Rotherham
(source: Stanley Walker, geograph project, Wikimedia Commons)
The
English town of Rotherham has been in the news. Between 1997 and 2013, at least
1,400 school-age girls were "groomed" for prostitution—a process that
begins with seduction and ends with confinement, trafficking, and serial rape.
The girls were white. The groomers were older men of Pakistani origin, except
for a few Afghans and Roma.
This
in a town of some 250,000 people. And that figure of 1,400 is
"conservative." It's hard to avoid concluding that many of
Rotherham's white families have been affected, perhaps one in ten.
Grooming
may have even left a dent in the census data. In Western countries, boys
outnumber girls at birth, and this gender gap gradually shrinks through the
higher mortality of boys until it is gone by the age of 20. This trend holds
true in Rotherham up to the 15-19 age group, at which point the gender gap
strangely widens. There seem to be around 500 girls unaccounted for. Evidently,
this figure would capture only the final "confinement" stage of
grooming and would exclude earlier stages when the girl is voluntarily living
with her Pakistani boyfriend (Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council, 2013, p.5. Figure 1.5).
What do the
academics have to say?
Not
much. British academia has either ignored the issue or cast aspersions on
anyone who brings it up, as seen in this paper:
The
implications of the current fixation with grooming and 'Asian sex gangs' are
examined and shown to further a political agendum and legitimise thinly veiled
racism, ultimately doing victims a disservice. (Cockbain, 2013)
Cockbain
cites two official studies to show that this fixation has no scientific basis:
Widespread
concern around grooming resulted in two large-scale government studies: the
Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre's (CEOP) assessment of
'localised grooming', and the Office of the Children's Commissioner for
England's (OCCE) study on 'child sexual exploitation in gangs and groups'.
[...]
Like The Times, CEOP focused on
community-based CSE, specifically excluding familial, peer-on-peer,
professional or primarily online abuse. Unlike The Times, CEOP removed limitations on victims' age and gender and
covered both solo and group offenders. Of the 31 per cent (N = 753) of suspects for whom race was known, 49 per cent (N = 367) were white and 46 per cent (N = 346) Asian. Meanwhile, the OCCE included all forms of CSE
in England, both online and offline, but was restricted to offenders acting in
groups of two or more, the exclusion of solo offenders seriously undermining
its claim to provide the 'most thorough and comprehensive collection of
information' on CSE to date. The statistics presented in the report are often
confused and incoherent, exacerbating methodological shortcomings and
understandable data deficiencies. What can be disentangled is that only a
minority of submissions to the call for evidence included any information on
suspects. Of a total of 1,514 suspects thus identified, race data were
available for 84 per cent (N = 1266).
For those suspects where race was known, 43 per cent (N = 545) were white and 33 per cent (N = 415) Asian.
Almost
half the suspects were homegrown whites? That figure seems far removed from the
picture one gets in the British press. It also seems far removed from the
picture one gets in a Dutch study of Amsterdam "lover boys":
The
young men were all between 21 and 24 years of age. Some of them were the
children of Moroccan and Turkish guest labourers who had come to the
Netherlands in the 1970s. Others had migrated at a young age with their parents
from Surinam or Curacao, or were born in the Netherlands. (Van San and Bovenkerk, 2013)
Is
seduction for profit more of a white boy thing in the UK than in the
Netherlands? Or is the difference due to some bias in data gathering? The
second explanation is suggested by the incompleteness of the British data. Only
31% of the CEOP files had information on the suspect's race, and only a
minority of the CSE files had any information at all on the suspect.
This
incompleteness can be traced to two biases in data gathering, which, curiously
enough, reflected a desire to avoid "bias":
1. Fear of
harming community relations
First,
there was a fear that evidence of Asian sex gangs, if publicized, could damage
community relations and hinder investigative work:
For
example, ever since projects for sexually exploited children were first opened
by Barnardo's there have been reports of Asian gangs at work. This information
was, very sensibly, not publicised by Barnardo's because they knew that their
workers depend on the goodwill and support of the local population — also
largely Asian — to gather information about the girls so they can help them.
Publicly highlighting the racial profile of the perpetrators would inevitably
turn the community against them. (Linehan, 2011)
Cockbain (2013) similarly evokes a fear of "fuelling racist rhetoric, distorting
policy and practice and exacerbating community tensions."
These
fears seem to have shaped public policy, as confirmed by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual
Exploitation in Rotherham:
Several
councillors interviewed believed that by opening up these issues they could be
'giving oxygen' to racist perspectives that might in turn attract extremist
political groups and threaten community cohesion. To some extent this concern
was valid, with the apparent targeting of the town by groups such as the
English Defence League. (Jay, 2014, p. 93)
2. Fear of
seeming racist
Another
reason, cited in the Inquiry, was simply a fear of seeming racist:
Several
staff described their nervousness about identifying the ethnic origins of
perpetrators for fear of being thought racist; others remembered clear
direction from their managers not to do so. (Jay, 2014, p. 2)
[...]
there was a widespread perception that messages conveyed by some senior people
in the Council and also the Police, were to 'downplay' the ethnic dimensions of
CSE. Unsurprisingly, frontline staff appeared to be confused as to what they
were supposed to say and do and what would be interpreted as 'racist'. (Jay, 2014, p. 91)
She
also reported in 2006 that young people in Rotherham believed at that time that
the Police dared not act against Asian youths for fear of allegations of
racism. This perception was echoed at the present time by some young people we
met during the Inquiry, but was not supported by specific examples. (Jay, 2014, p. 92)
Those
who had involvement in CSE were acutely aware of these [ethnic] issues and
recalled a general nervousness in the earlier years about discussing them, for
fear of being thought racist. (Jay, 2014, p. 93)
A systematic
bias
Because
of these fears of either harming community relations or seeming racist, there
was a systematic bias toward underreporting of Pakistani involvement in
grooming. This bias in data gathering led to a distorted view of reality among
public officials:
Within
social care, the scale and seriousness of the problem was underplayed by senior
managers. At an operational level, the Police gave no priority to CSE,
regarding many child victims with contempt and failing to act on their abuse as
a crime. Further stark evidence came in 2002, 2003 and 2006 with three reports
known to the Police and the Council, which could not have been clearer in their
description of the situation in Rotherham. The first of these reports was
effectively suppressed because some senior officers disbelieved the data it
contained. This had led to suggestions of cover-up. The other two reports set
out the links between child sexual exploitation and drugs, guns and criminality
in the Borough. These reports were ignored and no action was taken to deal with
the issues that were identified in them.
In
the early 2000s, a small group of professionals from key agencies met and
monitored large numbers of children known to be involved in CSE or at risk but
their managers gave little help or support to their efforts. Some at a senior
level in the Police and children's social care continued to think the extent of
the problem, as described by youth workers, was exaggerated, and seemed intent
on reducing the official numbers of children categorised as CSE. (Jay, 2014, p.1)
In
a BBC interview, a researcher described how an official reacted to one of the
reports: "She said you must never refer to that again. You must never
refer to Asian men. And her other response was to book me on a two-day
ethnicity and diversity course to raise my awareness of ethnic issues"
(Brooks-Pollock, 2014).
It
makes sense that public officials had trouble believing the evidence being
brought to their attention. After all, it ran counter to the findings of the
authoritative CEOP and CSE studies. The situation is not unlike that of the old
Soviet Union, where official statistics said one thing and reality quite
another.
How could this
have happened?
The
answer is easy. We live in a society where "racism" is viewed as a
major evil. Once this view had gained the full backing of moral authority, it
was just a matter of time before everyone fell into line ... and acted
accordingly. The average social worker became reluctant to report evidence of
sex crimes if the suspects were non-white and non-Christian. The average police
officer became reluctant to lay charges or pursue them if already laid. The average
politician became reluctant to bring the matter up in council or parliament.
The
result? Underreporting on a massive scale. This all could happen in broad
daylight and no one would see a thing.
This
massive underreporting then distorted the findings of official reports, which
in turn convinced people in authority that the whole thing had been greatly
exaggerated, undoubtedly for mischievous purposes. There was thus growing
pressure from above to root out racist politicians, racist police officers, and
racist social workers ...
Antiracism
is self-validating. On the one hand, it leads people to dismiss evidence that
may undermine its view of reality. On the other, it strengthens its view of
reality by encouraging people to create supporting evidence. There is no
conspiracy. There is only the madness of ideology.
References
Brooks-Pollock,
T. (2014). Rotherham researcher 'sent on diversity course' after raising alarm,
The Telegraph, September 2
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/11069178/Rotherham-researcher-sent-on-diversity-course-after-raising-alarm.html
Cockbain,
E. (2013). Grooming and the 'Asian sex gang predator': the construction of a
racial crime threat, Race & Class,
54, 22-32.
http://rac.sagepub.com/content/54/4/22.short
Jay, A. (2014). Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Exploitation in Rotherham 1997-2013
http://www.rotherham.gov.uk/downloads/file/1407/independent_inquiry_cse_in_rotherhamLinehan, T. (2011). Child sexual exploitation in the UK is all too common. But notions of gangs and grooming are a distraction and hinder our efforts to combat the problem.
Rotherham
Metropolitan Borough Council. (2013). Demographic
Profile of Rotherham,
http://www.rotherham.gov.uk/jsna/downloads/file/38/rotherham_demographic_profile_-_2013
Van
San, M. and F. Bovenkerk. (2013). Secret seducers. True tale of pimps in the
red light district of Amsterdam, Crime,
Law and Social Change, 60, 67-80.
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10611-013-9436-z
16 comments:
I was thinking about the structure of the gangs. Seriously, these gangs were/are an efficient criminal business model. I can agree with liberals in the sense that we should be looking at this as a criminal issue. Now that 'communities' exist, it is inevitable that each will have a criminal layer. Different communities specialise in different types of crime. Ignore the sexual aspect, this is violent crime. Anyway, how did the gangs function? I'm guessing that there was a core, brothers, cousins, a small business. Men of other ethnicities involved, who are they? Maybe lone under-achievers on the margins of the Pakistani community?
Of course, if these horrible crimes had been committed by white men against Pakistani girls, the liberals would be arguing that this was proof that all white men are evil.
It appears to resemble brood parasitism, an extended phenotype, utilizing memetic engineering, in that it ultimately reduces the reproductive success of the host.
It appears to resemble brood parasitism, an extended phenotype, utilizing memetic engineering, in that it ultimately reduces the reproductive success of the host.
Yes, but it cannot reduce the reproductive success below replacement.
http://drjamesthompson.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/rotherham-child-abuse-scandal.html
From the victim' point of view,is it better to be abused by an out group rather than by one's own group?
"From the victim' point of view,is it better to be abused by an out group rather than by one's own group?"
If there are no differences between the groups it can't matter either way. And there are people who who think that white society conspires to conceal crimes by whites against other groups. So are there horrible crimes (like genital mutilation) being committed by white men against Pakistani girls?
-----------------
"Now that 'communities' exist, it is inevitable that each will have a criminal layer."
The majority of the sexual abuse was not by the gangs themselves it was by men from the wider community of the gang. Moreover, the gangs were not disowned, local politicians came under a lot of pressure.
The current MP for Rotherham:- "I've also had [Muslim] family members come to my [parliamentary] surgery asking me to make representations on behalf of brothers who have been found guilty of child sex abuse. When I refuse, I frequently receive a tirade of abuse. “These girls are prostitutes,” one man shouted at me, and warned that I would pay a heavy price for not supporting him. He’d get thousands of people not to vote for me. (Rotherham is not an isolated incident}
What we have here is not a criminal underclass separate from the community. The community is a single interest group whose size gives it power to influence local media, government and policing into nauseating misogyny and complicity. They are an alien wedge.
Sean
I'm not disagreeing with you, I just think we don't know for certain exactly what is the social structure of these gang networks. You know, the way football hoologansim and riot behaviour, have been picked over by sociologists trying to figure out how they are organised, like trying to understand a flock of birds. The relatives visiting the MP could still be part of a 'layer' within pakistani culture. We won't know for certain until someone does the research. Hopefully Chick's e-book will inspire a new generation of bio-anthropologists.
Sean
If there are no differences between the groups it can't matter either way.
Thanks for your reply. Please try again. I am not following you. Of course there are differences; that's how you tell groups apart.
To answer my own question; I think it would be much worse to be abused by one's own group rather than an out-group.
But if it is done by one's own group in pursuit of that group's ideology one might well not think it abuse. Female genital mutilation for example. It is only from outside the ideology that we can see within the group abuse for what it is. As I think Peter was saying, the group's ideology trumps all else.
Ideology is key. Ideology drives language and behaviour. Morality is a way of explaining ideology and religion is a way of advertising ideology.
Sean said...
But if it is done by one's own group in pursuit of that group's ideology one might well not think it abuse.
Yes, I see the connection now. It would seem that the discussion on female genital mutilation would be better placed in Peter’s previous post.
What I want to concentrate upon is the Rotherdam particulars; lower class British girls being placed into sex slavery by Pakistani boys.
Is this better or worse than being placed into sexual slavery by British boys from their own group? (From the victim’s point of view.)
Did these Pakistani boys pimp any Pakistani girls? Are these boys doing this with a clear conscience? That is, do they think that since these girls are in an out-group then their normal moral rules don’t apply?
Referring to Peter’s older posts on Slavs to Slaves, it seems circumstances have really flipped out. In the 8th through 12th centuries a lot of money was made selling white girls into sex slavery in the Muslim world. Today, the Muslims come here, pick their own slaves, and then make all the money.
Whoever spent all that time coloring the national IQ maps needs to take another look.
Also, it's not just Rotherham. All the old textile towns are exactly the same as they all imported people from the rural parts of Pakistan to undercut wages in the textile mills (before they all closed down anyway).
There's maybe 30-40 places where it's as bad as Rotherham and many more where it's the same but on a smaller scale.
And that's just the grooming gangs.
There's a similar but less organized version related to the inner-city gang culture forcing all the young girls in their area to have sex with them and the disorganized version in towns where simply very large numbers of young male asylum seekers from various countries were dumped.
The scale of sexual violence inflicted on the urban working class population in the UK over the last sixteen years is mind-boggling - scores of thousands of victims and all of it completely hidden from the rest of the population.
It's a large part of the reason why millions of the native population have been fleeing the cities - mass ethnic cleansing all done by stealth because the people who could report it, won't report it because of "ant-racism".
The banality of evil.
"I was thinking about the structure of the gangs...how did the gangs function? I'm guessing that there was a core, brothers, cousins, a small business."
It started as a kin group activity where the younger better looking boys would be sent out to target very young girls - 12 to 13 is best because once they're hooked they'll take more abuse - and then once hooked they'd be brought back to be raped by the boy's uncles and cousins as a kind of family treat.
This had been going on for decades but on a much smaller scale.
The scale of it exploded with mass immigration under Tony Blair as that created a huge demand for cheap prostitution. At that point local businessmen turned it into an industry.
For example, one critical aspect of this is getting the taxi contract for transporting girls from children's homes to and from school as that provides a point of first contact.
"From the victim' point of view,is it better to be abused by an out group rather than by one's own group?"
In this case it is both because the in-group *ignoring* the problem is felt as abuse also.
In terms of the (unknown but probably large) numbers of murders I'd say the first is worst but in terms of the (unknown but definitely large) numbers of later suicides I'd say the second is probably worst - as being so totally abandoned by your own in-group seems to have deep impact.
n this case it is both because the in-group *ignoring* the problem is felt as abuse also.
In terms of the (unknown but probably large) numbers of murders I'd say the first is worst but in terms of the (unknown but definitely large) numbers of later suicides I'd say the second is probably worst - as being so totally abandoned by your own in-group seems to have deep impact.
Thanks for your thoughtful reply.
The previous post was informative and insightful as well.
From the victim’s vantage, in-group abuse has to be much worse because you are left all alone. If it is at the hands of an out-group at least you have the rationalization that you were likely victimized partly because of different group status. As you mentioned, the realization that one is a victim of neglect by one’s own group would seem to be even crueler.
I question the strength of the group loyalty felt by these girls. It couldn’t have been very strong or they would never have entertained the companionship of these Pakistani boys. I doubt that it would occur to many of them that they had been abandoned by their group. This would seem to be the main problem here. We have atomized individuals with little or no group identification being preyed upon by members of groups with very strong identification.
I don’t wish to blame the girls. They are not responsible for the dissipation of their group, nor are they responsible for the failures of the political system that was supposed to be standing in for their group.
We are in a hell of a mess. Gene-culture coevolution has led us to a dead-end. Of course let’s give a big shout-out to HBD.
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