Official Report into Rochdale Grooming Scandal and its implications.

The official report into the child abuse scandal in Rochdale highlights once again the abject failure of both Greater Manchester Police (GMP) and Rochdale council. Reading the conclusions, it is almost unfathomable how such negligence - yes, sheer pig-headed negligence - could have occurred, not even on the occasional case but systematically, through the racism and sexism of professionals charged with the safety of the vulnerable.

111 cases were investigated by the team headed by child expert Malcolm Newsam and former detective superintendent Gary Ridgway.

Many of the alleged perpetrators were never investigated, and the victims - usually frightened young girls lured by classic grooming techniques - were treated with disrespect. These victims were either ignored or strung along, in the latter case being interviewed but with no formal recording of the allegations leave alone any investigation.

In one shocking example, a victim known as ‘Amber’ was not only ignored when she sought help from the police but she herself was later arrested and then bailed to live with a man who had been previously arrested on suspicion of child sexual exploitation. If you wrote that into a TV drama, people would switch off jeering at the implausibility.

Some of the girls were threatened with guns and other death threats by perpetrators. When they placed themselves at serious risk of harm by nevertheless reporting the abuse to the police, the police didn’t even bother to make reports of the most serious allegations, such as mass rape and underage girls being caged and made to dress like babies or bark like dogs. The implication of such forced actions is clear - the paedophile was not only turned on by teenagers but by the thought of sex with a baby.  What kind of monster ignores such allegations? The police who didn’t bother to fill out reports should be prosecuted themselves because their negligence led to further child rape.

One girl was made pregnant by a rapist. Her foetus was subjected to DNA tests without asking the girl or her parents, but because many of the rapes were gang rapes, the DNA unsurprisingly didn’t match the main suspects. Instead of testing the DNA of other men involved in the gang rapes, the police dropped the case and left the foetus in a police freezer. The father of the foetus was never charged with sex with a minor - he served eight years for the lesser charge of trafficking for sexual exploitation. What on earth is the point of carrying out sophisticated forensics tests such as DNA when the evidence is ignored? The lack of respect for the traumatised girl is just staggering.

The report covered cases between 2004 and 2013, but since it also found that 96 alleged perpetrators are still free, there is no doubt that there will have been continued instances of grooming and coercion for sex since then.

At the time, much was written about the possible motives of council workers and police in ignoring these crimes. One was a fear of being thought racist, which of course is racist towards the mainly white victims. Even now this trepidation persists - The Times’s news piece on this report today refers to the perpetrators as being ‘Asian.’ What a discredit this does to the millions of Asians contributing to society and living peaceably in communities up and down the UK.  As an Asian-born (Persian) woman myself, this twee euphemism makes me seethe.

Two facts were apparent about the perpetrators. They were overwhelmingly Pakistani, or Afghani, and almost all in unskilled casual jobs. These were uneducated, unintegrated misogynists who had imported their street culture of male entitlement and sexual coercion into their host country.

One has to wonder why so many of this demographic were allowed into this country? Most pay no or little tax - these are largely not successful entrepreneurs or businessmen but men working occasionally in kebab shops or doing other menial jobs which allowed them to keep casual hours and spend their considerable spare time cruising for powerless girl children.

There is no doubt that immigration is a good thing when we are importing skilled workers happy to obey the law and integrate culturally. And being a chef or a chauffeur or full-time taxi driver or supermarket worker is a skilled job; it requires training and experience. But adults approaching middle age tossing meat on a skewer or providing a casual minicab service for a few hours a week is no serious career. I don’t even like to think of how many of these men were claiming benefits in order to spend their hours forcing drink and drugs into girls that they lied to and raped.

How it must sting for those Asians who have lived through years of casual or serious racist abuse and been relieved to find it no longer acceptable in society to see themselves being bunched in with a load of child rapists. My wonderful neurologist still receives occasional cat-calls of ‘nigger’ in working class areas of Glasgow where feral gangs prowl. My Chinese friends had to endure years of ‘shall we get a chinky?’ Pakistani and Indian professionals have squirmed through instances of stop and search, or extra attention at airport scanners.

It’s time to call these perpetrators out for what they were: criminals taking advantage of a guilt-ridden society atoning for past sins.

As for the treatment of the girls, this was a combination of misogyny and sneering at the powerless, whether girls from working-class homes or those in care without confident, furious advocates. The cases stem from a time when the word ‘chav’ was still in frequent use. What is the word but a disdainful put-down of working class individuals who lack the temerity to keep quiet and slog on. How dare they buy designer clothes? How dare they pollute the beach on which Giles Coren wishes to relax after an expenses paid meal costing what those individuals earn in a week?

Misogyny in culture still exists - see the term ‘Karen’ denoting a woman who can assert herself. Visible prejudice against the working-class may be less acceptable on paper these days, but at a time when the meritocracy of the late ‘60s to ‘80s has given way to nepotism and opportunities only open to the wealthy, working-class people have less and less of a voice in society. And then huge scandals come to light, like the numerous child-grooming, scandals, or the driving to suicidal despair and criminal records of working people of all races and nationalities in the sub postmaster debacle, and you realise that it takes decades, if at all, for justice to be done for those who lack a voice.

Even the prospect of a Labour government with more working-class MPs isn’t the balm it should be. Too many of those working-class MPs are tribal, concentrating on just their demographic whether it be white males (remember the horrific misogyny at Socialist Worker) or BLM or tolerating antisemitism in their quest to appeal to their constituencies.  Or else being too afraid of losing support to state truth (‘No, a rapist who turns up to Court in a dress does not belong in a women’s prison’ ‘Yes, someone waving a ‘jihad’ poster should be arrested.’). Many too will shriek ‘racism’ if anyone questions why foreign-born rapists with no job prospects were allowed into the country or have managed to stay despite allegations of child-rape.

Until this reticence to ask difficult questions can be overcome, it seems we are doomed to a cycle of cover-up and, years later, scandal. When will those in power realise that an egalitarian society is one in which no one, of any race, colour, or demographic, is born with an inherent advantage over another, and no one is ignored by those in power?