1,400 girls had been abused

Back to Rotherham:

The journalist who uncovered the Rotherham grooming gangs scandal has said that even he massively underestimated the scale of the abuse.

Mr Norfolk had been putting pressure on Rotherham Council and South Yorkshire Police to answer questions about child sexual exploitation by predominantly Asian men since he started receiving tip-offs in 2011.

There it is again, that meaningless “Asian” euphemism. What Asian? Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Malayan, Indonesian, Vietnamese, Indian, Sri Lankan, what?

But this time the BBC does in fact admit the truth, albeit briefly.

He admitted that he had had to balance his instinct to reveal the abuse with concerns that the story’s publication would both stoke the reaction of the far-right and lead to accusations of racism.

“If you’d asked me the day before that press conference how many young teenage girls had been groomed and exploited in Rotherham over the time period the report covered, I would have guessed 150,” he said. He was “staggered” to hear Prof Jay reveal how 1,400 girls had been abused, trafficked to other cities, or had petrol poured on them. “They were treated like sub-human species for the pleasure of these men,” he added.

Mr Norfolk had first identified a “pattern” of Pakistani-heritage grooming gangs exploiting white girls in the north of England and the Midlands in 2010, but came up against a “conspiracy of silence” when he tried to elicit responses from police forces and councils.

He said that hearing Prof Jay explicitly refer to the perpetrators’ ethnic backgrounds was an “extraordinary” moment. “It was so hard-hitting, she didn’t mince her words. The response was seismic across the world.”

The BBC is still carefully avoiding the issue, of course. What does “Pakistani-heritage” imply? Islam. What about Islam? It’s obvious enough when the Beeb and others report on Afghanistan but not when they report on people of “Pakistani heritage.” They don’t want to stir up the Tommy Robinson fans, and they’re right not to want to do that, but drawing a tactful veil or rather burqa over the fact that Islam is intensely hostile to women has its drawbacks.

The Times had been called racist and Islamophobic for pursuing the investigation.

“It was a very difficult story to cover because it was a story about white British girls, aged typically between 12 to 15, being groomed and abused by men who, as the pattern seemed to become more clear, were overwhelmingly of Pakistani and Muslim heritage,” he said. “It’s not fun being regarded as somebody with abhorrent views, when in your heart, you know the opposite is the case.”

There were also fears about how far-right groups would react to the story, which did eventually lead to protests and marches descending on Rotherham. “It was a dream story for the far-right,” he said.

And a nightmare for the girls.

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