The Rochdale Child Groomers: Let's Attack the Muslims!

After watching the case regarding the paedophile-ring in Rochdale in which nine men have been convicted of sexually abusing five girls over a period of six years, my first thought was 'how awful it is that it took so long to get these men jailed' and 'how could this go unnoticed for so long?' as well as concern for the well being of the girls at present.

Despite eight of the men being of Pakistani origin and one of Afghanistan origin, my mind made no connection between the race and religion of these men and the crimes that they had committed. Why should it? There are many white paedophiles and child abusers. Sadly, child abuse happens too regularly in the UK. Government statistics show that nearly a quarter of young adults in the UK experienced sexual abuse during childhood and there were 17,727 sexual crimes against children under 16 recorded in England and Wales in 2010/2011. Now, I can't be sure, but as a white person who lives in a predominantly white country, I can only assume that the perpetrators of the majority of these crimes were white. However, it's hard to find statistics on the correlation between ethnicity and child abuse because, for some strange reason, sociologists seem to think that it doesn't matter what colour you are. How shocking is that?

Britain is a multicultural society. The 2001 census showed that only 85.67% of people living in Britain are White British, and so surely the crime rates must accommodate that? Surely if 100% of criminals were White British than white people would be overrepresented within the crime statistics and that would be bad news? Surely, in a country that is inhabited by people from all over the world, some of the crime committed must be committed by those people?

So the Rochdale paedophile ring were all Asian. So? There are probably hundreds of white paedophile rings in the UK that are just not as publicised in the media as the above case. The media loves to scaremonger and it will take any excuse it can to demonise the Muslim community. I'm aware that this is quite a bold assertion to make but it's true. The Daily Mail is known for distorting information beyond belief in order to render the British population as scared and paranoid 'individuals' who can do nothing but wait with baited breath for the next issue to come out so that they can be reassured that, yes, we will be under Sharia law by 2014 unless we get the Muslims out NOW and that everything gives you cancer.

Judge Gerald Clifton, as he was jailing the men, said "All of you treated the victims as if they were worthless and beyond any respect. One of the factors leading to that was that they were not part of your community or religion." This is not bullshit that is stuttered out by ogres from the EDL. This is the rhetoric uttered by the judge in charge of the case and it's shocking and downright worrying that he has been allowed to make these wild assertions with no proof whatsoever that religion or race was an issue. Simon Danczuk, the Labour MP for Rochdale backed the judge up, stating "There is a subculture of a small group of males that are Asian, that are collaborating to abuse young white girls who are vulnerable." Am I the only one who thinks the race of these people is irrelevant? I have no doubt that the criminals treated the victims as if they were worthless and "beyond any respect" but I don't believe that this had anything to do with the fact that the girls were white! My humble opinion is that perhaps child abusers have no respect for children, regardless of ethnicity or class. Perhaps the lack of respect comes from the fact that their victims are young and defenceless and that this is precisely what gets these sick men off.

All the judge's comments have done is trigger even more hate and Islamophobia than there already is in this country. Muslim groups say that they have experienced a surge in abusive phone calls and hate mail since the trial ended last week and Liverpool Crown Court, where the trial took place, has been picketed by hundreds of EDL and BNP protesters who have used this case, exploiting the girls' ordeal, in order to stigmatise the Muslim community even further. The beginning of the trial had to be delayed in the first place due to two Asian defence barristers being attacked outside the courtroom.

At a time like this, when the morale of our country is low, we do not need to be hating on entire groups within the community when they have done nothing wrong. I've not read the Qur'an but I find it difficult to believe that Islam advocates child sexual abuse.

The issue, I feel, is that of parenting. The parents of one of the girls involved worried when she began receiving phone calls off much older men and didn't like the fact that she was hanging around with them at night. however, rather than keep their child under lock and key and refuse to let her out of the house of speak to the men on their phone, they packed her off to social services, and then blamed the system for failing their little girl when she chose to continue hanging around with these men, which ultimately culminated in the abuse. I know it's a pretty controversial thing to say, especially because these adults have obviously been through a devastating time recently, but I find it disgusting that they are blaming the social workers for their own, in my opinion, failures as parents. They were both physically, mentally and financially fit to look after a child but chose to shirk their responsibilities and then complain when things didn't end well. It's just like the Madeleine McCann case - do you remember her? The girl whose parents left their children in an open hotel room in a foreign country to go out to eat and then blamed everybody else when they child disappeared?

If we really want to combat crimes such as this, then of course we need to address the reasons why some adults abuse children, but we also need learn how to bring our children up well. It's no coincidence that the abuse happened in Rochdale, where teen pregnancies are above and beyond the national average and a district in Rochdale has been named as Britain's "welfare capital" after findings that 84% of it's residents are claiming state benefits. Parenting in Britain has deteriorated significantly in years gone by and it is this, rather than the large Muslim population, that is the reason for the rise in crime. If parents learned to look after their children and bring them up properly then maybe we wouldn't be seeing stories like this so regularly. Yes, it wasn't the children themselves committing the crimes in this instance, but we must ask ourselves why young girls are running to much older men to spend time with. If a man had approached me when I was 12, asking me to come upstairs in his shop and drink alcohol with him, I'd have run a mile, because from before I could even walk I've had the whole "don't talk to strangers" mantra drilled into me. Maybe this is the reason that I've not been a victim of crime such as this...