FIVE MEN from the northern English town of Rotherham were jailed in November 2010 for sexual offenses against underage girls. There was suspicion that the problem of sexual exploitation of children was more widespread, but the true scale and horror of the crimes became clear only recently, with shocking findings from an independent investigation that hundreds of girls were vilely abused over 16 years. Also appalling is how local authorities tolerated, even enabled, the unspeakable acts.
Sorting out why officials closed their eyes or looked the other way as an estimated 1,400 young girls were raped and brutally exploited from 1997 to 2013 will require Rotherham and the rest of Britain to come to grips with uncomfortable questions about race, class and gender.
"It is hard to describe the appalling nature of the abuse that child victims suffered. They were raped by multiple perpetrators, trafficked to other towns and cities in the north of England, abducted, beaten, and intimidated," wrote Alexis Jay, a former chief inspector of social work who was commissioned to conduct an independent inquiry after reports by the Times of London. She described a process that targeted girls from vulnerable or working-class families. Girls as young as 11 were raped by large numbers of men. Some children were doused with gasoline and threatened with being set alight if they told anyone.
The people who should have protected them -- police, social workers, council officials -- did nothing, even when complaints were brought to them. "Nobody can pretend they didn't know," Ms. Jay told the New York Times. Among the disturbing explanations for this complicit indifference is the fear of appearing insensitive or even racist since the perpetrators were members of the local Pakistani community. "There was a culture of not wanting to rock the multicultural community boat," said one Rotherham official.
The "multicultural community boat" indeed. When are we going to learn that it belongs on the ocean floor?
One correction, Bill: hardly any of the girls in the Rotherham case were Pakistani Moslems, they were nearly all white Christians.
Was that in the article? I must have missed it if so. I believe I'm correct, however, in stating that the people who did it were Pakistani Muslim men. For purposes of the point I was making -- that political correctness discouraged the prosecution of these people even though they had been doing it for 16 years -- I think my post remains valid.
I thank you for the correction as to the identity of the victims. A sharp-eyed reader is a valuable thing indeed.
You're welcome. The following New York Times article has plenty of details on this truly horrific case: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/02/world/europe/reckoning-starts-in-britain-on-abuse-of-girls.html?_r=0