humbled:
I remember having discussions here with Holocaust deniers, 'Truthers', AGW deniers, Creationists, hell, even a guy who claimed he saw a sasquatch. I am used to all sorts of idiocy, dehumanising ideologies and science denial.
I am well aware this board is not a monoculture, but the number of people falling for someone so patently pushing a divisive and ignorant distortion in my home country brings it close to home and is somewhat shocking.
That video you posted. The title is 'Tommy Robinson Andrew Norfolk finally admits it's a muslim problem’
This is firstly a blatant insertion of Tommy Robinson (aka Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon, aka Andrew McMaster aka Paul Harris) into the discussion. He's had nothing to do with the investigation. He's just inserting himself to get publicity for himself.Secondly, Andrew Norfolk does not ‘finally admits it's a muslim problem’. He says it is…
“… particular issue with small sub-section of men within the South Asian Community, predominantly Pakistani Muslim heritage”.
So, secondly misrepresentation. Did you not pick up on that? My goodness, sounds like Andrew is saying it is a cultural issue there. Which it is, as culture expresses religion rather than religion expressing culture - which is why people like ‘Tommy’ are dangerous, as they make it all about religion.
I totally agree with you that the case had gone on for years without attention, and think it is an example of poor parenting and sexist and classist attitudes in social services and the police amounting to a systemic failure to protect at risk children. The fear some in the local council, the social services and the police had of being thought racist did not help, but it was not the primary cause of lack of action.
Because you know that police and social services would reacted differently no matter what ethnicity the criminals had if the children had reasonably-off middle class parents who became mad with worry if their children were half-an-hour late coming home from a piano lesson and rang the police.
Those children suffered because of evil predatory men, shitty parents, and a system which classified working class delinquent children as not being worth protecting. That is why it went on for years.
Oh, and just as perspective. Muslims are under-represented compared to their percentage of the population if you look at the numbers in jail for sex offences, and if you look at sex-grooming gangs, the ones characterised by South Asian ethnicity typically are not primarily motivated by the age of their victims, but rather their exploitability. Sex-grooming gangs characterised by white ethnicity are typically motivated by their victims age.