Bill Carmichael: Cruel betrayal of sex victims

In the latest trial, for example, in which seven men from Oxford were found guilty of drugging, beating and raping young girls, investigators have claimed the key to understanding the case lies in the defendants’ professions, rather than in their background and culture.

Apparently in this case, as in similar incidents in cities around the UK, taxi drivers and kebab shop workers are disproportionately represented among the abusers – and that’s where the authorities reckon we should look to understand the problem. If this wasn’t so serious it would be laughable. Are we seriously suggesting that there is something in the psychological make-up of cabbies and kebab carvers that makes them more likely to commit sex offences?

Let’s get a few things straight from the start; no one is suggesting that all Asian men are child abusers, and it is no doubt true that white men commit the majority of sex offences.

But to deny there is a specific problem with gangs of young Muslims grooming children, often from broken and chaotic homes, is to fly in the face of reality.

There has been a long series of such cases – Rochdale, Oldham, Derby, Rotherham, Skipton and Keighley – which follow a strikingly similar pattern. The perpetrators are overwhelmingly Asian men, usually of Pakistani descent, and the victims are white working class girls.

To say this has nothing to do with race or religion is simply blinkered. These young men live surrounded by the highly sexualised culture of the West, and yet are often required to marry cousins from conservative families in rural Pakistan whose attitude to sex couldn’t be more different. And whether it is through their religion or their culture, many of these young men view women, and particularly white women, as inferior.

It is a short hop from that for some of them to see the scantily clad pre-teens, hanging around kebab shops in the early hours, as worthless and what former Home Secretary Jack Straw called “easy meat”.

To deny this isn’t just the sort of harmless political correctness that we’ve come to expect from the authorities, it has also quite devastating consequences.

In Oxford, as in the other cases, there is clear evidence that police and social services were alerted to the abuse and did nothing for years.

Why was that? Could it possibly be that they were so terrified of being accused of racism and “Islamophobia” that they turned a blind eye? If so it represents a terrible betrayal of some of our most vulnerable citizens – exactly the sort of people police and social services are paid to protect.

Luckily there are some people, including some brave souls in the Muslim community, who want to bring this issue into the light.

The trouble is there are too many police officers and social workers who prefer to pretend that the problem doesn’t exist – and while they continue to delude themselves many more young girls will be raped and prostituted.

Bang to rights

According to a study out this week, the average teenage girl slams 164 doors a year and has 183 rows with mum and 153 fall-outs with dad. My reaction on reading this was – is that all?

The good news is that by the time she is 23 she finally starts to appreciate everything her mum has done for her.

No word from the researchers as to when the reconciliation with dad occurs. I’m still waiting.