Mick Hartley

The Sunday Mirror report on sex abuse of young girls in Telford…for the BBC, it never happened. Douglas Murray:

When the story broke yesterday it was covered across a range of other papers, including in all of the Mirror’s competitors. But the story clearly sent the BBC into a panic. As Ed West pointed out on Twitter, this morning the story was not even on the front page of the BBC’s website…

In fact, the mass gang-rape of underage girls in Shropshire didn’t even make it to the homepage of BBC Shropshire. Only after a fair amount of comment about this online did the BBC manage, this afternoon, to squeeze the rape of the area’s kids into their round-up of Shropshire news….

For it is now not just abundantly but repeatedly clear that most people in positions of authority in this country never did want stories like Telford, Rochdale or Rotherham to come out. Not just because they want to continue being allowed to negotiate between the facts and the public, rather than just reporting the facts to the public. But because such stories spoil – perhaps more than any other – the pleasant, transient, but for the time-being dominant narrative which a whole generation of people in authority have come to believe in, or at least preach. Don’t forget that, as the case of the MP Sarah Champion showed last year, you can still lose your job in this country if you say this is going on.

Update: there is now something on the BBC website.

Telford grooming 'tip of the iceberg', says solicitor.

Ansar Ali, a spokesman for Together Against Grooming, also appeared on the programme and was asked why Asian gangs are often blamed for child sexual exploitation…

"I don't think there is a link to their heritage because most people from their background don't commit these sort of acts."

If that were true, we'd be seeing a similar proportion of Asian (ie Muslim) men as feature in the general population. That is very far from being the case.