Grooming trial: class action

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/may/09/grooming-trial-class-action-editorial

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The brutal exploitation of scores of vulnerable young teenage girls in Rochdale raises many troubling questions. Yesterday, most of the perpetrators received long prison sentences. But in the aftermath, it is important to examine how the girls came to be in such an exposed position, and why their families and then the agencies of the state that are supposed to help and protect them failed so miserably.

Separately, and in the wider context equally important, is the suggestion that early allegations were not properly investigated, first because police feared being branded as racist and second they were worried about the risk of provoking exactly the BNP-style backlash that has resulted in trial lawyers being assaulted and, in February, unrest on the streets of Heywood. The extreme right did its best to fan the racist claim, nearly causing the case to collapse when the BNP leader Nick Griffin tweeted the news that seven of the nine defendants were convicted before it had been reported in court. In their turn, some of the defendants accused the judge and jury of prejudice.

"He made me feel pretty," said the victim who tried to raise the alarm four years ago, of the first man to rape her. The abuse of young girls who lack the kind of family life that would keep them safe has been steadily increasing for years. A third of the victims are in care, the rest tend to come from poor homes, to have low self-esteem and little confidence in their ability to change their lives: easy pickings for the exploitative and unscrupulous. Worse, when this victim finally found the courage to report what was happening in 2008, first the police and then the Crown Prosecution Service refused to treat her as a credible witness and the case was dropped. They insist there could be no repetition now, and claim awareness of the problem of grooming has become much more sophisticated. Too many children have been abused over the past 20 years or more for this to be a sufficient explanation.

A search for excuses may be one reason for claiming that concern about appearing racist hindered the original investigation. This is turning the genuine issue of racism into a whole new genre of prejudice, a resentful moan against those who are supposed to neuter public discourse by imposing an abstract political correctness. But despite the assertions of well-regarded commentators such as Martin Narey, this is not an ethnic or cultural crime. This kind of grooming is not uniquely, or even predominantly, carried out by any one ethnic or religious group. More than nine in 10 of those on the sex offenders' register are white British. This is a tragic story about damaged children being terribly abused. The force that shaped it was not the ethnicity of the abusers but the poor, chaotic family lives of the victims. This is about class, not race.