Lessons of Rochdale
It should not be ignored that all of those convicted on Tuesday come from the same community
Published at 12:01AM, May 10 2012
Faced with the glare of an uncomfortable truth, the powerful temptation is to avert oneÔÇÖs gaze and focus on shadows. So it is with the horrific story of a sex-grooming network in Rochdale, of which nine members were jailed on Tuesday.
Unquestionably, there is something terribly dysfunctional about British care homes. When institutions that house a nationwide total of 1,800 girls report 631 suspected cases of residents being sold for prostitution, then these are institutions with an institutional problem. Greater Manchester Police also emerge from this gruesome tale with far-reaching problems, including a failure of empathy and an unforgivable inclination to make problems disappear, rather than seek to solve them.
But the true scandal of Rochdale is not one of law enforcement or social services, however easy and comfortable it may be to pretend otherwise. It is the scandal of a group of people in which a grotesque and backward attitude to women was taken to a vile conclusion.
Eight of those convicted on Tuesday were of Pakistani heritage, with a ninth from Afghanistan. They hail from a sub-culture in which the abuse and trafficking of underage girls is considered to be starkly more mundane than is the British norm. This is the group in whose cars, homes and kebab shops this abuse occurred. It did not happen in another British community, or no particular community at all. It happened in this one.
Appearing in court, numerous defendants in this trial showed anger and bafflement, rather than shame. ÔÇ£You look at your community,ÔÇØ raged one 59-year-old, who was subsequently convicted. ÔÇ£WhereÔÇÖs the school? WhereÔÇÖs social services, whereÔÇÖs anybody else? Why does nobody care about them?ÔÇØ He was right that society failed in Rochdale, but displayed a cold lack of comprehension as to how. Society was not to blame. He was. What society failed to do was protect these girls from people like him.
This is a community issue, not a racial or religious one. The distinction is delicate and vital. There are more than two million Britons of Pakistani, Indian or Bangladeshi heritage. To describe the grooming of underage white girls as endemic among British Asians, as some have done, is a foul slur upon almost all of them. There are more than a million British Muslims; this is not their shame, either. Attention must focus on a far smaller subset of Muslims of largely Pakistani origin, which has hosted the normalisation of the intolerable.
Eight of those convicted were born in rural Pakistan and came to Britain as adults. Four have children of their own. Evident here is a chilling level of remove, and a departed sexual morality no more developed than that of their young victims. In convicting, Judge Gerald Clifton did not consider their backgrounds irrelevant. The abuse of these girls was rendered acceptable, he noted, because they ÔÇ£were not of your community or religionÔÇØ.
ÔÇ£There is no excuse for this kind of criminality, whoever is involved in it, but I donÔÇÖt think it is a particular group of people,ÔÇØ said Keith Vaz, from the Home Affairs Select Committee. He is wrong. White men, acting alone, are responsible for the vast majority of sex offences in this country. But Rochdale showed a quite distinct pattern of abuse, albeit with the same devastating effect. Nobody can, or should, pretend otherwise.
The shame of Rochdale has already been exploited by those with a racist agenda, with protests outside court, and loathsome interventions by the British National Party and English Defence League. Such groups deserve no succour. But the fear of handing them facts that their bigotry may twist should not lead us to turn a blind eye to the background to these crimes and the problems on to which they shed light. Police and social services will continue to fail until they recognise what it is they are failing against.
