Rotherham

[DanaC]

And you're doing exactly the same thing as tw - making this about Islam. It was not about Islam. This had nothing to do with religion.

There are cultural factors at play - but to suggest that this was in any way justified by these men in terms of religion is ludicrous. 80 to 90 percent of child abusers in the UK are white men - are they doing it because they are Christian?

This is what Nazir Afzal has to say about it. This is the man who reopened the case in Rochdale and led the investigation that resulted in the successful prosecution of the men there. He is the Crown Prosecution Service's lead on child protection and has been instrumental in changing the way the CPS deals with cases like this and has been at the forefront of recent investigations and prosecutions.

His role means he has oversight of all child sex abuse cases in England and Wales. “So I know that the vast majority of offenders are British white male,” he says, setting the number at somewhere between 80 and 90%. “We have come across cases all over the country and the ethnicity of the perpetrators varies depending on where you are … It is not the abusers’ race that defines them. It is their attitude to women that defines them.”

Afzal, 51, is resigned to the ongoing scrutiny of commentators on the right towards the role of Asian men in recent grooming cases, but thinks that the focus is an overreaction. He is also wary of the suggestion found in the report, and reiterated by home secretary Theresa May on Tuesday, that a culture of “political correctness” had contributed to the authorities’ decision to turn a blind eye to the abuse of at least 1,400 in Rotherham.

“I don’t want to play it down. The ethnicity of these perpetrators is what it is. It is a matter of fact. It is an issue that has to be addressed by the state, and the authorities and the community – but it’s important to contextualise this,” he says, racing rapidly through his arguments, twizzling a paper-clip in his fingers in time with his swift delivery.

He notes that the amount of media attention devoted to child sex abuse cases is inconsistent. He led the legal teams that reopened and successfully prosecuted the Rochdale grooming case in 2012, over the abuse of 47 girls by a group of Asian men. “A few weeks after the Rochdale case, we dealt with a case of 10 white men in North Yorkshire who had been abusing young girls, and they were all convicted and they got long sentences. It didn’t get the level of coverage,” he says.

Where there is involvement of Asian men or men of Pakistani origin, he points to a practical, rather than cultural explanation – the fact that in the areas where grooming scandals have been uncovered, those controlling the night-time economy, people working through the night in takeaways and driving minicabs, are predominantly Asian men. He argues that evidence suggests that victims were not targeted because they were white but because they were vulnerable and their vulnerability caused them to seek out “warmth, love, transport, mind-numbing substances, drugs, alcohol and food”.

“Who offers those things? In certain parts of the country, the place they go is the night-time economy,” he says. “Where you have Pakistani men, Asian men, disproportionately employed in the night-time economy, they are going to be more involved in this kind of activity than perhaps white men are. We keep hearing people talk about a problem in the north and the Midlands, and that’s where you have lots of minicab drivers, lots of people employed in takeaways, from that kind of background. If you have a preponderance of Asians working in those fields, some of that number, a very small number of those people, will take advantage of the girls who have moved into their sphere of influence. It’s tragic.”

In the acres of coverage of this issue, few others have considered the possibility of such a pragmatic explanation for the profile of the abusers. Only Rochdale’s Labour MP, Simon Danczuk, has attempted a similar hypothesis, telling the New Statesman: “It’s a complex jigsaw and ethnicity is just one of the pieces. Class is a major factor, night-time economy is a factor in terms of this type of on-street grooming.”


-snip-

In the aftermath of the Rochdale trial, Afzal was disturbed at the way that some responded by muddling the actions of those prosecuted with their religious backgrounds. “There is a lot of criticism of religion – namely: ‘Is this a Muslim thing?’” He recalls how after the Rochdale case, someone called the Radio 4 Any Answers programme. “He said the Qu’ran supports paedophilia. I’m not paraphrasing, that is what he said. He wasn’t cut off, he was allowed to say all manner of things.”

“There is no religious basis for this. These men were not religious. Islam says that alcohol, drugs, rape and abuse are all forbidden, yet these men were surrounded by all of these things. So how can anyone say that these men were driven by their religion to do this kind of thing?

“They were doing this horrible, terrible stuff, because of the fact that they are men. That’s sadly what the driver is here. This is about male power. These young girls have been manipulated and abused because they were easy prey for evil men.”

But he recognises that this will be a difficult issue for the British Asian community for some time. “In one case I dealt with, a British National party member was convicted of child sexual abuse. The response of the BNP was to say that he was no longer a member. The British Pakistani community cannot do that about members of their community that are involved in abuse,” he says, pointing out that they do not have the same option of neatly removing membership rights from community members involved in abuse.

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2...e-in-rotherham


The problem of sexual abuse of young girls, and indeed young boys, is huge. It cuts across culture and race. White men, black men, asian men. The differences are in the style of grooming and the choice of victims but even then - many of the girls who were vicimised by those men in Rotherham were from the same group (vulnerable young people in care homes) as the victims of white non-muslim men.

Your response is exactly why people get worried about the race element. Though, from Afzal's report it seems that was a very minor factor in the way it was dealt with at the time. But people latching onto the fact that those men were muslim, as if that were the defining factor in what they did adds to racial tension and veils the real problems. And probably adds to the lack of willingness in those communities to step up and deal with those members of their community who do commit such crimes.

These were not Qu'ran bashing Islamists. They weren't ISIS. They were not fundamentalists. This didn't happen in a mosque under the eyes of Immams. They were drug taking, drug dealing, alcohol drinking criminals who raped and abused vulnerable girls.