On the one hand I am pleased that the spotlight is on organised sexual violence perpetrated by men of Kashmiri origin against young working-class girls. The ethnicity of perpetrators has been a taboo for too long.
If we are really going to tackle sexual violence we need to confront exactly where this activity takes place.
On the other hand, the real issue is being missed. The victims and survivors of sexual abuse have been utterly let down. And at the root of it all is institutional prejudice against white working-class girls.
It’s easy to demand an inquiry, but what these girls need is justice. And our public bodies need to do the job we expect of them. To protect the vulnerable and to prosecute those committing vile and evil crimes.
Keir Starmer whipped Labour MPs to vote down a proposed national inquiry into the grooming gangs scandal earlier this week.
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What we see repeatedly is a hierarchy of victims when it comes to sexual violence. In the case of these girls, they weren’t considered deserving of help and support. They weren’t expected to amount to very much. It was the worst kind of victim shaming. Collectively the local Police and public services looked the other way while this sustained abuse was allowed to continue.
And still it continues. Convicted offenders are now being released back into the communities where they used to perpetrate their rapes. And they are being supported to have access to children they fathered through rape.
Holding another public inquiry is just kicking the can down the road.
The Independent Inquiry on child sexual abuse published dozens of reports and made recommendations that need to be enacted. It is time to get on with delivering them.
We know exactly what is going on. What we need is justice.
Amongst those recommendations is the need to collect proper data on who the perpetrators and their victims are, including their ethnicity. That will once and for all shine a light on where there is gang offending and where authorities are failing to deal with it.
The victims of grooming gangs have been shamefully let down, says Jackie Doyle Price
GB News
Successive Governments have banged on about tackling violence against women and girls, but victims of child sexual abuse are still not adequately served by either our criminal justice system or by the authorities whose job it is to protect them. It says everything that the men involved in this debate are talking entirely about the perpetrators and not about the girls who have been failed.
It is the duty of the State to protect the most vulnerable. And it is the duty of the State to enforce the laws that Parliament has given them. The enforcement of the law should never be affected by the impact on community relations. This is another manifestation of how our criminal justice system diminishes female and underage victims of sexual violence. It is sinister, it is oppressive and until it is properly tackled, we will never have sexual equality in this country.
What is needed is not an inquiry, but a fundamental shake up of all our institutions to ensure that they always fulfil their duties towards victims. Demands for an inquiry are purely performative. We need more prosecutions of rapists and more support for victims and survivors. The welfare of white working-class girls should be more than just a battleground for publicity seeking politicians. What we all need now is action.
