For those interested in learning more about the rape gangs, this book by Jayne Senior, the main Rotherham whistleblower is essential. In this thread I’ll post some extracts from her book.
When Jayne grew up, Rotherham was still somewhere that felt safe for children.
Jayne became a social worker with Risky Business, working with vulnerable girls. Her first case was the victim of a grooming gang.
At the time they only knew about 21 girls involved in what was then (wrongly) called “child prostitution”. Even in the 1990s, children’s homes had problems with Asian men in taxis preying on girls. The police did nothing.
Early efforts to alert the authorities led to them being told that collecting info on potential abusers breached their “human rights”. By 2001 the abuse of girls was shifting from Sheffield to Rotherham, with girls as young as 11 being targeted.
The rape gangs would use younger relatives to groom the girls, acting as if they were their boyfriends and using the opportunity to gather intelligence on the girls. Then, once they were snared, they could be passed on to others.
When the father of “Paula”, a 14 year old being abused by a rape gang, tried to warn them off by saying he owned a shotgun, the police told him off but did nothing about the abuse.
One victim of the rape gangs was told she was “dirty” and made to convert to Islam, but still passed around for anal rape. Her abuser beat her and used her as a domestic slave, while he watched jihadi videos with his friends.
The main perpetrators were Asian men, many of them related to one another. Jayne says some Asian men had no respect for white girls but mentions a case of an Asian girl who was abused by a group who invited their brothers, uncles, and cousins to abuse her too. An Asian social worker said the girl could have avoided being abused if only she “dressed more appropriately”.
Jayne worked with a Muslim family man who was appalled by the abuse but who said that the father of a friend had told him that white girls were there to “practice” on before getting married.
When they started doing education in schools on sexual abuse, one head teacher asked if the Asian girls in the school should be excluded.
The rape gangs were organised. They would use young men to groom girls, before passing them onto the older men. Takeaways and hotels were used for abuse, with taxis used to transport girls around. Even the under 18s disco was infiltrated to groom more girls.
“Lianna” was homeless. Her abuser posed as a boyfriend and showed her a handgun to impress her. Within three weeks he’d forced her to have sex with his brother and threatened her with the gun to keep doing so.
Confronted with all these cases, the social workers at Risky Business started collecting information. But when they noted the abusers were almost all Asian they were accused of being racist.
“Jessica” was in foster care, even though her carer invited her abuser to tea. When her father tried to rescue her from the house where she was being abused, he made a racist comment. The police came and arrested him and an intoxicated, semi-naked, 14 year old “Jessica” but not the abusers. “Jessica” said that her abusers regularly used the “race card” against the police.
“Katrin” decided to go to the police about her abusers. Her older brother was attacked and her abusers would ring them at home to threaten them. A police officer effectively warned her off taking her abusers to court, so they got away with it.
A Home Office researcher worked with Risky Business to map the rape gangs but one morning the team found the office had been broken into. Files had gone missing, the password protected computer had been accessed, and minutes tampered with. The culprits have never been found.
The researcher was told by senior management never again to refer to Asian men running the rape gangs and was sent on a two-day ethnicity and diversity training course.
The researcher was pulled over by the police while driving her car. They told her that “people” knew where she lived. One day Jayne was told by a police officer to check that her tyres were in good condition and that she had car insurance. In retrospect, it was a threat.
“Julie” was 16 but with the mental age of a 4 year old. She was locked in a flat by a rape gang and abused but the police refused to act because she was of legal age and described it as being consensual, even though she turned up “dripping sperm from every orifice” with wounds.
A report for South Yorkshire Police pointed out that the rape gangs were also dealing drugs and committing violent crime. It cited a case where a 12 year old was kidnapped by a rape gang and forced to watch her 14 year old sister be gang raped. Another 14 year old was doused in petrol, as a warning. Iraqi Kurdish asylum seekers also abused girls, some of whom became good at translating Arabic as a result. The police did nothing in response to this report.
A rape gang beat two girls so badly they required the hospital but because the girls used racist language the police focused on them. The abusers weren’t arrested. The same abusers later broke into a house to threaten a 7 year old whose sister they thought might talk to the police.
“Amy” was harassed by her abusers so badly that her family had to move six times in six months. She was moved to live with an aunt but the aunt was probably paid to agree to her being taken abroad to marry an abuser’s relative so he could move to Britain.
“Amy” was trafficked to Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool, Doncaster, Barnsley and elsewhere. She spent so much time with her abusers that she learned reasonable Punjabi, as did other abuse victims.
Thread will continue tomorrow.
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