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There's also a deeper problem here of course in the way girls and women are viewed in our society when it comes to rape and sexual abuse. Something which is not just a problem in the Uk but much, much wider.
A couple of years ago there was a a case went to court of a man in his 40s charged with sexual activity with a 13 year old girl. Both the prosecuting lawyer and the judge characterised that girl as 'predatory'. The judge in his summing up said that the man had been 'egged on' by her and coudn't help himself. That she had behaved in a 'predatory' way. The man got a two year sentence.
The whole idea of the 'lolita' effect is alive and well in western culture. As is the notion that women and girls have suspect sexuality and boys and men no control over their sexual urges. recent cases on college campuses in the US and university campuses in the Uk show very clearly that girls and women who say they have been raped are immediately suspected of lying. The attitude seems to be that crying rape is a common thing.
Victim blaming of girls and women is rampant. from the coverage of a girl gang-raped by college football players which focused almost exclusively on the tragic damage to the boys' career whilst twitter erupted in disdain for their victim, to the #JadaPose twitter meme in which users ridiculed the 16 year old victim of a vicious gang rape who was raped whilst passed out at a party - with the video of it posted by her rapists showing them laughing as they inserted objects into her.
The way the police in rotherham viewed the girls who were groomed and systematically raped and abused by those men is not isolated. The idea that they were asking for it - that they were sexual beings and used accordingly pervades even our progressive western culture.
We are not so far away from India, where a leading politician claimed that rape is 'sometimes right, sometimes wrong' that boys 'make mistakes' and girls should not wear short skirts.
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