Unreliable
Well clearly this business of Musk and the grooming gangs is going to run and run, so let’s remind ourselves of the background.
The row between Mr Musk and Starmer centres around a series of high-profile cases where groups of men – mainly of Pakistani descent – were convicted of sexually abusing and raping predominantly young white girls around the UK.
In 2012 The Times newspaper investigated Rotherham grooming gangs, which led to a major inquiry. At least 1,400 children were subjected to appalling sexual exploitation in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013, according to a 2014 report written by Prof Alexis Jay. The report made headlines in the UK and around the world and led to major debates in Parliament.
Similar scandals also occurred in other towns, including Oldham, Oxford, Rochdale and Telford, leading to a national inquiry into child sexual abuse, which was also led by Prof Jay.
How did Oxford get in there along with three northern industrial cities?
The CPS was criticised for a decision not to proceed with a prosecution in Rochdale on the basis that it viewed the main victim as “unreliable” following an investigation between August 2008 and August 2009. That decision was overturned later by Nazir Afzal in 2011 after [he was] appointed by Starmer as the CPS chief prosecutor for north-west England.
Speaking to BBC Verify, Mr Afzal said that the view of prosecutors not to proceed to trial at the time was “if the police aren’t happy that she will give credible evidence then we’re not happy either”. He went on to say that he had reviewed and reversed the decision as “I believed what she [the victim] was saying”.
That’s always an issue in prosecution, as far as I know – there’s always worry about how a witness will come across to a jury, worry about how a victim will come across, worry about which way to jump. It’s not easy. We on the outside can think “They just should have [etc]” but we don’t know.
The elephant in the room is the question of whether the police and prosecutors erred on the side of doing nothing because the accused men were Pakistani, aka [whispers] Muslim. Would it be “Islamophobic” to prosecute them? Would it be controversial? Would it look like whities bullying brown people? Would it look like bullying [gasp] a community? I have no idea whether or how much that influenced decision making, but some people clearly suspect it did.
On a related note, Elon Musk is absolutely the wrong person to be re-lighting this fire.
Honestly, I’m a bit confounded about the ‘grooming’ language. Groomers target underage girls for psychological manipulation, to condition (arguably, brainwash) them into being sexually compliant adults. These gangs, from what I understand, were straight-up rapists. It’s a weird bit of timidity.
Ok good, I’m not the only one that was perplexed by that wording. Rape gang makes much more sense. “Grooming” lacks the utility it did but in this case it seemed entirely inappropriate.
And Ophelia, thank you for expressing a sentiment I’ve been feeling more than ever; the phrase “if only they just…” gets used all the time by people who have never been in a position where they’ve actually had to “only just do”. As an armchair general myself I get it.
The grooming comes in the part where these girls get stuck in the business for years. It’s not like these gangs rape these girls once and then run off. They find vulnerable girls, they lure them in with candy, drugs, food, and money… and then they pimp them around. For years.
If that’s not grooming, what is?
There is a Wikipedia article on the Oxford gang. It is grim reading.
Oxford is, in fact, an industrial city, though of course that’s not the first thing that people associate with it.
One doesn’t mention Cowley, said the Duchess.
BK @ 2 – Yer welcome. Even just a glimpse of jury duty – just voire dire for a couple of days – brought home the difficulty of having to decide.
Like so many hot-button issues, this is a case where there’s merit on both sides of the argument, which means the judgment comes down to the nuances of people’s personal biases, and then it quickly spirals into a mess of overthinking and overcompensating in one direction or the other. Racism and anti-racism are both factors. If you’ll forgive a Woody Allen reference — ugh, I know! But it’s apt — I always think of the exquisite opening scene of Match Point, with its monologue about a tennis net:
By the end of the film, the significance of the monologue hits like a thunderbolt.
Sometimes it comes down to the millimetre. The subtlest, most imperceptible factors will determine which side of the net the ball comes down on, and the whole game is decided as a result.
The Rotherham scandal isn’t tennis, and it’s not luck that nudges the ball to one side or the other. It’s the subtleties of people’s personal biases that start off as a nudge and then set the course for us to split into divergent, opposing sides.
There are people who are simply racist against Pakistani/Muslim/”brown” people, and will seize any opportunity to criticize them. They’re biased from the outset.
And there are people who are strongly anti-racist, and who have created an image around that value. They’ve crafted for themselves a public profile of strongly opposing the racists. In order to maintain their credentials, they put more weight on concern for the potential fallout to Pakistani/Muslim/”brown” “communities”. So they’re biased in the other direction.
And there are people who have crafted their public profile of personal values to feature cynicism against the sometimes naïve, simplistic, and performative attitudes of the anti-racists. Their bias goes back the other way.
Then there are people who think everyone in the camp that opposes the naïvety and performativity of the anti-racists must themselves be racist. Pop goes the tennis ball back over the net.
Then there are the people who think everyone in the camp that dismisses criticism of anti-racist overreach must themselves be corrupted by their own naïve worldview…
On and on it goes, each side overthinking and overcorrecting against the perceived excesses of the other side.
The only way to really adjudicate this is to take the very best arguments from both sides in absolute good faith, and try one’s best to weigh them equally. Look at the net from both sides simultaneously, and then you can clearly make out which side the ball should come down on.
I come down on the side that says this was started by the people who see themselves as anti-racists, or who were worried about how they’d be perceived by the anti-racist side. They got this one wrong. It was their bias at the outset that set off this culture-war flashpoint. But in the ensuing fiasco, the other side has proven to have flaws, too. Racism does indeed play a factor in this mess, even if it was an anti-racist panic that set it off.
I think one factor that would help, going forward, is NOT emphasizing the fact that the victims were predominantly white–this feeds into the racist fearmongering which treats this as a race problem instead of as a problem of fundie Islamists, or even a ‘man problem’ (after all, we just came off the French gang-rape case that didn’t involve Islam at all).
First off, this is England we’re talking about. Pick any group, and white people are going to make up the predominant segment of it, unless there’s a specific factor pushing the racial balance in another direction.
Second, I do think it has less to do with race than with religion. Little white girls and boys aren’t Muslims, which is important because raping a Muslim would either be defiling a Muslim male, or offending the Muslim man who owns the female. This would be ‘bad’ in a way that assaulting someone who is not Muslim would not be. It’s just that race is a fairly easy signifier for Muslim identity.
The question is, of course, how to crack the problem without resorting to racist deportations (which would, I should note, result in Muslim women–and even non-Muslim Arab women–being dragged/kicked back to countries where they will get acid-faced for not wearing a hijab). Obviously, the gangs shoudl be investigated and the participants punished the full extent of the law. But it’s a religion problem meaning it’s a culture problem, and you can’t just solve that sort of thing with nothing but punishment. There’s got to be some form of sincere outreach attempting to make inroads to the community so that you can create an understanding of just how wrong and wicked this behavior is.
Even a basic education campaign might help. (I’m a firm believer in assimilating asylum seekers, in particular, with mandatory education of how to live in a multi-cultural society.)
Well that and geographically isolating them so that forming ethnic enclaves is difficult.
I haven’t actually read the Quran or the Hadith, admittedly, but I know there are things in there (the Aisha story etc.) that can be (and has been) used to justify child abuse. Still, I’m strongly inclined to doubt that this is “about religion” per se. As Sam Harris once put it (from memory), “I’m not holding religion responsible for every bad thing ever done by a religious person. I’m only holding religion responsible for the things people do specifically for religious reasons.” E.g. I don’t think a catholic priest has ever raped a child because he thought it was the will of God, that it was mandated by Jesus in the New Testament etc. These are opportunistic male predators using their position to seek personal gratification at the expense of women and children. To the degree that religion plays a role it’s of a more indirect nature (i.e. giving religious leaders an authority they should never have had in the first place, creating a stake in defending the “community”[1] etc.). Likewise, I would be surprised if any of the notorious grooming gangs honestly believed they were doing the will of Allah [2].
Once again, I strongly suspect that the phenomenon is more appropriately understood in terms of cults than in terms of religion. Steven Hassan explicitly treats sex-traffickers, pimps, groomers etc. as a kind of cult leaders and demonstrates how they employ many of the same deceptive recruitment techniques, the same coersive methods of persuation etc. as, say, the Church of Scientology or Jehovah’s Witnesses. I have recently been looking into some of the more notorious rape and child abuse cults like the Children of God (a.k.a. The Family) founded by Moses David Berg, and while I’m not at all excusing the many failings of the Left (I don’t think the average reader of B&W can be accused of crazy wokeism!) when it comes to denying or explaining away things like grooming gangs [3], at the very least the history of these cults goes to show that you don’t have to be Muslim or brown to get away with the most horrendous child abuse for decades. There has been no shortage of people trying to draw attention to the problem and get politicians, the legal system, the police etc. to act, and one of the reasons it’s been so difficult is that the powerful Right-wing religious lobby (i.e. the people on Trump’s and Musk’s own side) have been doing everything in their power to block any regulations or oversight that might interfere with their own activities in the name of religious freedom.
[1] As some of us still remember, movement atheists and skeptics are hardly in a position to throw any stones in this respect.
[2] I do think Jihadist terrorism, suicide bombings, stoning of adulteresses, killing of appostates etc. are mainly motivated by religion.
[3] One of the reasons Jim Jones (leader and founder of the People’s Temple and responsible for the Jonestown massacre) was able to get away with his endless scandals for as long as he did, was that Leftist, sympathetic to the Temple’s progressive stance on racial integration, were successful in portraying any criticism as racially motivated, Right wing smear-campaigns.
@Ophelia:
Some people also have a suspicion that the Pope might be Catholic and that bears just might shit in the woods.
Again, it’s worth recalling a part of the background to this, which is the Stephen Lawrence affair. As a result of a too-perfunctory investigation by the police into the murder of a black teenager by a white gang, the whole police force was officially declared to be “institutionally racist”. The press gave the police an absolute drubbing over this, with similar accusations being made against most other British institutions.
Over decades, most of the mainstream British media has adopted the mindset that it’s their job to find fault with British institutions and with anything “traditionally white” (aka “punching up”), whereas finding any fault at all with minority groups (aka “punching down”) just isn’t done.
Artymorty #7
Very well put. I made a similar point (although not as eloquently) here.
There is, of course, no shortage of misrepresentation, spin, dishonest “framing”, or even outright lying going on, but for the most part I think the greater problem is out of control partisanship, ethical and intellectual double standards, seeing the splinter in your brother’s eye, but not the beam in your own etc.
What contemptibly dishonest nonsense from Coel As anyone who has bothered to acquaint themselves with the murder of Stephen Lawrence knows, it was very far from being a problem of merely ‘perfunctory investigation’ — it was thoroughly incompetent and inadequate, as a reading of the Macpherson Report (available on the internet) will show. I suppose Coel thinks he can get away with this dishonesty because he is speaking to a mainly non-British audience here. What little respect he shows for you. Here are a couple of quotations from the Report:
“There is no doubt whatsoever but that the first MPS investigation was palpably flawed and deserves severe criticism. Nobody listening to the evidence could reach any other conclusion. This is now plainly accepted by the MPS (Metropolitan Police Service). Otherwise the abject apologies offered to Mr & Mrs Lawrence would be meaningless.”
And:
“The sustaining of negative relationships with the Lawrence family and Duwayne Brooks; a failure to undertake an adequate investigation; a lack of competent management; and a lack of a particular approach to the investigation of a racial attack were compounded precisely because the officers in charge of the inquiry did not place race at the centre of their understanding of the Lawrence murder and its investigation. Race relations were consistently under-played or ignored”.
What Coel is seeking to do here is not to account for the disgraceful deficiencies of the investigation of the rapes in Rotherham and elsewhere, but to seek to put the blame on a report that went out of its way to be fair-minded (but was nevertheless damning) by pretending that it was a first example of the ‘wokeness’ that he now pretends to see everywhere and is responsible for anything he disagrees with.
In a recent comment, Coel referred to Kamala Harris as ‘a mediocre DEI hire’ – the precise words I have heard from the mouth of an American acquaintance who is Trump supporter; I suppose this characterisation has been all over the right-wing fever-pits for months, and Coel was repeating a belittling phrase that he liked. I was surprised that no other commenter here remarked on this characterisation of Kamala Harris until I drew attention to it. Coel, as should be obvious from numerous comments in the past, as well as from the one above, has a racial axe to grind – and a thoroughly unpleasant one. He is not honest, and he is a thoroughly unpleasant piece of work.
I should add that two of the perpetrators – Gary Dobson and David Norris – are now in prison; they were found guilty, nineteen years after the murder was committed.
@Tim:
Yes Tim, when someone does a task in a “too perfunctory” manner (perfunctory: “carried out without real interest, feeling, or effort” or “done superficially, only as a matter of routine; careless or cursory”) they do tend to do it inadequately.
I’m sticking to my one-word summary, thanks. Indeed, I submit that it’s a more appropriate summary phrasing than yours (since a policeman who cared a lot and tried hard could still do an “incompetent and inadequate” job if they were not good at it, whereas my phrase conveys the underlying accusation, that they didn’t care).
Anyhow, are you saying that I’m wrong to suggest that the complete drubbing that the police received from the media and politicians over that then contributed to their turning a blind eye to the Pakistani rape gangs?
Ooooh, how utterly damning!
The fact that she was a DEI hire (picked primarily owing to her identity) is obvious. The fact that she was mediocre (by the norms of that role) is also fairly clear. And half of Americans agree with me. Indeed, half of the other half also agree with me, but would vote Democrat whatever.
Coel: Stop. Take a break. Go pester someone else. You always do this – you push the ugly harder and harder until you end up with this trash. Just shut up.
Harris mediocre? Of course she is. Just like Biden. It’s become a requirement for the job. (Trump would be mediocre too if the cancer of his depravity hadn’t metastasised to every element of his being.)
In reality most US presidents have been mediocrities.
I’d settle for mediocrity in a Republican president–that would be quite an improvement over most of them (at least in my lifetime).
As for Harris being DEI, that’s the whole point of a VP candidate–diversity (whether it’s geographic, ideological, experiential, demographic, or whatever–the only exception I can think of is when Clinton chose Gore, though Gore was more of an insider). Harris was no different than any other VP or VP candidate in that regard.
Well there’s also when Obama picked Biden. I never did like that choice, frankly.
Dear Ophelia,
It is of course entirely up to you what you allow on your blog, but it does seem unfair to me if other posters are allowed to make direct and aggressive attacks on me, but I’m then not allowed to respond.
In this thread I had posted one reasonable and on-topic comment. Tim then replied with an aggressive attack, including dragging in off-topic stuff from another thread, and I simply defended what I’d said, phrasing the reply way more moderately than Tim’s comment.
But if I’m too annoying I’m happy to simply stop reading here,
Cheers, Coel.
Why does Coel bring in, in connexion with Rotherham, etc, the murder of the black teenager Stephen Lawrence, about which Coel seems, and probably is, totally unconcerned, and the MacPherson Report, which he has complained about before since it used the term ‘institutional racism’ – and not, pace Coel, who clearly hasn’t bothered to read it, only in connexion with the Metropolitan Police? The reason is not that Coel is much concerned about the rapes (they were, after all, working-class girls who, being working-class, are, as Coel has told us, congenitally feckless because they have low IQs – ‘white slags’ seems to have been the phrase used in certain police departments – any more than he is concerned about the murder of Stephen Lawrence; the reason is that he wishes to ’suggest’ – in sneaking Tucker Carlson fashion – that the Report, because it introduces the term ‘institutional racism’, is basically responsible for the failure of the police in Rotherham and elsewhere to address matters in a responsible way. It is a thoroughly unpleasant and absolutely intended smear campaign on Coel’s part, and the pretence of injured innocence that he puts on should be seen for what it is. I wish that there was as much attention paid to the misogyny displayed towards working-class girls from poor backgrounds as to the race of some of their abusers.
But that fits the pattern I’m talking about–young(ish), inexperienced Black candidate picks older, experienced white man as his running mate, the idea being that it could bring in more voters and allay concerns about the candidate.
The contrast with Clinton/Gore is that they were both young(ish), moderate white Southerners. That was perceived as an unusual, and potentially risky, choice at the time.
Tim, referring to one’s nominal interlocutor in the third person rather than addressing him or her directly is rather passive aggressive and disrespectful. It’s the kind of behavior that triggers in natural contrarians sympathy with the opposite side.
I realise that I’ll likely get permanently banned from this blog for this (if I am not already), but at this stage I’m quite happy to be banned from a blog that allows someone to act like Tim, with near-incessant snide lies.
Just fuck off with your lies Tim. I have not said anything remotely like that, so either quote me (you can’t), or just fuck off you contemptible, dishonest shit.
By the way, Tim, you should ponder the fact that no-one asks to be born with the characteristics they have. If a person finds that they’ve been born with a lower IQ than someone else, well, they didn’t ask to be like that. It’s no fault of theirs. They are equally human beings, equally deserving of empathy and human rights and a decent life. Please think about that in amongst your nastiness.
Well,after I suggested that (not “in sneaking Tucker Carlson fashion” but openly and explicitly) Unherd published a piece by an ex-policeman, saying exactly the same thing:
“That, of course, immediately raises a simple, shocking question: why did British police services turn a blind eye to the gang rape of tens of thousands of young girls? I should have a fair idea. I was a police officer for 25 years, …
“The answer, in the end, is simple. Racism, for police services from Chester to Penzance, remains the original sin. From the Scarman Report to the Macpherson Inquiry [into the Stephen Lawrence affair], the police have long served as Britain’s sin-eaters, …”
Link.
So just fuck off Tim. You are vile.
Opelia, if you’re reading this, please either: (1) ban me, (2) tell Tim that his behaviour is unacceptable, or (3) at least allow me to reply to him when he attacks me.
Thanks for the link Coel, interesting. I hope you stay, you give me things to think about, as others do here. Sometimes we won’t agree, but that has it’s own kind of value.
Also, Ophelia is an outstanding editor/moderator, which is why B&W is as good as it is. She has saved me from looking like a jerk many times, to which I am appreciative. I try not to cause her undue trouble.
Coel @ 25 – fair enough.
Tim, please do dial it down.
Coel again – I haven’t banned you and don’t intend to and don’t want to. But that trumpish “DEI hire” crap is sheer goading. However it’s also not fair to pile on you after I’ve told you to take a break, so let’s everybody not do that.