Thread by @CDP1882

1/ Lots of people are spreading this misinformation about the role ethnicity has played in the grooming gang scandal. This is the biggest race hate scandal in 21st century Britain so we need to get it right. Thread…

https://twitter.com/PippaCrerar/status/1642567493884444672

2/ The claim that ethnicity played a role was first raised by Times journalist Andrew Norfolk in 2011, when he  found a pattern of Pakistani ethnic abusers and white victims in 17 cases. Nick Clegg and the chief executive of Barnado's both backed calls for a major investigation.

3/ The authorities were worried by the race angle. In 2008 the Human Trafficking Centre commissioned a film about the dangers of on-street grooming. But three years after being made, it still wasn't shown in schools, apparently because they were "scared" of the subject matter.

4/ Following revelations by Andrew Norfolk in The Times about the scale of the abuse in Rotherham, social worker Alexis Jay was commissioned to investigate the issue. Her 2014 report found, at a conservative estimate, at least 1,400 victims from 1997-2013.

5/ The Jay Report found that the majority of perpetrators were described as Asian by their victims but that the council had failed to address that, with some staff worried about discussing ethnicity for fear of being seen as racist, while others were told explicitly not to.

6/ Only around 2-3% of the population of Rotherham during the period examined by the Jay Report came from a Pakistani ethnic background. Most abusers of the 1,400 girls therefore came from a population of only around 8,000 people. Clearly they were hugely over-represented.

7/ Following the Jay Report, the government commissioned an investigation of Rotherham Council by Louise Casey. It found that political correctness had prevented the council dealing with the abuse. A social worker said that statistics on ethnicity were taken out of presentations.

8/ The Casey Report also found that the majority of abusers were of Pakistani ethnicity and the majority of victims were white. This was "a matter of fact". The Council was scared of mentioning ethnicity and confronting that there was "a race issue here".

9/ This over-representation of Pakistani ethnicity abusers targeting white girls wasn't exclusive to Rotherham. The Telford Inquiry released last year found the town had at least 1,000 victims and that this figure might be "tame".

10/ The Telford Inquiry also found that, like in Rotherham, efforts to discuss the nature of the abuse were shut down with accusations that it was racist. Claims of racism helped prevent effective action and led to the abuse being allowed to carry on.

11/ Once again, the Telford Inquiry found that the majority of CSE suspects were "men of Southern Asian heritage", despite the Asian population of the town only being 4.7% in 2011. Just as in Rotherham, the predominantly Pakistani Asian community were over-represented as abusers.

12/ To find out if this over-representation was true, a Home Office Report was commissioned and then published in 2020. It supposedly found that the majority of abusers were white men - a line which is trotted out whenever Pakistani ethnicity over-representation is mentioned.

13/ But what the Home Office report actually found was that data was so poor that nobody knew for sure. Rather than try to actually find out, they limply pointed out that a majority of abusers were white. But of course that’s the case, Britain is a majority white country!

14/ Going all the way back to Andrew Norfolk in The Times, the contention had always been that those of Pakistani heritage were over-represented as abusers, not the majority of abusers. And the research cited by the Home Office Report actually agreed with that.

15/ The Asian population of Britain in 2001 was 5% and in 2011 it was 7.8%. The studies summarised by the Home Office Report showed Asians made up:
- CEOP (2011): 28%
- Berelowitz (2012): 27%
- CEOP (2013): 75%
- Berelowitz (2015): 14%

16/ During the research for my film “Grooming Gangs: Britain's Shame” I came across a new research paper which showed that people of Muslim and especially Pakistani heritage were significantly over-represented in group based localised child sexual exploitation.

17/ By comparing the number of prosecutions to the overall population, the NCA-cited study showed that 1 in every 2,200 Muslim men over 16 in England and Wales had been prosecuted for this crime from 1997 to 2017.

18/ When it came to Pakistanis, rates of prosecution across England and Wales for this kind of abuse was 1 in 1,700.

In Rochdale, 1 in 280 Muslim males over 16 were prosecuted.

In Telford, it was 1 in 126.

In Rotherham, 1 in 73.

19/ There is still more research to be done, but the Home Office Report doesn't disprove that those of Pakistani ethnicity are over-represented. And those who claim saying so is racist are repeating what led to the scandal being hidden for so many years. Justice requires truth.