Rotherham

[Undertoad]

looking the other way is not being culturally sensitive it is a shameful dereliction of duty

Precisely.

A lot of people are going to say it's political correctness gone mad, but if that was the case, there would be a lot more towns reporting in. Racial tension is everywhere, P.C. is everywhere. This was something local, something broken.

[DanaC]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Precisely.

A lot of people are going to say it's political correctness gone mad, but if that was the case, there would be a lot more towns reporting in. Racial tension is everywhere, P.C. is everywhere. This was something local, something broken.

Absolutely. I think there was a lot of politics involved in this. And corruption. And people more concerned with protecting themselves from political fallout than in protecting children from abuse.

But there was also a seriously warped view of who those girls were and that is a much wider problem. Not just girls but children, and in particular poor and troubled children. We can see that same thing in the way historic cases of abuse are now coming up for children's homes and what appears to have been some very powerful men (including at least one MP) abusing those children with impunity and then strong arming the police not to investigate. Even without the strong arm tactics to stop police investigations it seems that several youngsters who tried to report abuse were basically ignored because they weren't believed and they weren't believed because they were troubled young lads in a children's home making accusations against pillars of the community.

Poor and ignored.

There is a class element as well as a gender element to much of this. I think poverty in the Uk has similar implications as race in the US in how people are viewed and treated. The police, politicians and care workers were from a different class to most of the victims and that warped their view of them.