Mick Hartley

Julie Bindel wrote about this last week. Now the Times has picked up the story, with the emphasis on Sadiq Khan’s efforts to look the other way.

It is almost 15 years since Andrew Norfolk of The Times exposed the grooming of girls with drugs and alcohol for extreme and violent sex in northern towns — but Sir Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, has been accused of a cover-up for publicly denying there were grooming gangs in the capital.

Asked in January how many rape gangs London had, Khan asked seven times for his inquisitor, Susan Hall, the Conservative leader in the London Assembly, to “clarify” what she meant.

The mayor said: “The situation in London in relation to young people being groomed is different to other parts of the country. What we have in London is young people being groomed — to use your word, not mine — to be used in county lines.”

He’s deflecting. Yes, county lines as well, but grooming for sex too.

Campaigners who helped to expose grooming gangs say the situation in London mirrors the “cover-up” by officialdom they faced for years in towns and cities in the north of England.

Maggie Oliver, the Manchester police officer turned Rochdale whistleblower, has said London is the “last bastion” of the rape gangs cover-up…

Chris Wild, an author and campaigner, said: “It’s not as bad as it is in Rotherham, it’s worse. We’ve got a problem in every area of London.”

During the pandemic Wild managed six children’s care homes across north London in Enfield, Tottenham and Haringey. “They were losing 50 to 75 per cent of their children every single week to prostitution,” he said.

“One [home] had six kids, and lost five to prostitution every single week. They were coming back dishevelled, having had drugs, [been] sold off to sex rings and raped by paedophiles. The police won’t get back to you for five or six days then they say, ‘Oh, she won’t give a statement’. If these girls were known to them, they’d say all sorts, ‘She’s the instigator’, ‘She’s promiscuous’.”

Wild urged Khan to “acknowledge that [the problem] exists first”, adding: “Someone in his position could put an end to it tomorrow, but they just don’t want to upset people.”

The same old story. Khan, of course, doesn’t want to upset his Muslim supporters.