Comment by Riaz Haq 21 hours ago

Elon Musk 'misinformed' on grooming gangs, says Wes Streeting

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czxdzng92lno

Police figures from 2023 reveal that group-based child sexual abuse accounted for 3.7% of all sexual offences against children reported to police.

https://www.hydrantprogramme.co.uk/assets/Documents/CSE-Taskforce-G...

According to the data, 26% of group-based child sexual abuse happened within families, compared with 17% involving groups including grooming gangs.

Schools, clubs and religious institutions accounted for 9%.

There have been numerous investigations into the systematic rape of girls and young women by organised gangs, including in Rotherham, Cornwall, Derbyshire and Bristol.

Inquiries into Greater Manchester Police's (GMP) handling of historical child sex abuse cases in Manchester, Oldham and Rochdale have also been carried out.

Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham said tackling grooming gangs was "not something to be politicised".

"We've done this when others were looking in a different direction," Burnham added.

"This is something to be faced up to fully and unflinchingly in my view."

Earlier on Friday, health minister Andrew Gwynne suggested Musk "ought to focus" on US politics, where he is set to act as an unelected adviser to the Trump administration on cutting federal spending.

Speaking to LBC Radio, Gwynne added that child grooming was a "very serious issue", pointing to previous investigations which had taken place into sexual abuse scandals.

"There comes a point where we don't need more inquiries, and had Elon Musk really paid attention to what's been going on in this country, he might have recognised that there have already been inquiries," he said.

Comment by Riaz Haq 21 hours ago

Failing victims, fuelling hate: challenging the harms of the ‘Muslim grooming gangs’ narrative - Ella Cockbain, Waqas Tufail, 2020

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0306396819895727

Abstract
‘Muslim grooming gangs’ have become a defining feature of media, political and public debate around child sexual exploitation in the UK. The dominant narrative that has emerged to explain a series of horrific cases is misleading, sensationalist and has in itself promoted a number of harms. This article examines how racist framings of ‘Muslim grooming gangs’ exist not only in extremist, far-right fringes but in mainstream, liberal discourses too. The involvement of supposedly feminist and liberal actors and the promotion of pseudoscientific ‘research’ have lent a veneer of legitimacy to essentialist, Orientalist stereotypes of Muslim men, the demonisation of whole communities and demands for collective responsibility. These developments are situated in the broader socio-political context, including the far Right’s weaponisation of women’s rights, the ‘Islamophobia industry’ and a long history of racialising crime. We propose alternative ways of understanding and responding to child sexual exploitation/abuse. We contend that genuinely anti-racist feminist approaches can help in centring victims/survivors and their needs and in tackling serious sexual violence without demonising entire communities.

Comment by Riaz Haq 21 hours ago

Most grooming gang offences carried out by white men, police chiefs say

https://www.times-series.co.uk/news/national/24849607.grooming-gang...

Main facts and figures

https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/crime-justice-an...

White Men, Not Pakistanis, Responsible for Most Grooming Gang Crimes: NPCC Report

https://khybernews.tv/white-men-not-pakistanis-responsible-for-most...

Comment by Riaz Haq 13 hours ago

Financial Times' Ed Luce on Elon Musk's tweets on grooming gangs scandal: CNN.com - Transcripts

https://transcripts.cnn.com/show/fzgps/date/2025-01-12/segment/01

"And there have, of course, been other child abuse scandals in the church of England, the Catholic Church, the Boy Scouts, private schools, as you've seen in other countries that have not been mentioned by Elon Musk and that haven't had this kind of publicity"

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Fareed Zakaria: I'm just trying to understand, is there any basis for implicating him (PM Kier Starmer) in this scandal?

LUCE: No, there's no factual basis. It's true that he was director of public prosecutions in Britain, which is kind of the equivalent of attorney general, but also solicitor general. When that scandal broke in 2012, he then stepped up what was clearly a very lax system. He sort of tightened up the Crown Prosecution Service, which he was in charge of, to try to prevent such a recurrence of, you know, what was clearly a massive sort of fail by the system.

And he then began the prosecutions that are ongoing. But we've got, you know, a pretty long legacy now of trials in this case. And there have, of course, been other child abuse scandals in the church of England, the Catholic Church, the Boy Scouts, private schools, as you've seen in other countries that have not been mentioned by Elon Musk and that haven't had this kind of publicity.

ZAKARIA: And Musk doesn't like Keir Starmer. He's been encouraging the Reform Party, which used to be called the UKIP Party, the pro-Brexit party, to essentially rise. He's calling for new elections. Do you understand what that's about?

LUCE: Yes. I mean, he's a big fan of far-right parties, not just in Britain but in Germany. As you know, the Alternative for Deutschland, the far-right German party, he's saying is the only possible savior of Germany. And Nigel Farage's Reform Party in the U.K. similarly, he believes, will be the savior of Britain.

The context is the conservatives were defeated last summer by the Keir Starmer's Labour Party, and the conservatives are competing with reform for the far-right vote. They're moving to the right and Nigel Farage's Reform is moving to the left to make it a bit more electable. And they're roughly neck and neck in the polls. So there is this sort of battle as to who can be more right-wing and who can claim the mantle of sort of being a Trumpian British Conservative Party.

And Musk's interventions in favor of reform should be seen in that context. The reality is that Musk is not popular in Britain. The approval ratings I think a few years ago for him, when he was seen principally as a space guy and an EV guy, were very high. There are now fewer than 1 in 5 British people approve of Musk. So I think there are diminishing returns to this kind of really unprecedented intervention in another democracy.

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