Thread by @bindelj

THREAD
Hi @GoodwinMJ, I read your lastest Substack on how, according to you, 'the media class did not touch this issue AT ALL until the year 2011.'

You write: 'Even though there have been rumours about the rape gangs since the 1970s, and even though political groups like the British National Party and the English Defence League were pointing to them from as early as the mid-to-late 2000s'

'the media class did not touch this issue AT ALL until the year 2011.' But this is not the case, Matt. I will post proof in my later tweets, but first to say, I (and many other journalists) also use Lexis. The problem is that you used it with limited search terms. For example,

try to use terms that more accurately describe the atrocity, such as child rape and pimping, which is why you did not find my 2008 article on Charlene Downes, published in the Guardian:

Charlene, whose case I investigated from 2004, was not a victim of Pakistani 'grooming gangs' but rather dozens of men her father Robert brought home from the pub (white rapists), and subsequently several men, none of whom were Pakistani, who worked in the takeaways.

I do not point this out to in any way defend the numerous child rapists, pimps and sex buyers who ARE Pakistani Muslim, but rather because as a journalist I know you rely on and pride yourself on accuracy.

Then we get to my investigation, published by the Sunday Times Magazine a year before the Charlene Downes one, in September 2007, four years before my esteemed colleague Andrew Norfolk's first piece was published in the Times, 20011.

This piece was not on Lexis (newspaper mag supps often are not as you know) but it DOES use the term 'grooming', and it WAS the very first on the topic in the national press.
Your Substack, therefore, contains omissions and inaccuracies. I know you have a point to make, but

perhaps recognise that not all of us are cowardly elitists. I worked with the mothers and victim/survivors of these horrific crimes, from the 1990s. It is blatantly disrespectful to come along now on your white charger to posture and preen, painting yourself as hero of the day.