Galaxy
I am not surprised that various people such as Tommy Robinson have a platform on this issue. Any attempt to discuss it is shut down. I talk about the problems within the Catholic Church with regard to safeguarding, when I do that no one goes 'but what about the Methodists that commit abuse'. It is fine to talk about abuse by catholic priests, it is fine to talk about abuse by Asian grooming gangs, it is fine to talk about the specific risk from step parents. They all are specific problems with regard to safeguarding. I couldn't care less who gets upset about those conversations.
I am a catholic and for some years our parish priest was a CofE priest who had, so to speak, changed sides.
I was talking to him about a cluster of cases, some physical abuse, not sexual, that drove me from the church for several years. He said to me that the extent of abuse within the CofE was far greater than in the catholic church.
As with the attention paid to sexual abuse involving Muslims, we must remember this countries long history of fear and contempt for the foreigner and their foreign religion. Before the current wave of immigration the fear and loathing was for the Irish, who emigrated to Britain, probably in millions from the 1840s onwards, and their Roman catholicism. I can remember it from my childhood. I come from an Irish army family and I can remember the doubt placed on the loyalty of soldiers of Irish heritage, despite them providing a disproportionately large proportion of the army since the late 18th century.
There is no argument that child abuse is a problem throughout society, but this concentration on particular sectors where the origins and religions are seen as alien both demonises certain sectors of society, and allows 'mainstream' society, to see it having nothing to do with them, but see it as an aberration brought in by outsiders and perpetrated by them.