Trigger Warning

England's ongoing rape gang scandal

England’s rape gang scandal has become headline news, again. Aspects of the scandal have been headline news many times before. But the headlines have been short lived, and the news stories have not given the whole picture. Lengthy inquiry reports have been published, but their recommendations have not been acted on. Promises that ‘lessons will be learnt’ have not been fulfilled. If the scandal remains in the public eye for longer this time, it could be because of recent posts on X by Elon Musk, and speculation about how these might influence British politics in years to come.

Musk’s interventions have been ignorant and crass. ‘Tommy Robinson’ is not a political prisoner, he is a criminal in jail for contempt of court, and his opposition to sexual abuse is limited to cases where the victims are white and the perpetrators Muslim. Safeguarding Minister Jess Phillips’ refusal to agree to Oldham council’s request for an official Inquiry into child sexual exploitation in the town should definitely be criticised, but that doesn’t make her a “rape genocide apologist” and it doesn’t justify Musk’s call for her to be thrown into prison.

It is tempting to dismiss Musk’s comments as the rantings of a billionaire who is keen to use his wealth and social media platform to buy political influence. Yet we can be suspicious of his blatant attempt to interfere in British politics while recognising that his interventions do at the same time remind us of the rape gangs, their victims, and the ongoing institutional cover ups. It’s a rare opportunity to expose past inaction to public scrutiny, and ensure that effective action is at last taken to safeguard the girls who are actual and potential victims of this exploitation and bring the perpetrators to justice. This is where the focus should be, not on Elon Musk or Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (‘Tommy Robinson’).

The reasons for official inaction are often difficult to fathom. Is it fears that paying attention to a crime that is mainly committed by men of Pakistani heritage will be seen as racist, or that this might undermine ‘community cohesion’? Is it distrust of information that is often only reported on right wing media? Is it, for the Labour Party, fear of losing votes in parliamentary constituencies with a high proportion of Muslim voters (including Jess Phillips’s Birmingham Yardley constituency)? Do any of these reasons justify dismissing the young girls who are being abused? Do any of us really believe that it’s their ‘lifestyle choice’ to be brutally raped by gangs of middle aged men?

Continued cover up doesn’t just leave perpetrators free to continue their rapes, or absolve people in authority of their responsibility to safeguard vulnerable children. It shields us from knowing what is actually happening to children in our towns and cities.

I wrote in November, here and here, about the child sexual exploitation taking place in one northern town, Rotherham, and I included testimony from three of the survivors. We know, from Alexis Jay’s report in 2014, that there were more than 1,400 victims of child sexual exploitation in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013. We don’t know how many victims there have been before 1997 or since 2013, or in towns and cities outside Rotherham. We do know that the numbers are huge, and that gangs have been active not just in predominantly working class northern towns like Rotherham, Rochdale, and Oldham, but throughout England. We need the full picture, and we need to know what the victims were made to endure. This time, it actually does need to change.

One of the results of institutional failure is that few cases have actually come to court. One of the few that did was in Oxford, a southern English city that is home to an elite university. The judge’s sentencing remarks, from 2013, appeared on social media recently. They describe, in horrific detail, what Akhtar Dogar, Anjum Dogar, Kamar Jamil, Mohammed Karrar, and Bassam Karrar did to six vulnerable young girls. The judge’s remarks should be read by anyone who does not know what child sexual exploitation involves, or by anyone who has been taken in by the lie that it is the child’s ‘lifestyle choice’.

Trigger warning - the sentencing remarks are a difficult read. But they should be a call to action.