European women and girls.

A source quoted today linked the demography of certain areas and the make up of the night time economy with the over representation of Asian offenders. He said 'Young vulnerable girls migrate to the night time economy where they come across taxi drivers and people working in take aways who are more likely to be Asian. It is better to focus on occupations of offenders not race or religion'.

In many ways the biggest danger is not on the streets but online and the totality of abuse shows far more white people are perpetrators.

I listened to a senior police officer on the radio this morning and she clearly had no defence but I did get the impression that things will be different in future for which we must be grateful. I heard the mother of one of these girls on the radio yesterday saying how hard she had tried to get help. She didn't sound like the sort of uncaring parent we might 'expect' these girls to have. Apparently the Social Services said they might take her away from home if the mother persisted!

petra I can't agree with you. If this gang had all been white Irishment would you have blamed the Irish? If they had all had blonde hair would it be something to do with blondes? It is too soon to suggest that their ethnic origin is responsible and as far as I can see the Muslim community is as outraged as I am.

excellent article by Zoe Williams here

In these particular cases, blame the PC brigade. This has been going on far longer than these cases represent. Nobody would talk about the Elephant in the room: that all these men are of pakistani/ Muslim Origen.
Jack Sraw knew it was going on when he had the power to do something; but no, it would have seemed racist to even think it.

I don't think it's necessarily that "vulnerable" children have had dreadful upbringings in the sense of current bad parenting. One of the girls who has been widely reported on was adopted. I don't know what age she was adopted at but it's possible that her earlier childhood experiences contributed to her vulnerability. It seems that her adoptive mother did all that she could to try and get help. Apparently, she even organised a "case conference" herself but said that everybody kept passing the buck. I have heard previous reports where parents were told there was nothing that could be done because the children were "prostitutes" and it was a lifestyle choice!!

I think it's absolutely appalling that nothing was done by the police, social services or anybody when it was brought to their attention that young girls were being abused in this way. Thank goodness for the one policeman who apparently meticulously followed it up and managed to get enough evidence for the case to be brought to prosecution.

There certainly does seem to be evidence to suggest that the attitude towards the abuse of "troubled" children has in the past - and even to date - tended to be one of indifference.

I think in the case of the poor abused children in the recent case, it's a 'blame the victim' attitude. There seemed to be no understanding of how these children had been cleverly groomed and totally exploited. It's also the case that these children were 'vulnerable' a code word for having had dreadful upbringings and therefore probably, difficult to manage. It was just too easy to say that they would not help themselves and therefore they couldn't be helped.

There is some excellent background in today's Guardian.