Vold og overgrep

Ni dømt for seksuelle overgrep

Ni menn i Storbritannia er dømt for organisert seksuell utnyttelse og voldtekter av sårbare jenter ned i 13-årsalderen. Mennene, i alderen 25 til 59 år og gifte fedre, er opprinnelig fra Pakistan, med ett afghansk unntak. Straffeutmålingen blir kjent i dag. Tidligere parlamentsmedlem for Labour beskylder politiet for unnfallenhet. Ann Cryer mener politiet kunne stoppet de voldsomme og systematiske overgrepene for flere år siden, men at redselen for å bli stemplet som rasister fikk politiet til å vegre seg fra å handle. Et av vitnene i saken, sier at organisert seksuell utnyttelse og voldtekter av britiske jenter, begått særlig av menn med pakistansk opphav, foregår over hele Storbritannia.

Hege Storhaug, HRS

Det er knapt til å ta innover seg, og vi har jo hørt dette i flere år nå: asiatiske gjenger (først og fremst med pakistansk bakgrunn), som voldtar og utnytter jenter seksuelt (typisk hvite britiske sosialt sårbare jenter), ved å få dem på kroken gjennom alkohol, mat, gaver, penger og andre ”fristelser”. Såkalt ”grooming”. I denne siste saken fra Manchester kommer det frem at ei av jentene ble misbrukt av 20 menn i løpet av en natt. Et annet vitne, nå 20 år gammel, forteller hvordan politiet sviktet henne i 2008 da hun søkte beskyttelse. ”Grooming” den gang var ukjent for politiet, sa hun i retten. Påtalemakten ville ikke ta ut tiltale mot gjengen grunnet jentas ”troverdighet”, forklarte hun. Dette førte til at hun etter å ha oppsøkt politiet ble fanget opp av gjengen igjen og yterligere grovt misbrukt i fire måneder til. Jenta mener at ”grooming” foregår ”overalt” i Storbritannia. Hva med Norge?

‘It’s like, then, in 2008 it weren’t really heard of… Asian men with white girls.

‘It was just unheard of. I’ve never heard of it. Now it’s going on everywhere. You think of Muslim men as religious and family-minded and just nice people. You don’t think… I don’t know… you just don’t think they’d do things like that.’

The girl, now 20, only escaped the gang in December 2008 when she fell pregnant and moved away. She was then made to wait until August 2009 for the CPS to tell her they were not taking the case to trial.

She called the men who abused her ‘evil’ and said she hopes they pay for their crimes.

‘They ripped away all my dignity and all my last bit of self-esteem and by the end of it I had no emotion whatsoever because I was used to being used and abused daily,’ she said.

‘It was just blocked out, it was just like it wasn’t me any more. They just took everything away and I just think hopefully they’ll pay for what they’ve done.

Gjengen kan ha voldtatt inntil 50 britiske jenter. Ann Cryer mener at ”den politiske korrektheten” i politiets rekker er ”en skandale ”.

Andre politikere benekter enhver sammenheng mellom det åpenbare etniske og/eller religiøse mønsteret. Man må være blind og døv for å benekte den voldsomme kulturkollisjonen?

Uansett, hadde det vært omvendt, at britiske menn utnyttet og voldtok eksempelvis britiskpakistanske jenter, vet vi vel hva reaksjonene hadde vært?

Fears that they would be branded racist meant that police and social services left an Asian paedophile ring free to rape up to 50 white girls, it was claimed today.

The sex grooming gang plied teenagers with alcohol before abusing them and could have been stopped two years before their sickening crimes were finally uncovered in Rochdale, Greater Manchester. Nine will today be sentenced for their role in the sexual abuse.

Former Labour MP for Keighley Ann Cryer said that the authorities ignored complaints about them because they were ‘petrified of being called racist’.

These innocent girls were ultimately ‘betrayed’ and left to live lives of ‘untold misery,’ because of political correctness, she said.

‘This is an absolute scandal. They were petrified of being called racist and so reverted to the default of political correctness,’ she told the Telegraph.

‘They had a greater fear of being perceived in that light than in dealing with the issues in front of them.’

Ms Cryer has long campaigned to tackle the issue of Asian sex gangs in Britain.

But chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee Keith Vaz claims that the issue has nothing to do with race or being Asian.

‘I do not believe it is a race issue,’ he told BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme.

‘I think we do need to look into this but I think it’s quite wrong to stigmatise a whole community.

‘These are vile crimes, we all agree they should go to jail. But it’s a big leap to suddenly go from that position to the position where you say «it is Asian men and Pakistani men».

‘We shouldn’t be afraid to discuss this. It’s quite right that we should discuss it but those who do just discuss it, they ought to have evidence. What the BNP is saying is that this is a crime that is committed by Pakistani men and Asian men – that is wrong, that is where I say there ought to be caution.’

As many as 47 vulnerable girls were given alcohol, gifts and money before being passed around to have sex with ‘several men a day, several times a week’.

At least one victim was forced to have sex with 20 men in one night when she was drunk, police said. Two became pregnant as a result of their horrifying ordeal – one of whom was only 13 and had an abortion.

Yesterday nine men, all but one originally from Pakistan, were facing lengthy jail terms after being convicted of a string of offences, ranging from rape to sex trafficking.

But it can be revealed that a golden opportunity to smash the ring was missed nearly four years ago after a 15-year-old girl told police she had been raped in 2008.

Over the next two years, dozens of white teenagers were abused by older men in the gang, which was centred around takeaways in Rochdale, Greater Manchester.

A review of the earlier case in 2010 sparked a wave of arrests and charges.

The leader of the Ramadhan Foundation has accused Pakistani community elders of ‘burying their heads in the sand’ on the issue of on-street grooming.

Mohammed Shafiq, chief executive of the group, said police should not let the ‘issue of race’ stop them from addressing the issue.

The Ramadhan Foundation is a Manchester-based moderate Muslim youth group that works for ‘peaceful co-existence and dialogue for all communities’.

Mr Shafiq said: ‘There is a significant problem for the British Pakistani community, there is an over-representation amongst recent convictions in the crime of on-street grooming, there should be no silence in addressing the issue of race as this is central to the actions of these criminals.

‘They think that white teenage girls are worthless and can be abused without a second thought; it is this sort of behaviour that is bringing shame on our community.

‘I urge the police and the councils not to be frightened to address this issue, there is a strong lesson that you cannot ignore race or be over sensitive.’

He added: ‘I have been overwhelmed by the support the Ramadhan Foundation has been given by young people for our campaign on child grooming but concerned that community elders are once again burying their heads in the sand, this concerns us all and we must speak out.

‘The community elders need to learn from the reaction of young people and reject any attempt to silence the reaction from our community.’

He said the police would need to ‘reflect on their failures’ in this case.

‘Finally the far-Right and fascist movements are not welcome to Rochdale, we reject their division and hatred and it has no place in a tolerant and diverse society.

‘We will learn lessons from this case but not allow outsiders to divide us,’ Mr Shafiq added.

But Asian Labour MP Keith Vaz warned that blaming a particular race or religion for grooming young girls for sex risks opening up a Pandora’s box over race relations.

Mr Vaz, chairman of the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee, said the root causes of the criminality against young girls needs to be addressed and the focus taken off the ethnic origin, religion or geographical location of those involved.

Mr Shafiq also paid tribute to the bravery of the victims. ‘Without their contribution justice would not have been possible,’ he said.

‘Today’s guilty verdicts are to be welcomed and I hope the message goes out that if you engage in these crimes, you will be caught and brought to justice.

‘These criminals have brought shame on themselves, their families and our community.’

The case is the latest involving men of predominantly Asian origin picking up young girls for sex.

Former Home Secretary Jack Straw last year accused some Pakistani men of seeing white girls as ‘easy meat’ for sexual abuse following the jailing of another grooming gang in Derby. The latest case was conducted against a backdrop of racial politics.

Tensions were exploited by far-Right groups who waved anti-Muslim placards outside Liverpool Crown Court and marched on the takeaways named in the case three days after the trial started.

A barrister for the men was punched outside court by a protester, while tweets by BNP leader Nick Griffin sparked extraordinary claims – later dismissed – of a ‘mole’ inside the jury room.

Despite this, police were at pains to play down the racial element last night.

Detective Chief Superintendent Mary Doyle, of Greater Manchester Police, insisted that getting ‘hung up on race and ethnicity issues’ detracted from what was simple child sex abuse.

‘There is no evidence to say they were targeted because they were white,’ she said. ‘They were targeted because they were there.’

But some campaign groups argue that to tackle the problem it is vital to recognise that a minority within their community prey on young, white girls.

‘There is a particular problem with groups of Pakistani men who think white girls are worthless,’ said Mohammed Shafiq, director of the Ramadhan Foundation. ‘They think they can use and abuse these girls in this abhorrent sort of way and then discard them.’

The missed chance to save the girls came in August 2008 when the 15-year-old was arrested after smashing the counter at one of the takeaways.

She told officers that two men had subjected her to repeated sexual abuse, plying her with vodka before raping her.

One was the ringleader of the group – a 59-year-old who cannot be named for legal reasons. But despite evidence which included DNA swabs from her underwear, a senior CPS lawyer ruled there was no prospect of conviction and the pair were never charged.

As a result, members of the gang were allowed to continue their abuse.

The investigation was only revived after Nazir Afzal was appointed chief crown prosecutor for North West England and examined the file.

Twelve men were arrested in 2010 but many of the girls were too scared to give evidence in court or regarded the men as their boyfriends despite the huge age gap. However five bravely agreed to testify against their abusers.

Girls who were reluctant to have sex were held down and raped, the court was told, while some deliberately drank themselves into oblivion to blot out what was happening.

One said she fell asleep after being given alcohol, waking to heavy breathing on her neck as she realised she was being raped.

Another gave evidence of being raped by two men while she was ‘so drunk she was vomiting over the side of the bed’. One 13-year-old victim became pregnant and had the child aborted.

Victims of the abuse were introduced to the men by an older white girl known as the ‘Honey Monster’. She didn’t face charges because lawyers considered her a victim of sexual grooming herself.

Yesterday the 59-year-old was found guilty of conspiracy to engage in sexual activity with children under the age of 16 as well as two counts of rape, aiding and abetting a rape, one count of sexual assault and an allegation of trafficking for sexual exploitation.

Abdul Aziz, 41, from Rochdale, was found guilty of conspiracy and trafficking for sexual exploitation and not guilty of two counts of rape. Kabeer Hassan, 25, of Oldham, was found guilty of conspiracy and rape. Adil Khan, 42, of Rochdale, was found guilty of conspiracy and trafficking for sexual exploitation. Abdul Rauf, 43, of Rochdale, was found guilty of conspiracy and trafficking for sexual exploitation. Mohammed Sajid, 35, of Rochdale, was found guilty of conspiracy, trafficking, one count of rape and one count of sexual activity with a child. Abdul Qayyum, 44, of Rochdale, was found guilty of conspiracy. Mohammed Amin, 45, Rochdale, was found guilty of conspiracy and sexual assault. Hamid Safi, 22, was found guilty of conspiracy and trafficking but not guilty of two counts of rape.

After the case, chief prosecutor Mr Afzal said he hadn’t had to think twice about reviewing the decision not to press charges and apologised to the girl who blew the whistle. ‘She was let down by the whole system,’ he said.

Former chief of prisons and head of children’s charity Barnados Martin Narey said there was a clear link between Asian men and grooming in the north.

‘Undeniably it seems to me, in the north there is a very significant over-representation of Asian men – frequently Pakistani men – in these terrible crimes,’ he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

‘My experience in running prisons for seven years is that sex offenders actually are overwhelmingly white and I think there’s a lot of evidence now that those guilty of online grooming are disproportionately white.

‘But for this particular sort of crime, the street grooming and trafficking of girls in northern towns… there is very troubling evidence that Asians are overwhelmingly represented in the prosecutions for such offences. That is not to condemn a whole community – most Asians would absolutely abhor what we’ve seen in the last few days in the Rochdale trial.’

Police fears of being branded racist ‘left grooming gang free to abuse teenage girls for two years,’ says former Labour MP