Over in the UK, the Casey Audit into Group–Based Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (or in the vernacular, the “grooming” or “child rape” gangs) is out. It makes uncomfortable reading for all those politicians and their enablers in the British media who cared more about being politically correct than the rights of white working class girls not to be raped, abused and tortured by gangs of predominantly Muslim Pakistani men. It also makes essential reading for any Irish person or Irish politician who cares to make sure that what happened there does not happen here.
A quick summary from the report, which is scathing:
“That term – ‘group-based child sexual exploitation’ – is actually a sanitised version of what it is. I want to set it out in unsanitised terms: we are talking about multiple sexual assaults committed against children by multiple men on multiple occasions; beatings and gang rapes. Girls having to have abortions, contracting sexually transmitted infections, having children removed from them at birth.”
“The grooming gangs model remains similar to well-known cases like those in Rotherham, with often a man targeting a vulnerable adolescent child – often those in care, or children with learning or physical disabilities – grooming them into thinking they are their ‘boyfriend’ showering them with love and gifts and taking them out. Subsequently, they pass them to other men for sex, using drugs and alcohol to make children compliant, often turning to violence and coercion to control them.
This model has not changed significantly over time, although the grooming process is now as likely to start online, and hotspots might have moved from parks to vape shops and the use of hotels with anonymous check-in facilities. Grooming gangs are often loosely interconnected, based around existing social connections and so are often broadly homogenous in age, ethnic background and socioeconomic status. Acting in a group likely has a disinhibiting effect on the perpetrators, while misogyny or ‘othering’ allows them to disregard victims.”
Back when I lived in London, yours truly called out the abuse and the systemic cover – up in 2017 on BBC Any Questions. I said “these young girls were sacrificed on the altar of political correctness and they continue to do so.” At about 25 minutes in the debate starts:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b0910z8b
I was pretty angry at the time and have been since. I have written about it repeatedly over the years at my old haunt The Conservative Woman, and then again on my Substack.
Prime Minister Starmer has now ordered the public inquiry. This is a good thing. The myth that diversity is our strength is falling apart fast, in the UK at least. This is going to cause some serious heartache for those who really believed it. There will still be some hold-outs. There always are.
Ireland is still behind the times. We are currently doing the ‘we were never a real country’ thing and the is the tri-colour flag a symbol of the far right nonsense. I remember the British equivalent, this undermining of national identity, 10 years ago. I’ll pencil in the Irish media apology in a few years’ time.
The abuse of the white working-class girls is unforgivable, and the attempted cover-up outrageous. To compound matters many of the girls were criminalised at the time. The girls were convicted instead of their rapists.
Casey says: “When those same girls get older, they face long-term physical and mental health impacts. Sometimes they have criminal convictions for actions they took while under coercion.”
In the beginning of the report Casey explains that she met some of the women abused.
They said that they are “unable to live the lives they wanted, sometimes with criminal convictions they had received whilst children and being groomed. This blighted their chances, for example, leaving some unable to get a bank account or go on their kids’ school trips.”
The women who were abused were also told they couldn’t receive full trauma counselling in case it compromised their evidence. Also, their abusers break anonymity orders with impunity, circulating their names and images on social media. When reported, no explanation is given as to why it isn’t prosecuted.
So, the women are still suffering for the State’s failure to protect them when they were children. And the British State continues to fail them by failing to enforce anonymity orders.
Casey makes some recommendations to change this. Recommendation 3 is for a review of the criminal convictions of victims of child sexual exploitation. This should include quashing any convictions where the government finds victims were criminalised instead of protected.
Two things really hit me here. First, it is shocking that women are being denied bank accounts because they were criminalised as a child by a State that should have protected them. This should be remedied by whatever legislation is necessary. In fact banks should be stepping in and offering bank accounts now.
Also, the idea that mothers who were abused as children cannot go on their children’s school tours and trips because of the failures of the State is wrong. This might not sound like much but it is. For these women, their children will be their life. Can you imagine wanting to go to the library or the little trip with your child and when you volunteer you are banned because you are deemed a danger to the children. It’s outrageous. The humiliation is awful.
I used to go on the school trips with my children when they were young and I always enjoyed it. You got the gossip as five years olds have no filter and you could sneak them nut free sweets when the teachers weren’t watching. Good times. All mothers should have the right to these experiences and memories. Their convictions must be reviewed as soon as possible.
Finally, not only should these women be receiving counselling, it should be paid for by the state. Any rules of evidence that must be changed for future trials should be changed so the fact of counselling or therapy notes are inadmissible at trial.
These women have been failed over and over again. None of these changes need oceans of time or endless reviews. They should be made as soon as possible. It’s the very least these women deserve.
And in Ireland, we need to learn these lessons. We’re on the same path that Britain took. There is still time to turn back. But not much.