The truth about grooming gangs in the UK … and how racism is failing child sex victims

Leigh G Banks is a journalist and broadcaster and spent many years investigating child sex abuse in the UK. He worked on the Rochdale and Cleveland abuse scandals, has investigated paedophiles in churches, Satanic abuse and exposed politicians and celebrity perverts.

Here he takes a look at the racist myth that Britain’s child sex grooming gangs are predominantly Asian.

Leigh’s explosive new book, Ravine, investigates British journalism and analyses the decades he spent hunting down high profile paedophiles and low-life perverts. It will be published soon.

A Home Office report a few months ago exposed the stereotyping of ‘grooming gangs’ exploiting white girls in the UK.

The horror of grooming gangs has been used for more than a decade as a major part of a silver-bullet arsenal of hatred against the Asian population of the British Isles.

Last year’s report has been ignored by right-wing propagandists who believe their own vicious agendas and insult any truth that tries to get in their way.

The Home Office report, while not addressing all issues of grooming, gives verified evidence that makes it clear there is nothing credible in claiming that any particular ethnic group is mainly responsible for child sex exploitation.

It culled its data from police forces across the UK, local authorities and many reputable organisations.

And, damningly to the right-wing racist claims, Home Office researchers have found ‘that group-based offenders are most commonly white’.

The mythology that Asian men were responsible for exploiting white girls began in 2011 when The Times said it was exposing an establishment cover-up of sex abuse.

Times doyen Andrew Norfolk claimed that we had a ‘secret problem’ of Muslims being sexual predators of white girls. It became a firm fixture in the catalogue of grievances of the extreme far-right. 

It is also a claim perpetuated by the British Press for many years. The remedy, as usual, was to publish the report last year with no real comment.

The report makes it crystal clear that this is a scandal with absolutely no substance at all. 

It took two years to put together and concludes there is no legitimacy in claiming that Muslims, Asians, Pakistanis or any other ethnic group, are disproportionately involved ‘group-based child sexual exploitation’.

The common denominator is not immigration, race, culture or Islam. It is in fact to do with power, exploitation, patriarchy and opportunity.

And a complete disregard for children.

It really is time to call off this outrageous demonisation of cultures. We need finally to accept what credible research has been telling us for years: that child sexual abuse is not a ‘Muslim problem’ but is the shame of all our communities.

An estimated one in 13 adults in England has been sexually abused as a child. In 2019/20, police across the UK recorded more than 73,518 sexual offences .

The simple and appalling truth is that children have been – and are being – raped and sexually assaulted, often by family members and other trusted figures like teachers.

We have to stop fixating on the lurid and false distraction of ‘Muslim grooming gangs’.

How are those unsubstantiated claims helping our children?

#sex #racism #childsex #grooming #asians #muslim #rightwing #courts