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<< This week marks a watershed moment in a decade of discussion of "grooming gangs": a much-anticipated Home Office report has concluded that there is no credible evidence that any one ethnic group is over-represented in cases of child sexual exploitation. For many in Britain today the term "grooming gang" immediately suggests Pakistani-heritage Muslim men abusing white girls, but the Home Office researchers now tell us that "research has found that group-based offenders are most commonly White". A powerful modern racial myth has been exploded. What started as a far-right trope had migrated into the mainstream, meeting little resistance along the way. In 2011, the Times and its chief investigative reporter, Andrew Norfolk, claimed to have uncovered a new ethnic crime threat, shrouded until then in a supposed "conspiracy of silence". The racial stereotype gained credence when the Quilliam Foundation, a controversial "counter-extremism" group, claimed that 84% of "grooming gang offenders" were Asian. The "grooming gangs" narrative fed into the agenda of the far right, but it was not only there that the issue was racialised: the Labour MP Sarah Champion, for one, wrote a now notorious article in the Sun in 2017, for which she resigned as shadow equalities minister. The two-year study by the Home Office makes very clear that there are no grounds for asserting that Muslim or Pakistani-heritage men are disproportionately engaged in such crimes, and, citing our research, it confirmed the unreliability of the Quilliam claim. The horrific and widely reported crimes committed in places such as Rochdale, Oxford and Telford were real: but racist stereotyping and demonisation deflected from that. It might be tempting to think that, if nothing else, a decade of outrage had stimulated wider concern about child sexual exploitation. In truth, it has diverted resources and effort into wasteful paths while opportunities to address systemic barriers to prevention and improve victim support have been missed. The claims that "grooming gangs" were not properly investigated due to "political correctness" and a fear of being accused of racism are heavily undermined by decades of research highlighting the consistent over-policing of minority communities. What's more, the whole history of the UK's responses to child sexual exploitation and abuse is littered with failings - as shown by the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse, Operation Yewtree and numerous other investigations and inquiries. There were also regrettable consequences for child protection, since victims and offenders who don't fit the stereotype can be overlooked. >> see rest here at the guardian.. https://www.theguardian.com/ |