"Easy meat"

In 2011 the former Home Secretary Jack Straw was accused of "stereotyping" after suggesting some men of Pakistani origin see white girls as "easy meat". He was quick to qualify his remark by adding "Pakistanis, let's be clear, are not the only people who commit sexual offences, and overwhelmingly the sex offenders' wings of prisons are full of white sex offenders" (here).

The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Exploitation in Rotherham (1997 – 2013) makes grim reading (download available here). From the Executive Summary:

No one knows the true scale of child sexual exploitation (CSE) in Rotherham over the years. Our
conservative estimate is that approximately 1400 children were sexually exploited over the full
Inquiry period, from 1997 to 2013.

In just over a third of cases, children affected by sexual exploitation were previously known to
services because of child protection and neglect. It is hard to describe the appalling nature of the
abuse that child victims suffered. They were raped by multiple perpetrators, trafficked to other
towns and cities in the north of England, abducted, beaten, and intimidated. There were examples
of children who had been doused in petrol and threatened with being set alight, threatened with
guns, made to witness brutally violent rapes and threatened they would be next if they told anyone.
Girls as young as 11 were raped by large numbers of male perpetrators

Over the first twelve years covered by this Inquiry, the collective failures of political and officer
leadership were blatant. From the beginning, there was growing evidence that child sexual
exploitation was a serious problem in Rotherham. This came from those working in residential
care and from youth workers who knew the young people well.

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. [My emphasis - Ed.]

This is a serious problem. Rotherham is just the latest town to be highlighted where Asian men have targeted vulnerable children. Evidence has been produced showing that children were "trafficked to other towns and cities in the north of England". Where does it end? For far too long the politically correct have held sway. We have been inhibited from stating the obvious for fear of causing offence to minorities who in their own country in Pakistan, for example, do as they please using blasphemy laws to their own advantage. It is time to stand up and defend our values even if it risks offending the sensibilities of those who have accepted our hospitality.

Section 8.16 of the Report highlights: "One of the common threads running through child sexual exploitation across England has been the prominent role of taxi drivers in being directly linked to children who were abused. This was the case in Rotherham from a very early stage, when residential care home heads met in the nineties to share intelligence about taxis and other cars which picked up girls from outside their units. In the early 2000s some secondary school heads were reporting girls being picked up at lunchtime at the school gates and being taken away to provide oral sex to men in the lunch break."

I have often been puzzled by the rise in ethnic taxi drivers, especially those who are able to afford to live in the more affluent areas of our cities but the observation in the Rotherham Report raises a more serious issue which should place all of us on our guard for suspicious behaviour around our schools and the homes of vulnerable children.

The claim that most sex offenders are white also finds space in the Rotherham Report [11.2]:
 As has been stated many times before, there is no simple link between race and child sexual exploitation, and across the UK the greatest numbers of perpetrators of CSE are white men. The second largest category, according to the Children's Commissioner's report, are those from a minority ethnic background, particularly- 92 - those recorded as 'Asian'. In Rotherham, the majority of known perpetrators were of Pakistani heritage including the five men convicted in 2010.

Let us be clear. The population of Britain is still basically White. British people of Pakistani origin account for only 1.9% of the United Kingdom population according to 2012 figures. Of those, 90% living in England and Wales at the time of the 2011 UK Census stated their religion was Islam, mainly Sunni Muslims yet they comprise the second largest category of offenders. Proportionately that is a serious problem, the point Jack Straw was making. We need no more excuses that there are more White perpetrators for fear of being accused of racism or Islamophobia. That serves no interest, least of all to those who have suffered the most appalling sexual abuse, Muslim, Christian or no faith at all.

This evening on the BBC's One Show we were served up another helping of how the troubles in the Middle East are the fault of the US and the UK with no mention that the displaced peoples were there centuries before Muhammad was born. That minorities are being cleansed abroad is bad enough. We must ensure that we are not cleansed in our own country, standing up for what we believe even if it offends our guests.