Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Is Rotherham A Dysfunctional Family?
Until last week, I’d never heard of Rotherham, either. Sorry to say, it wasn’t a good first impression. A recent report in from the English city, however, has exposed the sexual abuse of more than 1,400 children over the last two decades by sex-abuse gangs.
For years, I’ve volunteered with a charity organization in a developing country in Southeast Asia that cares for girls who have been rescued from sex-trafficking — or as it’s called these days, commercial sexual exploitation. I’m often asked why this systematic abuse persists to such a scale in some corners of the world. Police officers bribed to look the other way, corrupt politicians who don’t want to upset the powerful gangs, local authorities who like money the sex-tourists from abroad bring in, and child welfare services in poor countries with too little resources to deal with such an enormous problem? Those reasons I’m familiar with. But what happened in Rotherham has thrown me for a loop.
The Rotherham report details how authorities dismissed, ignored, and possibly covered-up allegations of abuse. The local police and child protection services had the authority, and had (or could have gotten) the resources and information needed to tackle the problem; they had everything they needed but the will to do so. So what on Earth makes people — whose very job it is to protect children — collectively shrug when faced with blatant evidence of sexual abuse of hundreds of young girls?
Maybe I’ve been looking at this through the wrong lens. What if the authorities were behaving less like an overwhelmed and corrupt social system in a poor country, and more like a dysfunctional family, a family that reacts in the worst way possible when a child tells about what another family member did to her?
There are always some family members who would simply rather live in denial. It’s too much of a paradigm shift to accept that the abuse really happened. Uncle Bob would never do a thing like that! That sort of thing doesn’t happen in our family. Little Sally must be making it up.
The Rotherham report states that most of the perpetrators were Pakistani gangs and most of the victims were white girls, and some social services staff said they received “clear direction” from their managers not to reveal the ethnic identity of the perpetrators. In one instance, a social worker dismissed the concerns of the mother of a fourteen-year-old victim — who had repeatedly gone missing only to be found intoxicated by substances given to her by older men — saying that the mother was unwilling to accept the fact that her daughter was growing up. It’s not really rape. These are accusations by whites against minorities. They’re like something out of racist, fear-mongering propaganda. They must be false. After all, isn’t that what we were taught in our multicultural training classes?
Then there are those in a dysfunctional family who know full well that the abuse happened, but conclude that it’s best to sweep it under the rug for the sake of family harmony. If this gets out, it’ll tear the family apart. Sally will get over it in time. There’s no reason to make things worse for everyone else.
The report also indicates that several staff members believed that — if they went public — they’d be “giving oxygen” to racist stereotypes and attract extremist groups that threaten “community cohesion.” Best to leave it alone. Why make community relations worse with a bunch of irate protestors and racists? What will people think of us? We’ve got enough problems already.
Then there’s the inexplicable — but predictable — blaming of the victim. Everyone knows about Uncle Bob’s proclivities. Sally shouldn’t have been dumb enough to be alone with him.
One of the victims in Rotherham explained that when she went told police about the rapes, the officer replied, “What did you expect?” Her case was dismissed. After all, everyone knows what happens when young girls hang around with these older Pakistani men. The girls made their choice. That’s just the way it is around here.
Maybe it helps to look at this horror like a dysfunctional family. Or maybe not, and I’m just trying to make sense of the senseless here.
Better training to identify child abuse, more resources to deal with aftercare for the children, and more communication with community members: all well and good. But I suspect there’s something deeper that’s been going on in Rotherham.
One incident in the report details how a twelve-year-old girl was found drunk in the backseat of a car with a grown man who had sexual photos of her on his phone. Though the girl’s father had said that she had been raped, the social care manager determined—three months later—that the girl was at “no risk” for sexual exploitation. Case closed. A month later the same girl was again found intoxicated, this time with several adult men in a house. The police arrested her for being disorderly. None of the men were arrested.
That sort of response doesn’t happen because the authorities need another training class or a larger departmental budget or better interagency communication. It happens because individuals choose to deny what’s right before their eyes, to disregard the obvious, and make themselves believe that something else is more important than the lives of these little girls.
Image Credit: Shutterstock user wavebreakmedia.
Published in General
Yes–I see that too.
The world is in a politically correct state of denial. News is censored, blind eyes are turned and even statistics and “science” becomes a complete nonsense if it interrupts or contradicts “the narrative*” that all of the world’s evils are concentrated in Christianity, heterosexuality, and fifty shades of Caucasian pigments.
When Ray Rice clocks his wife we’re treated to the same old myths about 1 in 4 women are abused by their men. No one mentions that only 5% of abuse cases come from long-term marriages. [DOJ] Or that men are just as likely to be abused. [CDC] And that rates of abuse inside same-sex relationships is twice that of heterosexuals. [Journal of Social Service Research]
In Rotherham the truth endangers the myths of open borders, cultural relativism and the necessity of confronting “the religion of Peace.”
I don’t think we need a metaphor to understand what is happening, though it might be necessary as the basis of a column.
Actually, “Asian”, as used in the UK press, does not mean Japanese or Chinese or Hindu Indians or Vietnamese. It does not mean “South Asian”. It is pure code for “Muslim”.
Yes, I saw Ross’s article this morning. It’s very insightful!
As the investigation continues, it wouldn’t surprise me if some of this is uncovered too.
This is PC run amok. No, it’s worse. This is a town held hostage by thugs who know how to game the system. The Brits are not innocent in this; their PC tolerance has reached outrageous proportions. Seeming to want to welcome one and all, together with everyone’s ‘social customs,’ children and adults alike were forced to accept anything and everything without question. Mandatory training classes for the constabulary which included how to deal with those who objected ensured obeisance on the part of the citizens. Rotherham is the consequence writ large of such thinking.
There may be a ray of hope in all of this. Rotherham may just be the abject evil that awakens the Brits to what has happened to their country. They may finally be willing to face these consequences head on. This stark realization has already occurred in other countries – France, Denmark, The Netherlands…
Multicultural rubbish. (The attitude and the people both.)
Where is today’s Sir Charles Napier? He who supposedly said (Wikipedia):
You’re so right, along with Napier
(And I should have referred to it as multicult above.)
This is one “village” that didn’t do much of a job raising- or protecting- its children.
If you have the time, I’d highly recommend listening to Ricochet’s Delingpole podcast on this topic (episode 58). It’s not abduction as we’d normally think of kidnapping, but rather abuse through grooming, brainwashing, and threatening. It’s terribly methodical.
We have our corollaries here in the US -in kind if not in degree. I’d be interested in other’s take on how an obvious lunatic like Major Nidal Hasan received positive evaluations for so long before his unfortunate bout of workplace violence. At the time a few brave TV analysts said maybe, possibly it was rumored by others that officers doing his evaluations knew that any controversy touching on multicultural issues would be the kiss of death for their careers, so he was promoted and coddled.
Zafar (#24):
Zafar, I don’t have the reference, but I was told that in the Hadith there is an episode where the Prophet told his warriors that the women of the infidels were theirs for whatever. Leading to a Wahhabi teaching that forcing sex with infidel women is not really rape. So, to a Pakistani listening to a Wahhabi Imam, there is no moral infraction if the victim is not a Muslim.
A quick google provides:
http://wikiislam.net/wiki/Qur'an,_Hadith_and_Scholars:Rape
In my personal experience (not a scientific study by any means), many men of Pakistani origin (that I know of second hand – mainly through the women involved), don’t treat their own women well. Rapes within family members is reported but suppressed due to the shame it may brig to the family. So, we can quote Quran all we want, the bottom line is that there is a culture of slime that is prevalent within some circles, and it needs to be fixed from the inside.
The outsiders responsibility, in the entire thing, is not to ignore the matter but treat it as any other sexual abuse case based on the law of the land.
Interesting source, and rather disturbing, for instance:
Also:
and:
If they regard the girls in question as their slaves, they could justify their actions under these laws.
Seconded, I listened this morning, great podcast (as usual). Another factor mentioned was heroin addiction, some of the girls go back to their abusers to get more heroin, and perhaps also fear reporting the abuse to anyone because they’re trying to hide their drug use.
I don’t believe this to be remotely true. See, eg., this article (the link button isn’t working for me):
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-health/10574805/Illegal-sex-selection-abortions-why-are-some-British-Asians-aborting-their-female-foetuses.html
Many articles on Hindus, in particular, refer to them as Asians. Keith Vaz, a Catholic MP and cabinet minister, was consistently referred to as Asian. Google him and you’ll see that his ethnicity was mentioned frequently. The first Asian MP, Dadabhai Naoroji, was a Zoroastrian. Lord Paul, the deputy Speaker of the House of Lords, is a Hindu, and is consistently referred to as Asian. I believe that this is consistently true for non-Muslim South Asians in Britain.
You often find the most awful sources, Zafar! The subhead reads “No one seriously believes the authorities felt they had to ignore abuse because of the race of the perpetrators.” It goes on to say “But can it really be true – as the tabloids and the right robustly claim – that a significant contributor truly was political correctness;”, and that’s basically the argument; don’t agree with this claim because only untouchables make it. This is false, though. The claim isn’t just being made by tabloids and the right. Dennis McShane, the left wing MP for Rotherham for most of the period of abuse, blames himself and political correctness generally. So do many other left wing politicians who recognize the horrors.
The article says that, instead, the problem is that we don’t spend enough on social services and social workers are overworked. No one but a committed ideologue who watched the committee hearings could walk away with the impression that the problem was that the government wasn’t kind enough to the scum that make up Rotherham social workers. It’s not just that they were led astray by political correctness before, it’s that so many of them defend it even now. They know that they can’t be fired thanks to the awfulness of the union dominated British public sector, so they remain unrepentant.
It’s a gift.
Yes, drugs are so often a part of sex-trafficking in many corners of the world, not just in this case. It’s mostly as a way to control the girls, but also it makes the girls “criminals” and unreliable witnesses should they ever think about going to the police.
It wasn’t the reason, but it certainly was a factor. From the Inquiry into Child Sexual Exploitation in Rotherham 1997-2013 (Alexis Jay): “By far the majority of perpetrators were described as ‘Asian’ by victims, yet throughout the entire period, councillors did not engage directly with the Pakistani-heritage community to discuss how best they could jointly address the issue. Some councillors seemed to think it was a one-off problem, which they hoped would go away. 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.”