Islam versus Europe

Looking at some of the corrupt characters involved in this inquiry, like the odious Muslim Keith Vaz and the repulsive Berewitz, it is obvious that not much insight is going to emerge from it. This is simply the next stage of the cover-up. It follows the standard pattern. When Muslim wrong-doing has become so extensive and extreme that it can no longer be suppressed from the public sphere, the tactic then is to do a "limited hang-out", all the while relativising it and minimising its significance. This is who the children of Britain have to protect them. What a tragedy.

A parliamentary inquiry into the sexual exploitation of children was announced yesterday after MPs were told that thousands of victims have been identified across the country.

The scale of the abuse was revealed as a Commons committee listened to evidence of failings by the police, prosecutors and care professionals that allowed a grooming ring to sexually abuse dozens of girls in Rochdale, Greater Manchester.

Nine men, eight of Pakistani heritage and an illegal asylum seeker from Afghanistan, were jailed last month for numerous child-sex offences in the town and surrounding areas.

Their trial came after an investigation by The Times into a hidden pattern of group offending against vulnerable girls, usually white and aged from 12 to 16, across northern England and the Midlands. Most of the men involved were British Pakistanis.

Keith Vaz, chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, said that he had been shocked to hear that the number of victims runs into the thousands. “This is clearly not a case just relating to one northern town, but a national issue that requires thorough investigation,” he said.

“The serious questions raised require immediate answers. We will, therefore, extend the time we have allocated to this issue and widen our inquiry so we can deal with the causes . . . and solutions as a matter of urgency.”

The shared ethnicity of offenders prosecuted in towns and cities, including Derby, Rotherham, Birmingham and Dewsbury, came under scrutiny at yesterday’s committee hearing.

Peter Fahy, the Chief Constable of Great Manchester Police, said that although Asians were a small minority of the region’s registered sex offenders, “when it’s a case of grooming children on the streets then clearly Asian men do feature disproportionately”.

Mr Vaz asked him why such a pattern of abuse had been allowed to develop over a number of years “until a series of articles in The Times brought this to the attention of the public”.

The chief constable said he did not believe that cultural issues were necessarily a factor in such offending. Colin Lambert, the leader of Rochdale council, said that “badging it as an Asian crime” was wrong because “there are issues in all communities”.

Sue Berelowitz, the Deputy Children’s Commissioner for England, who is already leading a two-year inquiry into sexual exploitation involving groups and gangs, was asked about the validity of the race-linked child abuse pattern identified by The Times.

Mr Vaz drew her attention to comments by Jack Straw, the former Home Secretary, that some Pakistani men saw white girls as “easy meat”, and by Baroness Warsi, the Conservative Party co-chairman, who said last month that a small number of British Pakistanis viewed white girls as “fair game” for sexual abuse.

Ms Berelowitz accepted that there was a pattern of exploitation involving “Pakistani males”, as seen in Rochdale and other northern towns, but said that this was merely one of many abuse models identified by her inquiry.

There was evidence of gang-related child abuse involving black perpetrators and black victims and she also pointed to a white council estate in northern England where a group of white men were sexually exploiting white girls.

“There are parts of every single community — white, Pakistani, Afghan, gypsy and Roma travellers, you name it — who are seeing children as easy access in terms of sexual exploitation,” Ms Berelowitz added.

Asked by Mr Vaz whether exploitation was a crime neglected by the authorities until newspaper articles brought it “to the fore”, Ms Berelowitz agreed that society had not been “sufficiently alive to it until now”.

“We’re talking about thousands [of victims]. There isn’t a town, village or hamlet in which children are not being sexually exploited. We must recognise the breadth of sexual exploitation, rather than see it as one narrow group,” she said.

Source: The Times (£)