Rotherham

[DanaC]

At least 1400 children and in a small northern town. 0.5 percent of the whole population. Much bigger percentage of the town's children.

This has been bubbling away for quite a while now. That some of the people involved are still in their jobs is fucking disgusting.

You know - I can understand, having spent some time as a councillor, and in particular working with the Children's and Young People's directorate for that council that there is often a sene of unease when faced with something potentially incendiary as far as race is concerned. Indeed, we had a much smaller flurry of cases like this that came up whilst I was a councillor. And I remember as we started getting reports aout it there was real sense that this could play into the hands of the BNP and other racist parties. But that didn't stop us getting those girls into a safe place and it didn't stop the local police from arresting the men concerned and pressing charges.

Rotheram/Rochdale has been a centre of racial tensions for quite a few years - so I can imagine how worried people might have been that this was going to spark a lot of trouble. I cannot get my head around how that stopped them doing the right thing. The answer to the racist accusation that muslim men are abusers is to point out that some white men also abuse not to try and deny that some asian men do. And it is very clear and has been for a number of years that whilst the number of men abusing girls and children is probably no more for one than the other, they tend to follow very distinct patterns in how that abuse is carried out. It is a pattern. And denying it, covering it up,. looking the other way is not being culturally sensitive it is a shameful dereliction of duty.

And as for the police. Their utter contempt for these girls still baffles me. May of the girls were from deprived or troubled families, lot of them in carehomes. That coloured the police view of them as members of an underclass - not like nice girls. These they saw as slags, whores, street scum.

I could fucking weep.