Rotherham Child Abuse

The convicted (& others not apprehended) men involved in this terrible case are criminals. Their depraved behaviour is unacceptable. Criminals and depraved people are found in all social and ethnic groups. In this particular case the men, who I understood all knew each other through being friends of friends etc. came from the Muslim community in Rotherham.

I think the fact that many public employees involved in investigating the cases or 'caring' for some of the girls, thought that other members of the local Muslim community would not (are not) be equally appalled by the behaviour of this terrible gang and help is in itself a form of racism. Until we/society stops seeing people as 'a type' and start seeing people as individuals first then situations like this may continue.

Nihal Arthanayake (Radio 1 DJ and also BBC Asian Network) was on the news tonight saying that he asked the Pakistani community about their feelings and to phone in to the show - he said that some of them thought that even mentioning the fact that the men were Pakistani is a racist thing to say. Maybe the police were right to be concerned.

An interesting article by Suzanne Moore here:
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/aug/27/poor-children-seen-as-worthless-rotherham-abuse-scandal

I think she has hit the nail on the head. And also, in her first section, made it clear how impossible it is to protect these girls who see themselves as worthless, short of chaining them up.

Earlier intervention is what is needed in order that they should grow up with some self-respect and not feeling worthless. It starts in nursery - and the government has curtailed funding for the sort of places that help these youngsters to gain a sense of self-worth - Sure Start, and early years centres for parents and children where parenting skills are demonstrated and children get positive play experiences. Then the struggling education system picks them up and tries to help them to self worth. An almost impossible task with the size of schools we have.

These things do not happen in isolation - they are part of society as a whole and of the flawed systems we have in place.

If priority is not given to nurture and support for struggling parents who do not have the skills to make good parents, then this is the reward we will reap. Government needs to re-open these centres and put the priority back on prevention, right from the earliest years..

The PCC has fallen on his sword and resigned from the Labour party before his is kicked out. But Wright has not resigned from his very well-paid job. The words "brass neck" springs to mind. But not surprising that he continues to see the world and his part in it as positive, worthy and blameless.

Why were the girls not cared for? Was it collective denial? Was it a fear of being seen as racist or was it a combination of sexism, class prejudice and a prejudice against teenagers. How many of us actually have positive attitudes towards teenagers? People gush about children but the minute they hit puberty many adults see them in a very different light. If you are female, working class and a teenagers what hope have you got that people will take you seriously and treat with respect? (I'm assuming most of the victims were working class as Rotherham is a pretty working-class town I believe)

That's partly true, but not entirely so. I've just heard an interview with one of the abused girls - now a woman - who described doing the normal things that teenagers do, going to the shopping centre, MacDonalds, giggling on street corners and so on. She was 'befriended' aka groomed by the man whom she thought was a boyfriend, he bought her presents, she thought he was her boyfriend and imperceptibly she was drawn in to the abuse and then made to have sex and worse with his gang. She was threatened, her family were threatened, she saw no way out. Her family was not uncaring or inadequate.

So while some of the girls came from care homes or disfunctional families, it certainly wasn't the majority - the police bear a heavy responsibility here. For example, the report indicates that where three secondary headteachers pleaded with police to prevent men waiting at the school gates to collect the groomed girls to provide oral sex in the lunch break, the police declined to do anything. This would have been a laughably easy way to arrest the perpetrators, but it was easier to do nothing.

Thanks, Mamie. That article reflects wholly my experience of working with sexual exploitation of children - there are so many dimensions to social work, care for those in need and control of those who perpetrate these terrible acts. Delving even deeper, it wouldn't surprise me to learn that the criminals themselves have been abused in different ways, too. However, that is never an excuse to harm others, but goes some way to explain how innocent children get knocked from pillar to post and end up meeting their own kind out on the streets, away from protective, interested adults who want to steer them away from exploitation, whether they are doing it or suffering from it.

Mishap and others who refer to our society/culture beginning with prevention at an early age are right. Children soak up what they see around them. Dad with his Sun, page 3, misogynistic jokes, sexualising children before they have had their childhood, women constantly deferring to men's dictates, racist jokes, kids having free rein on the internet, being exposed to images that eat away at their self-esteem......I could go on all day!

Our society creates the environment in which organised sexual exploitation of children can thrive. I'm not talking about sexual abuse of individuals by individuals - there is no culture on this planet that is free of ths behaviour - I'm talking about power, gun crime, the trading of abusive images, human trafficking, drug dealing, money laundering, paedophile rings, corruption in high places and terrorism - all are intertwined. Our children have to grow up in this environment and need us to understand what is out there in order to protect them. It's not only about groups of abusive men from particular ethnic backgrounds.

MiceElf the example you describe is typical of how organised crime draws in children to be attacked and abused, given alcohol, drugs and money, filmed whilst they are being abused in the most horrendous ways you can imagine, then the videos trafficked at a different level across the globe to fund the purchase of drugs, arms, missiles, terrorism. Hard to take in but true. This is why multi-agency organised crime units and child sexual exploitation units have been set up across the country and the smaller multi-agency units dealing with local serious crime management largely disbanded, except for larger areas, and absorbed back into the specialist teams in police, probation and social services. Unfortunately, both levels of crime management are still needed.

Lots of children's fathers read The Sun, it's a popular newspaper.
I'm not sure it always helps when after something like this happens we try to then make sense of it all from our text books, learned papers, experts. So called experts were being told of what was happening at the time and they were beyond useless.
These impressionable young girls and so many girls are impressionable at that age were first wooed by the 'adoring' criminal in question. They were made to feel special, loved, before gradually being made dependent on hard drugs, alcohol. At this point I expect they hardly knew what day it was. Incredibly sad. A particular type of girl was targeted by a particular type of man in these cases. It was done on an industrial scale and the men came from communities where the girls were passed around their family members, friends, others and this was seen as acceptable because of who these girls were. White, mostly although not all working class. What hope for the male dominated community these men represent? If we try to make sense of this and use lack of self esteem, The Sun newspaper I think we lose the terrible facts of dousing in petrol and worse in our wooliness.
I only hope the girls, now young women are getting all the help and support they must now need. Are they though? God help them if it's from those who should have been listening to all the cries for help as part of their job.

I don't see much news in The Sun, Penguin! That's probably what makes it popular. Yes, the complexity of child sexual exploitation can't be pinned down with a few references to what each of us thinks causes it, but having a helpful debate like this raises awareness all round and contributes to the bigger picture. Each of us are cogs in a wheel, the size of which we cannot begin to imagine. We can all do our bit, though, in helping to protect children and guiding them so they are less likely to harm others.

No I don't suppose there is much news in The Sun whenim. I agree we all have to do something. I posted, probably too soon, after reading my usual mix of online news and I'm just feeling so frustrated reading how those who were supposed to protect failed so miserably. Reading your post MiceElf about the head teachers being ignored by the police, it just beggars belief. These men must have thought they were untouchable in the end.

I recall seeing a tv programme a while back about young white girls being groomed by Pakistani men. Not all of them were from care homes, some of the girls were from regular families who did the usual thing young teenagers do, hang round the shopping mall on Saturday afternoons. There they were befriended by young Pakistani boys, possibly some would have been school mates. These boys would buy them presents and lavish attention on them, once these boys had their captive audience in their pocket, they would then pass them on to older men in their community. The whole process would have been very insidious and if any of us can remember our young selves at that age, I can see quite well how easily it would be to be duped when you are naive and susceptible to flattery.

Mice and When your posts this morning sum up so eloquently what I was trying to say yesterday. That's what I also meant in my post directed to Nonu about the responsibility of all of us to create the sort of society in which our ( and by this I mean our society's) girls can flourish and our boys develop healthy attitudes towards women. HD - your comment about 'maybe the police were right to be concerned' - my view would be that it might have been understandable that they were concerned but it is never never right for such concern to impact on your actions as a police officer. However, as I have said in pps I think the police's behaviour was much more a result of their mysoginist attitude with a healthy dose of classism thrown in.

One or two of you have wondered what lasting effect this has had on the girls. Some of you may have seen this on This Morning today. The lady who rang in yesterday saying her daughter was one of these girls (although not in Rotherham) came into the studio this morning with her daughter to be interviewed anonymously. The daughter was terribly abused by gangs of men from the age of 12. She said she can't sleep until it gets light as she fears they will come to get her. She has flashbacks, nightmares and wakes up screaming most nights. She is obviously having ongoing counselling
The mother also said that the authorities need to wake up to the fact that this is going on in a lot of towns and cities in the UK.

That was brave of them to do that - so often an individual case really strikes home when the bigger picture is just so overwhelming. She'll never have the life she would have had will she no matter how much support she gets

Of course vote catching has nothing to do with attitudes of Governments !!

I just see in some of the latter posts nothing that makes me believe anything will change.

Government bashing, The Sun newspaper, no doubt the Daily Mail and Margaret Thatcher will be brought in soon.

. This is not the fault of the government, if it was then Labour are to blame also, perhaps even more because it has been going on for so many years whilst they were in power and it is a Labour run council. . Sure Start was in place, it didn't stop the Asian paedophile ring nor any white, Chinese or black paedophiles. Out of interest we have not lost our Sure Start centres.

To try and say they didn't do their job because of sexism, class prejudice and predudice against teenagers is ridiculous. Council workers, Police Officers, Social Services employees are all working class, dealing with sexism all day and have kids of their own.

The newspapers had b----r all to do with this case. Why try and use your hatred of some newspapers or political persuasion to give so much as 1 inch of propaganda in defence of these filthy /@!,!#)'''s.

Even now there is no acknowledgement of the reality behind this particular case, too hot to handle and the truth must not come before the need to protect multiculturalism , liberal thinking and the need to blame anybody but not the /u?#>@'s who have violated, ruined and abused 1400, 'known' children who were not all from the care system.

That's what I am getting heartily sickened at. There must be an adault debate and openness over this case or it will never be stopped. It is not racial hatred, it's not getting at a minority group, it has to be about cultural values in this instance because that is what is at the heart of this particular paedophile ring. We don't try and protect the paedophile from the religious groups, politics, celebrities why on earth should this case not be held up to account just because it about a particular community.

Is it our liberal thinking? We, the establishment, try in our muddled way to accommodate people and think somehow they will absorb all our values, be like us, think like us?
I have no idea.

MiceElf I was certainly not equating working class with dysfunctional. Just trying to convey that in our society women are victims of prejudice, "lower class" as well and I would add "teenagers" to the list. So put the 3 together and the safety of these girls is not a priority for many in power.

well said POGS. Too many excuses/reasons/justifications, not enough about arresting the rapists. The only people who need help and understanding are the children involved. Multi-cultural sensitivities should not be used as a screen or a reason for failure to respond to these children. There are only two possibilities here: (1) the agencies involved were not aware of what was going on. (2) the agencies involved were aware of what was going on and for whatever reason chose to do nothing about it, on a collective basis. In either case, they have failed to do the job(s) they are paid to do and should at the very least be fired, if not charged with criminal offences. I appreciate that this may seem simplistic to some, but I dont see how it can be any other way. Perhaps we need another Police Force to investigate? Certainly should be consulting with the local community leaders to start arresting some of these pigs.

Said in today's paper that a minority of white men were involved in this awful behaviour, Eastern European and Roma.

I do wonder if perceiving others to be outside one's own culture makes it easier to objectify and abuse.

I think it is important to read Alexis Jay's report in full to even begin to try and understand what happened. I really don't think it can be condensed into a brief newspaper or TV report. Neither the problem or the solutions are simple.

You are absolutely right, Mamie. This is a very careful and thoroughly researched report and many of the points people have raised on this thread are fully covered in it.

What on earth do you mean by working class POGs? What is certainly isn't is a homogeneous group of people - far from it. I have one social worker and one police officer in my circle of friends, both are graduates and come from affluent, professional homes. A colleague used to be a council worker - he was the chief executive of a council and a qualified solicitor. I'm really puzzled ( hope you are not going to pull ' they all go out to work do they all working class malarchy)

And yyyyyyyyyyy to Mamie about reading the full report