• The grooming gangs debate has been manipulated, perpetuating Islamophobic narratives despite evidence showing widespread abuse across all communities.
• The far-right has exploited this issue for political gain, fuelling violence and racial stereotypes, with tragic real consequences, including the New Zealand mosque attack.
The Grooming gangs issue has been re awoken by the likes of Elon Musk, the billionaire American who seems to be interfering in British politics. He seems to be telling the likes of Kiers Starmer and the leadership that more needs to be done on grooming gangs and then he is championing people like Tommy Robinson. Since the formation of Tommy’s EDL party, there have been at least 20 members and supporters convicted of child sexual exploitation offences; at least ten of these were active in the EDL while Tommy was still leading it.
Musk has also been jumping on Nigel Farage, saying he’s an incompetent leader because there’s a clip going around of Nigel Farage saying Tommy’s not welcome in our party.
When it comes to the British sentiment of the grooming gangs, it is important for us to address this head on because this is an issue which is derived from facts; facts that have indeed been selectively reported and falsely analysed, and of course, we shouldn’t belittle them and as I have said and many Muslims, scores of Muslims including leadership have said they should be punished in the most strictest way possible, that being said, this term grooming gangs is a media constructed term, it is not legal nor is it a technical term. It’s been coined Asian exclusive crime of brown and Muslim people but if we look at the scores of other news stories that come of similar, if not worse cases then there is absolute no mention of their race or their religion. The reason why this has come up, is coming up and will continue coming up is because it is a gift for the far right and even the right wing. Why? Because it justifies their cause, it echoes a racial myth that we saw not so long ago during slavery that white women were in danger from black men and black men were accused of of raping white women–not to mention before World War II, the Jews were also referred to as pedos and the final point I want to make in this section is when it comes to any academia that’s researched into this field whether it’s Ella Cockbain’s research that I’ll be drawing on significantly. All of these people are consistent in saying that when it comes to child sexual abuse, it is not just one category, if you look at it on the whole, the police have been poor in general not only to the non-whites.
Statistics
Let’s look at some of the statistics in the UK: one in seven girls and one in 20 boys are sexually abused in the UK. 12 million children are sexually abused in the UK every year, this is according to the centre of expertise Centre of National Crime agency. It estimates between 550,000 to 800,000 people that pose various degrees of sexual risk to children and not to mention a lot of what the police is dealing with is peer on peer abuse so of course the grooming issue, the police initially were seen to not be as active as they should have been. It’s not just the case when it comes to grooming, it’s the same when it comes to child sexual abuse in general.
Foul Play
Let’s move on to the next section which I’m titling Foul Play.
In which you’re seeing white perpetrators of these crimes are being referred to as individuals and deviants but anyone who is non-white. There’s been a call for collective responsibility and blaming their culture, at least this is what academics like Shamim M have said. Caitlyn Spencer was a victim of abuse and what was she told? she was told her children deserved to die. And that they should be drowned in the channel and because she’s published a book and she was due to speak to the House of Lords, she was told beforehand to blame the Muslims. And she’s not the only one in Rochdale. A group for child sexual abuse survivors said it had been approached on several occasions by senior UKIP members including Lord Pearson who offered them high wealth donors, millionaires if they count out to the narrative being pushed by them with regards to this whole grooming gang thing now let’s move on to….
Home office report
The home office report which was commissioned by Sajid Javed who again was peddling this whole grooming gang thing. He was being used as a poster boy conservative party Home Secretary at that time and because it was delayed, there was a petition of half a million people that wanted it to be released again. It was delayed and Pritti Patel made it out to be like you know what, I’m trying to get it out quick but these people– I don’t know what’s going on there and then when it eventually did come out, it didn’t call it grooming because like I said, at the start of the video, it’s not a technical or legal term. They called it group-based child sexual exploitation and they concluded that the majority of the perpetrators were white and also that the victims were also boys and ethnic minorities, not just solely white women as many make it out to be. And then echoing a point that I mentioned at the beginning– the home office released something called a literature review accompanying the main report, saying that it’s dangerous to racialize abuse because number one, it’s harder to respond to abuse effectively and number two, it stigmatizes communities, as well and of course, Pritti Patel which was causing issues before the release was one of the high-profile people to cast aspersions and doubts on it and saying what is this clear certain communities, you know what I mean? Just waffling– no evidence whatsoever so how…
How did it start?
We know that there were right-wing people like the BNP that would pedal this and we know pre World War II there are, there have been other groups that have been labelled with similar kind of things. However, it was when the Times, Yes Rupert Murdoch’s Times had an Expose and they called it ‘Street grooming’ that brought it to the mainstream but the study that really gave this whole thing credence was something released by Quilliam, yes there were a bunch of brown guys that identified as Muslims, yes the same Quilliam that was funded by the likes of Lind and Harry Bradley Foundation who Scholars say are a part of the islamophobia industry I mean Ella Cockbain has ripped their so-called report to pieces. She calls it a joke frankly yeah so they released a report in 2017 and they said 84% of grooming gang offenders were South Asian–Pakistani origin–Muslim Heritage. What happened: the news headlines ran with this, they weren’t the only ones, you had Ayan Hiris Ali who referenced this Middle Eastern Forum that referenced this many, many newspapers went with this headline. Sunday Times and the likes even Tommy Robinson who was caught at one of the set trials that were taking place in Huddersfield and he nearly spoiled the trial so then he was held in contempt of court and one of the evidences that he brought forward was the Quilliam’s report so you know this report was big. Well the experts that looked into this report say it didn’t say where the data came from, nor did it say it’s source of funding and nor did it have any peer review done to it. Well frankly, that’s straight in the shredder mate. If that’s not all, the authors had no expertise in the field or around basic data analysis. Ouch!
Let’s get to the nitty-gritty now. They only looked at (this is a joke) they only looked at 264 offenders. Get this, across 12 years so that’s on average 22 only, 22 offenders a year and let’s put this in perspective here: In 2016 there were 6,60087 offenders just in England and Wales. They made conclusions on the victims when people that follow these cases know that the victims have anonymity protection. They actively denied black and brown victims when Dr Ella Cobain herself has worked with them and of course. And this is the key bit: the authors claimed to be quote unquote Muslim, which provided legitimacy to the far-right groups that said their own people are saying this so it must be true. And then this was taken on by the politicians. You had Labour’s Sarah champion who wrote an article in the Sun and you had Suella Braverman, the conservative MP who wrote an article in the Mail on Sunday, all of them pushing the same thing. UKIP then jumped on board with The narrative of our daughters and one of their guys Alan Craig called it ‘A holocaust of our daughters’. Interesting choice of word there. Then the Home Secretary Sajid Javed in 2018 only emphasized the Asian abusers aspect and perpetuated the whole grooming narrative.
Attacks that resulted
Now what happened as a result? Well the New Zealand attacker, the Terrorist that you heard, of course because he murdered 51 people in a mosque in New Zealand. On his ammunition he wrote for Rotherham, that’s one of the places affiliated with this whole grooming gangs issue. Number two: an innocent 81 year old man called Muhammad, yeah in Rotherham, same place he was kicked to death by two white people that called him the p word and a groomer. He was of course innocent, had nothing to do with it but they saw a brown guy, elderly and they they murdered him. Number three: you probably heard of the Finsbury Park attacker who killed one person outside the mosque, Darren Osborne. He also mentioned the grooming gangs thing as well and Andrew Leak, the fire bomber at DOA Center, yeah he also referred to it as well after firebombing it and then taking his own life. So that is the academic background behind all this.
