Maros Tancos and Joanna Gomulska, ‘who kept people as slaves’ in a house termed ‘the “gate to hell” have been jailed for a total of 25 years’; the ‘evil couple’, both aged 46, ‘trafficked at least 29 vulnerable victims from Slovakia’, and Tancos ‘even used links to Slovakian orphanages to recruit people to work at their car wash firm.’
The victims were ‘mostly men’, aged from their ‘late teens’ to their 30s, who ‘toiled for free and lived in squalor while the couple spent at least £923,835 in unpaid wages on gambling and cars.’ One of the victims stated: ‘“I thought there was no way back”’ (‘Slave pair are jailed’, Daily Express, June 23, 2022). https://www.pressreader.com/uk/daily-express/20220623/textview
Perhaps the greatest irony in this dreadful case is that the ‘gate to hell’ was in Bristol, home to the toppled statue of 17th-century slave trader Edward Colston, whose local authority has been noted for its preoccupation with condemning historical slavery and even demanding that financial reparations be paid.
Condemning historical slavery is, of course, a woke obsession, which perhaps explains why another terrible crime still perpetrated in modern times – organised sex slavery – has also been ignored, reportedly because of fears of police, local authorities and social services of being perceived as racist, owing to the ‘predominantly British Pakistani’ background of the paedophile perpetrators. Yet another report into this scandal has been published, this time from the Independent Office for Police Conduct detailing how South Yorkshire police ‘“failed to protect vulnerable children and young people”’; however, ‘despite the IOPC investigating 47 officers, carrying out 91 investigations’, ‘“considering” 20,000 documents and 800 investigation statements’ and ‘logging 1,300 exhibits’, not a single police officer ‘has been prosecuted or sacked.’
Out of 163 complaints investigated by the IOPC, 43 were upheld, with eight officers found to have ‘a case to answer for misconduct’; six had a case to answer ‘for gross misconduct’; one resigned, and seven were retired. The investigation found that ‘children as young as 11 were viewed by police as “consenting” to their abuse’, even ‘while car crime was given greater priority than child sexual abuse and exploitation.’
The ‘misconduct’ included cases in which perpetrators discovered ‘in the act’ were let off by police, and ‘there was an unwritten policy’ of not writing down crimes ‘unless there was a strong possibility that it would be marked as detected’; meanwhile, ‘“[m]any vulnerable individuals were seen as problems not victims. Especially children in care.”’ So lightly was this organised abuse taken by police that the ‘most severe punishment recorded was a final written warning and “words of advice”’, while ‘some officers were allowed to retire on a full pension’.
Even worse, one father, named only as ‘John’, ‘was held by officers for breaching the peace when he tried to rescue his daughter’ from her abusers; he later ‘received death threats’, and to add insult to injury, recalled: ‘“On a number of occasions police officers came to our house calling us bad parents.”’
South Yorkshire Police admitted that they ‘“got it wrong and we let victims down”’. This must rate as the biggest understatement of the century; however, this is only 2022, and the IOPC director of major investigations, Steve Noonan, while thanking ‘survivors for their “incredible bravery” in speaking out’, added: ‘“The challenge now is to ensure that, as this type of offending continues to evolve, police forces continue to adapt so they are never again caught unprepared”’ (‘Abuse victims let down again as no officers are sacked for police failings’, Daily Express, June 23,
How they failed to recognise these far from unprecedented crimes is a mystery, and one suspects that the ‘biggest challenge’ now is how to deal with this ongoing criminal crisis while avoiding accusations of ‘racist’ policing.
The view of so many police that these child victims consented to their abuse must surely be connected to the effective decriminalisation of under-age sex in 1985, when under the so-called ‘Gillick competency’ rule, the State allowed under-age children to be given contraception and abortions without their parents’ knowledge and consent, based on the circular reasoning that children who request such ‘care’ are sufficiently competent to be given it.
Now it seems the State has also decriminalised under-age sexual abuse, giving the green light to abusers (formerly known as paedophiles).
The scandal is not confined to Yorkshire, either, but is still happening throughout the country, although it is easier to condemn historical slavery than to see its many permutations flourishing in the present day. Under the ‘mind over matter’ approach – if the Left doesn’t mind, it doesn’t matter – governments, social services departments and politicians have looked the other way as the family crumbled, with thousands and thousands of children taken into care; and with the annual cost to the State soaring into the billions, it is certainly cheaper to allow them to slip out of care and into the hands of uncaring abusers and traffickers.
It is easier to treat these children as worthless rubbish who ‘deserve’ to be abused, lest those whose duty it is to provide protection for the vulnerable be obliged to address the pernicious results of their own ‘progressive’ policies; easier to see the crimes of the past than to see the suffering slaves of the present. It is far easier to condemn the slave traders of yesterday than to deal with the slavers of today; and it would seem that the slaves to wokeness have slept through one of the greatest crimes of our so-called modern age.