Mick Hartley

Julie Bindel in the Telegraph:

Right now, it’s a pretty depressing time to be a feminist campaigning to end men’s violence towards women and girls. I first reported on the grooming gang scandals back in 2007, having been alerted to the prevalence of the grooming gangs operating in northern towns and cities in England. Now, these gangs operate across the UK.

And when I first pitched this story, in 2005, to the editor of a liberal newspaper, I was turned down, because: “We would be seen as racist.”

That “liberal paper” would be the Guardian.

Making a three-part podcast series with grooming gang victim Fiona Goddard, I have learnt shocking, jaw-dropping details I was hitherto unaware of, despite having been all over this story for two decades. I thought I knew as much as it was possible to know.

I was wrong.

Fiona was repeatedly told by the perpetrators, almost all of whom were related, that she should travel to Mirpur, Pakistan to meet the rest of the family. Luckily, practicality stood in their way, but Fiona knows of many other girls who were trafficked overseas, never to be seen again – not only to Pakistan, but also to Saudi Arabia. Some were forced into “temporary Islamic marriages”….

In her case, and those of many others like her, the abuse she suffered was racially aggravated. She was called white trash, and told that girls like her were only good for sex – because Asian girls are to marry and keep pure. It is almost beyond belief that the only accusations of racism that arise in this whole horror story are levelled at the victims.

“Most Muslims don’t drink or sniff coke”, says Fiona, “but these men would fast and then break their fasts with a line of coke, a vodka, then toddle off to the mosque.”

I had not realised just how highly organised the gangs are. Operating on a strict policy of “omertà”, men are brought in not only from all over the UK, but also from overseas. All of them are close business contacts within the drug trade, with many extended family members involved.

It operates like a Ponzi scheme, with boys being groomed into the business model through blackmail and threats of violence. They are required to rape the girls, after which they belong to the gangs and end up just like the older perpetrators.

The podcast interviews with Fiona Goddard can be seen here.

The brutality of the grooming gangs is appalling enough, yet in a way the true horror here is the complicity of the police and social services in all this.

And – still – the denial.