Quote Originally Posted by Andy Bee View Post
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To turn this thread into a is he/isn't he racist competition instead of addressing my initial question. "Has political correctness went that far that people and more to the point Police and Social Services are actually that scared to confront something like this that they'd rather sweep it under the carpet?"


You keep rolling out this line of why some people here find this type of abuse "more disgusting", I can guarantee that nobody here finds this type of abuse "more disgusting" than any other abuse and you know it so stop saying it.

This is a fairly new phenomenon, more and more of these gangs and victims are coming to light and it's current, it's happening right now in a lot of UK cities and towns, that's why it's being discussed, not because you've stumbled onto some kind of secret KKK sleeper cell.

36 of the 39 territorial Police forces in England have or are in the process of investigating a grooming gang. Two of those forces are investigating more than one gang at the moment. Eighteen of those forces have investigated a grooming gang case or cases where all of or most of the perpetrators are "Asian", three forces have brought a case to trial that the perps were all white and two where the perps were black. In ten forces FactCheck couldn't establish the ethnicity of the accused and in half of those it was because the case was still to be brought to trial.



To give some background to my initial question..Maggie Oliver a Det Const in Greater Manchester Police was chosen to lead Operation Augusta in 2004, started because of the death of a 15yr old girl who overdosed on heroin injected by a 50yr old man. She identified 16 victims, gained their trust and then went on to identify 97 suspects, predominantly of Pakistani Muslim descent. She then took 3 months compassionate leave to care for her husband and upon her return the investigation had been closed down. Lack of finances was the official line but it's thought it was also to do with fear of racial tension, only three convictions were established and the investigation was buried. That's the reason for my initial OP, when I said a new grooming gang had been uncovered it was more that Andy Burnham initiated an enquiry and the findings uncovered the cases from back in 2004 and operation Augusta. There's going to be some horrific stories coming from the upcoming investigation and it could of all been stopped 16 years ago.

A similar story in Rochdale. Sara Rowbotham was a sexual health worker, now an MP and suspected abuse was happening in girls from the age of 13yr old who attended her clinic. She reported her suspicions to child services and police and was fobbed off for years. Her and her team collected names, addresses, even reg numbers for cars for 100's of suspects and kept reporting them without any of the services taking it further because of what she thought was fear of being labelled racist. Initially a case was opened, one of the victims came forward and made a statement but the case was dropped because the CPS doubted the witnesses credibility. Years later Maggie Oliver was involved in re-opening the case where she mentions that it was almost a carbon copy of what was happening in Manchester. She brought some of the perps to justice but mentions the fact that she had only scratched the surface, that's bolstered by the fact when a girl who was 13yr's old at the time and had serious learning difficulties was finally interviewed 6 years later she mentions in her testimony that she was taken to flats, dropped off, taken in, then confronted by a circle of around 50 men who "passed her around like a ball", only a gang of 9 were convicted.

The final nail in the coffin for that gang was the witness who initially was deemed not credible years previously, cross examined by 9 different defence barristers and she nailed them.

Maggie Oliver then resigned from the force because of the way some witnesses were treated and to be able to talk openly about it.

Nafir Afzal's first job on becoming the chief crown Prosecutor was to reopen the Rochdale case stating "white professionals' over-sensitivity to political correctness and fear of appearing racist may well have contributed to justice being stalled"


Just to add and on some reflection, on posting my original post I was reluctant to label these gangs Asian because I'm not comfortable generalising like that. I'm also not comfortable naming them as Muslims because I'm no expert in the Quran but I know for a fact that every practising Muslim who is devoted to their religion would not dream of committing these crimes and are as appalled, probably more than I am, they simply wouldn't identify these animals as being true Muslims and I'm not actually comfortable singling them out as predominantly Pakistani or Pakistani heritage either. Nobody has a problem naming catholic priests and the way some of them behaved for example so what's the difference?

Nobody would dispute that the failure to properly investigate the cases you mention was scandalous and seems to have been down to 3 things:

- because they concentrated on crimes in which they had targets to meet and child sexual exploitation wasn't one of those
- because they feared exacerbating existing racial tensions between communities
- because of over sensitivity due to their own history of "institutional racism", the Lawrence case etc.

However, those cases were over a decade ago. Is there a serious concern/do you have evidence that the lessons weren't learned and the same failings are continuing? If so, then there is some basis for your initial question, although I would argue that none of the 3 factors can be described as "political correctness", gone mad or otherwise.

Otoh, if investigations into such cases are now being carried out with the resources and thoroughness they should be, then what are you trying to achieve?