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You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/aug/11/convictions-of-sexual-exploitation-gang-in-newcastle-are-well-worth-the-price
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| Version 0 | Version 1 |
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| Convictions of sexual exploitation gang in Newcastle are well worth the price | Convictions of sexual exploitation gang in Newcastle are well worth the price |
| (6 months later) | |
| Letters | |
| Fri 11 Aug 2017 19.18 BST | |
| Last modified on Mon 27 Nov 2017 18.37 GMT | |
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| Your call (Editorial, 11 August) for properly funded research to understand the sexual exploitation of vulnerable young girls following the Newcastle trials is welcome, but in the wake of similar cases and what we (and you) already know, feels evasive. | Your call (Editorial, 11 August) for properly funded research to understand the sexual exploitation of vulnerable young girls following the Newcastle trials is welcome, but in the wake of similar cases and what we (and you) already know, feels evasive. |
| At root, this is a problem of gender and class in a context of poverty and cutbacks in education and social services. Girls are violated because perpetrators, the police and social services have in their different ways ignored their vulnerability, treating them as other: as “meat”, as “trash”, as “white trash”, as manipulable, uncontrolled or uncontrollable, even as free subjects making responsible decisions despite their age. With this background, Northumbria police should be congratulated, the use of an informant seen as an important but secondary matter. Why lead your editorial with it? | At root, this is a problem of gender and class in a context of poverty and cutbacks in education and social services. Girls are violated because perpetrators, the police and social services have in their different ways ignored their vulnerability, treating them as other: as “meat”, as “trash”, as “white trash”, as manipulable, uncontrolled or uncontrollable, even as free subjects making responsible decisions despite their age. With this background, Northumbria police should be congratulated, the use of an informant seen as an important but secondary matter. Why lead your editorial with it? |
| That there is a significant ethnic, cultural and racist dimension in this and a number of other casesought to be recognised and addressed, but it is only one issue. Ken Macdonald’s comment that Newcastle represents a “profoundly racist crime” is both valid and glib, distorting our understanding of how gender victimisation works in a setting of social disadvantage.Professor Alan NorrieWarwick Law School | That there is a significant ethnic, cultural and racist dimension in this and a number of other casesought to be recognised and addressed, but it is only one issue. Ken Macdonald’s comment that Newcastle represents a “profoundly racist crime” is both valid and glib, distorting our understanding of how gender victimisation works in a setting of social disadvantage.Professor Alan NorrieWarwick Law School |
| • Northumbria police gave £10,000 to a convicted paedophile and convicted an 18-strong grooming gang in a fraction of the time it took to deal with similar events in Rochdale, Rotherham and elsewhere. Operation Yewtree, meanwhile, costs the taxpayer £5m a year for negligible returns in justice done. Dare one suggest that this hullabaloo has less to do with moral principles and more with politically correct smoke-screening that yet again a grooming gang has come from Pakistani-Bangladeshi backgrounds, and that this beleaguered section of our community has a serious problem with these monsters, far more worthy of Operation Yewtree’s blank-cheque resources?Mark BoyleJohnstone, Renfrewshire | • Northumbria police gave £10,000 to a convicted paedophile and convicted an 18-strong grooming gang in a fraction of the time it took to deal with similar events in Rochdale, Rotherham and elsewhere. Operation Yewtree, meanwhile, costs the taxpayer £5m a year for negligible returns in justice done. Dare one suggest that this hullabaloo has less to do with moral principles and more with politically correct smoke-screening that yet again a grooming gang has come from Pakistani-Bangladeshi backgrounds, and that this beleaguered section of our community has a serious problem with these monsters, far more worthy of Operation Yewtree’s blank-cheque resources?Mark BoyleJohnstone, Renfrewshire |
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| Child protection | |
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| letters | |
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