Next week Deputy Children's Commissioner Sue Berelowitz will publish a major report into child abuse
An official inquiry into child sex gangs will fail to highlight the
targeting of white girls by Pakistani men. Instead the year-long
Government-backed investigation will say that child sex abuse is a problem
caused by men of all backgrounds in towns and cities across the country. The
findings of the inquiry by Sue Berelowitz, the Deputy Children's Commissioner
for England, are likely to anger ministers and provoke disbelief among those
who have observed and investigated cases of abuse of teenage girls in towns in
Lancashire and Yorkshire.
The inquiry into child sexual exploitation by gangs was launched more
than a year ago, but its investigations became more urgent this summer following
the convictions of nine men in Rochdale for their roles in a child sex ring
which groomed young white girls for sex. The men, eight of Pakistani origin and
one from Afghanistan, received jail sentences of between four and 19 years. In
September, police documents revealed that in Rotherham officers ignored
evidence of large-scale sex crime by 'networks of Asian males exploiting young
white females’, which dated back more than a decade.
As long ago as 2002, Home Office inquiries suggested that police were
failing to question or investigate Asian abusers while treating their victims
as 'deviant and promiscuous'. Education Secretary Michael Gove said in May that
Miss Berelowitz should not let her inquiries be swayed by questions of
prejudice and should instead 'ask tough questions about cultural background'. However
her first report, to be published next week, will argue that the problem lies
with men from all ethnic backgrounds. The findings are expected to reflect
opinions that were given by Miss Berelowitz to MPs this summer, when she said
child sexual exploitation was happening across the country.
Her report has met an unenthusiastic response in Whitehall, where one
source said: 'It is important we don't take a politically correct approach and
pretend there is not a real problem here. Obviously abuse has been carried out
by men from all sorts of ethnic backgrounds. 'But that doesn't mean we cannot
say there is an issue about groups of Pakistani men systematically targeting
young white girls.'
A spokesman for Miss Berelowitz said there would be no comment on the
report until it is published next week. But a senior political figure with long
experience of trying to combat sex gangs said there is a specific problem with
groups of young Pakistani men, and that Miss Berelowitz would be wrong to
ignore it. Ann Cryer, who stood down as Labour MP for Keighley in West
Yorkshire at the last election, played a central role in bringing a gang of
abusers to justice in 2004. 'Abuse and sexual exploitation is a universal
problem, especially with white men who groom targets through the internet,' she
said. 'But there is another problem in some towns with Pakistani men.’
'This is connected with parents in Lancashire and Yorkshire who have the
intention of marrying young men to cousins from Pakistan whom they have never
met. This means the men look for other partners. Older white women are not
interested, because they know it is never going to end in wedding bells, and
they dare not look for girls in their own community. So they look for young
white girls.' Mrs Cryer added: 'I believe there is a problem and the solution
is for the elders of their community to take action. The point is not that they
are being picked on because they are Muslim, but that the way they are behaving
is un-Islamic.'
Source: Daily Mail UK
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