Rotherham

[DanaC]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

There may be a little of everything in the mix. Cultural tendencies. Racial biases. Underprotection of children. Poor policing. Poor management of policing. Overapplication of political correctness. Groupthink that excuses the behavior. Groupthink that encourages the behavior.
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I think that's a pretty fair summary.

[tw]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

There may be a little of everything in the mix. Cultural tendencies. Racial biases. Underprotection of children. Poor policing. Poor management of policing. Overapplication of political correctness. Groupthink that excuses the behavior. Groupthink that encourages the behavior.

Why justify public endorsement of corruption, links to major crime, irresponsible adults, a demented press, no checks and balances in the local government or the many higher levels of government, prosecution of top mangement where all this stuff must have tacit or overt approval, and justification using groupthink as an excuse? This could only occur when adutls in mass numbers acted as children. Are you saying even priests, ministrers, and rabbis can be excused for condoning this? Something this large could only exist when virtually all powers that be were complicit.

Aircraft crashes do not happen because everyone screws up. It happens when each one responsible person does not do his job. That is why investigations are conducted. To discover why each responsible person - who by themselves could have averted the whole thing - did not do their job.

Number of people who did not do their job, so that children in mass numbers could be sexually attacked, was massive. Groupthink can only occur when adults act like children rather than think for themselves as adults are required to do. Yes many adults are still children. But an entire town had nothing but adults with child mentalities? An entire town was that mentally deficient, morally bankrupt, and overtly corrupt? And that is an excuse?

Groupthink says the entire town should be prosecuted as accessories to the crime - if we are responsible. Or groupthnk is an excuse also used by many to excuse the Catholic Church for condoning and protecting pedophilia. Groupthink also justified the Halocaust. So groupthink is a valid excuse?

Plenty of excuses somehow justify what happened in Rotheram. Excuses that conclude we do not want to hold anyone responsible. Same groupthink is why the Catholic Church still protects pedophilia today.

[Undertoad]

I can't parse most of that. I'm pretty sure we said the same thing.

[orthodoc]

Tw, you diminish what happened to the young women in Rotherham by carrying on your endless personal vendetta against the Roman Catholic Church.

What happened to these young girls and women had nothing to do with the RCC, but had everything to do with Islam and the criminal elements that justify their actions in terms of their religion. Please widen your scope. This was a huge crime against everything non-Muslim, perpetrated by criminals to justify their assaults on innocent women.

[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.

[DanaC]

Fernbridge was set up after Labour MP Tom Watson raised the issue of child abuse at Prime Minister's Questions in October 2012.

He spoke of "clear intelligence suggesting a powerful paedophile network linked to Parliament and No10".

The revelations come amid a series of other sexual allegations centring on Westminster.

It emerged over the weekend that Lord Brittan himself has been questioned by police in connection with a rape allegation.

He was understood to have been interviewed under caution last month after a woman claimed she was raped in London in 1967. The peer is believed to strongly deny the allegation.

Last month, police searched the Westminster office of the Labour peer Lord Janner of Braunstone in connection with historical child sex abuse allegations.

The search was part of an ongoing inquiry linked to children’s homes in Leicestershire and came after officers searched the 85-year-old politician’s home in Golders Green, north-west London, in December.

The peer has not been arrested.

It is understood more than 10 current and former politicians are now on a list of alleged child abusers held by police investigating claims of a Westminster paedophile ring.
MPs or peers from all three main political parties are on the list, which includes former ministers and household names.

Several, including Smith, are now dead, but others are still active in Parliament.

Another is said to be Sir Peter Morrison, the former MP and parliamentary private secretary to Mrs Thatcher, who died in 1995. He was linked to allegations of child abuse at homes in North Wales.

Mr Danczuk is leading a campaign for a public inquiry into historical child abuse in public life and has the support of 139 MPs.

He in a Sunday newspaper yesterday: “Among the higher echelons of party politics, where the real power resides, my impression is that there is little appetite to confront the abusers in their midst.
“Quite the opposite. The mood is defensive, the approach is dominated by silence. ‘Move along, nothing to see here’, or ‘what’s the point of raking all that up old boy?’”.

Former Conservative cabinet minister Lord Tebbit, who also served in Mrs Thatcher’s Government, said there "may well" have been a political cover-up over child abuse taking place at Westminster in the 1980s.

"At that time I think most people would have thought that the establishment, the system, was to be protected and if a few things had gone wrong here and there that it was more important to protect the system than to delve too far into it,” he said.

"That view, I think, was wrong then and it is spectacularly shown to be wrong because the abuses have grown."
Asked if he thought there had been a "big political cover-up" at the time, he said: "I think there may well have been."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukne...blishment.html

These men were not muslims. They were powerful men who had easy access to vulnerable young people.

The key factor is not ethnicity. It is access to victims.

A lot of criticism is levelled at the muslim community for not coming forward, for 'harbouring' those in their midst who commit such crimes. And maybe that's a fair criticism. Though, with reactions like yours it's easy to see why. But what about the political community? Coverups and protection. Another common feature of large scale child abuse cases.

[limey]

Thanks, Dani, for taking the time to explain this so thoroughly. I, too, was saddened to see Ortho's kneejerk reaction about this being a Muslim problem, but haven't the energy or time to set out the details.
In short, it is about powerful people (or those perceived as such - whether that's minicab drivers, politicians or entertainers) having access to vulnerable people whom they can abuse ....

[orthodoc]

I want to apologize for my post last night. It was completely unacceptable. It doesn't even make sense. I'm not doing well right now and plan to take some time away. Take care all.

[Gravdigr]

Uh-oh, she's pulling a Gravdigr.

[DanaC]

Originally Posted by orthodoc

I want to apologize for my post last night. It was completely unacceptable. It doesn't even make sense. I'm not doing well right now and plan to take some time away. Take care all.

I think most of us understand you're having a hard time just now Orth. Lot of shit going on in your life. Sorry I went in so hard. Don't feel you need to vanish because of a kooky post. But if you do need break, please come back soon. *hugs*

Uh-oh, she's pulling a Gravdigr.

yeah...but you do it with such panache :P

[limey]

Hugs Ortho! I knew it was uncharacteristic of you. X

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by DanaC

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.

This is happening a lot, blaming religion when it's actually cultural traditions. Islam doesn't dictate burkas, or not educating girls, it's tribal customs.

Of course the ones who benefit from these barbaric customs are the ones in power, and they wish to remain in power, so they strictly enforce the customs. Round and round it goes. Some of those involved is this circus are clergy but it's still about power through culture, not religion.