16 Years, 1400 Children Later.. Too Little, Too Late..

Discussion in 'Ethics, Morality, & Justice' started by Bells, Aug 27, 2014.

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  1. Bells Staff Member

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    I had considered posting this in the Misogyny and Rape thread, but this.. This deserves its own thread as it needs to stand on its own.

    For 16 years, 1400 children, mostly girls, were raped, beaten, tortured, molested, abused, and used in sex trafficking in a town.

    No, this did not happen in some backward 3rd world country. But in the United Kingdom.

    If that wasn't enough, if this horror show was not enough to turn the stomach, it was found that the police and child protection knew and simply dismissed it, in many cases, abused and blamed the victims and sometimes even arrested them and their family members who tried to rescue them from the houses where they were being held and abused. The perpetrators were never even questioned, even when they admitted to having raped these children to the police, they would be told to carry on with the victim being left with them.

    16 years and 1400 children raped, gang raped, beaten, tortured, molested and abused and passed around. Some were forced to watch brutal gang rapes of their friends, others were doused in petrol and threatened to be set alight.

    Reading through the report (available for download here) is a harrowing experience. By the time I got to page 69, I was finding myself considering how appropriate the death penalty might be for some of these people, not just the gangs who perpetrated these abuses, but the authorities who allowed it to continue, unhindered. And why? Because the police either did not believe these girls and boys, and because as far as they were concerned, these young girls especially were "undesirable", and "not worthy of police protection or care". So much so that they wrote off an 11 year old's rape as being consensual, instead of the obviously brutal rape that it was.

    The authorities knew, from the outset. The victims were contacting the police and child protection services and filing reports. They were dismissed, and treated like rubbish. The report also deals with the fact that the police were at times, instructed to ignore and dismiss these reports of child sex abuse, child sex trafficking, reports of rapes, molestation, torture, abuse because the perpetrators were of Pakistani descent and they did not want the police to appear to be bigoted. The victims were in what appeared to be the majority of cases, white (page 35 of the report) and many were supposedly in care. Many of these children were groomed at school, some by other children (also victims and part of the sex trafficking trade and who had been prostituted to other boroughs) and some children were used to access their friends who were in care.

    The scale of it is breathtaking as it is revolting. And it may be just as bad in other areas of the UK.

    Professor Jay agrees, citing a “macho, sexist and bullying culture” within the local authorities which prevented it from acting.

    She later told the BBC that she fears such systematic abuse may also be prevalent in other English towns.

    The town’s former Labour MP, Denis MacShane, agrees. “It is clear the internal trafficking of barely pubescent girls is much more widespread,” he said.

    Police say some 29 arrests have been made in relation with child sexual exploitation offences in Rotherham. There have also been arrests in 11 other Northern and Midlands communities.

    Almost all arrests have been of men of Pakistani origin.

    Police “regarded many child victims with contempt,” Professor Jay said, adding that the first report that described the situation in Rotherham was “effectively suppressed” because senior officers refused to believe the data.

    Professor Jay's report also found how the police and the authorities suppressed and openly and deliberately ignored previous reports, detailing (and some in explicit terms) the scale of abuse in Rotherham. From the report's summary:

    No one knows the true scale of child sexual exploitation (CSE) in Rotherham over the years. Our conservative estimate is that approximately 1400 children were sexually exploited over the full Inquiry period, from 1997 to 2013.

    In just over a third of cases, children affected by sexual exploitation were previously known to services because of child protection and neglect. It is hard to describe the appalling nature of the abuse that child victims suffered. They were raped by multiple perpetrators, trafficked to other towns and cities in the north of England, abducted, beaten, and intimidated. There were examples of children who had been doused in petrol and threatened with being set alight, threatened with guns, made to witness brutally violent rapes and threatened they would be next if they told anyone. Girls as young as 11 were raped by large numbers of male perpetrators.

    [HR][/HR]

    Over the first twelve years covered by this Inquiry, the collective failures of political and officer leadership were blatant. From the beginning, there was growing evidence that child sexual exploitation was a serious problem in Rotherham. This came from those working in residential care and from youth workers who knew the young people well.

    Within social care, the scale and seriousness of the problem was underplayed by senior managers. At an operational level, the Police gave no priority to CSE, regarding many child victims with contempt and failing to act on their abuse as a crime. Further stark evidence came in 2002, 2003 and 2006 with three reports known to the Police and the Council, which could not have been clearer in their description of the situation in Rotherham. The first of these reports was effectively suppressed because some senior officers disbelieved the data it contained. This had led to suggestions of cover-up. The other two reports set out the links between child sexual exploitation and drugs, guns and criminality in the Borough. These reports were ignored and no action was taken to deal with the issues that were identified in them.

    [HR][/HR]

    Seminars for elected members and senior officers in 2004-05 presented the abuse in the most explicit terms. After these events, nobody could say 'we didn't know'. In 2005, the present Council Leader chaired a group to take forward the issues, but there is no record of its meetings or conclusions, apart from one minute.

    By far the majority of perpetrators were described as 'Asian' by victims, yet throughout the entire period, councillors did not engage directly with the Pakistani-heritage community to discuss how best they could jointly address the issue. Some councillors seemed to think it was a one-off problem, which they hoped would go away. Several staff described their nervousness about identifying the ethnic origins of perpetrators for fear of being thought racist; others remembered clear direction from their managers not to do so.


    And the litany of failures continue.

    Sadly, the abuse continues to this day. Some victims reported and detailed how they still see their rapists and abusers walking the streets to this day. Of the 29 that were arrested, there is no word on how many were prosecuted.

    From page 36 makes for harrowing reading. As it begins to detail the extent and what these children and their families suffered. In some cases, the fathers of the victims who had managed to track down where their daughter's were being held abused and attempted to rescue them, were arrested by the police, no charge or investigations against the rapists and kidnappers of these girls. The rapists and kidnappers were never arrested or even charged. In some instances, the victims were arrested for being drunk and disorderly. Some parents, desperate to save and protected their children, deliberately placed them into State care, in the hope that their daughters would be protected after having been raped and ignored by the police. What they then found was that these children were at even more risk as these gangs were finding easy pickings in vulnerable children in State care and protection.

    In two of the cases we read, fathers tracked down their daughters and tried to remove them from houses where they were being abused, only to be arrested themselves when police were called to the scene. In a small number of cases (which have already received media attention) the victims were arrested for offences such as breach of the peace or being drunk and disorderly, with no action taken against the perpetrators of rape and sexual assault against children.

    There are numerous historic examples (up to the mid-2000s) of children being stalked by their abusers, and some extreme cases of violent threats or actual assaults on the victims and their families.

    One parent, who agreed to her child being placed in a residential unit in order to protect her, wrote to children’s social care expressing her fears for her daughter’s safety. She described her despair that instead of being protected, her child was being exposed to even worse abuse than when she was at home:

    My child (age 13) may appear to be a mature child, yet some of her actions and the risks to which she constantly puts herself are those of a very immature and naïve person. She constantly stays out all night getting drunk, mixing with older mature adults, and refuses to be bound by any rules.”​

    One child who was being prepared to give evidence received a text saying the perpetrator had her younger sister and the choice of what happened next was up to her. She withdrew her statements. At least two other families were terrorised by groups of perpetrators, sitting in cars outside the family home, smashing windows, making abusive and threatening phone calls. On some occasions child victims went back to perpetrators in the belief that this was the only way their parents and other children in the family would be safe. In the most extreme cases, no one in the family believed that the authorities could protect them.



    The report details how these gangs preyed on and groomed children in vulnerable areas and homes, many went after children in State care. Many of these children were in abusive households. Schools had noticed that these children were being groomed and filed reports highlighting the risk to these children. They were ignored and dismissed. Why? Because these girls were apparently not worthy of protection, police in some instances believed that they were asking for it, that it happened because of how they dressed (remember, some of these victims were groomed and some were raped by the time they were 11 - rapes that were deemed consensual sex by the police), that they wanted it to happen, that they consented and a whole litany of excuses misogynists make to excuse rape. All of it can be found in how the police responded to these girls reporting being raped, abused, gang raped, tortured and all the rest of it.

    The grooming process was repeated over and over again (and all ignored by the police and child protection).. These girls were courted by a young man, sometimes even their own friends who were also victims, they were given expensive gifts, mobile phones, then alcohol and drugs, told how they were loved, by which point they were introduced to other men, who also showered them with gifts, took them on drives, and more often than not, were appearing outside the school gates, picking them up in taxis (taxis were often used in the kidnapping and sexual exploitation of these children) and expensive cars.. And made these girls believe that their rapists loved them. That they were special. By the time the girls were 11-12, many of them were hooked and had been completely groomed. Then the rapes, beatings, torture, gang rapes, being prostituted and held and sold to other boroughs would commence. The police ignored, disregarded them and treated them with absolute contempt. The rapes and abuse would usually end by the time they hit their mid teens.

    In many instances the police and child protection services fought against other agencies attempting to protect these children and placing them on the child protection lists, because they believed that these children were consenting to sex. For example (page 38):

    Child A (2000) was 12 when the risk of sexual exploitation became known. She was associating with a group of older Asian men and possibly taking drugs. She disclosed having had intercourse with 5 adults. Two of the adults received police cautions after admitting to the Police that they had intercourse with Child A. Child A continued to go missing and was at high risk of sexual exploitation. A child protection case conference was held. It was agreed by all at the conference that Child A should be registered. However, the CID representative argued against the category of sexual abuse being used because he thought that Child A had been ‘100% consensual in every incident’. This was overruled, with all others at the case conference demonstrating a clear understanding that this was a crime and a young child was not capable of consenting to the abuse she had suffered. She was supported appropriately once she was placed on the child protection register.

    Worse still, the police and child protection services blamed many victims who did come forward and accused them of wanting it to have happened and of thus, making false allegations because they (the child) had not done enough to protect themselves from the multitudes of rapes and abuse they had suffered. The police and local government also attempted to manipulate the date and reports and indicators of the abuse of these girls, in their attempts to hide it. As the Guardian notes:

    On a number of occasions, victims of sexual abuse were criminalised – arrested for being drunk – while their abusers continued to act with impunity. Vital evidence was ignored, Jay said, with police apparently trying to manipulate their figures for child sexual exploitation by removing from their monitoring process girls who were pregnant or had given birth, plus all looked after children in care.

    The report details one paedophile being caught with one child in his car, with explicit photos of the girl on his phone and he was merely cautioned and allowed to carry on. And there are hundreds of such stories. Hundreds. The report only touched on a small portion. And the 1400 figure is an estimate. They suspect it could be much worse than that.

    This report makes for hard reading.

    And the absolute misogyny and hatred the authorities held towards these victims is vomit inducing. Page 83 of the report details the reaction to previous reports that were critical of the handling of the explosion of sexual exploitation and abuse of children in the Rotherham area. In one case, one researcher was unable to finalise her critical report after she was harassed and was shown such extreme hostility from the local police and council, who wished to dismiss it and regarded it as over-exaggerated. The content of her very explicit and descriptive report of what these children were being subjected to were found to have been accurate.

    While many members of the local council attempt to deny knowledge, and the police and child services attempt to cover their tracks, deny knowledge and pass the blame onto others and some are falling on their swords, the greater majority of these victims are still without support and their abusers and rapists are still free and have not been prosecuted or even questioned by the police. In many instances, the victims were blamed by the police, even when found with their rapists and their rapists had recordings and pictures of the rapes they had committed. The rapists were never questioned and allowed to carry on.

    As noted above, the report can be downloaded here: "Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Exploitation in Rotherham (1997 – 2013)"

    This could be just the tip of the ice-berg. They suspect that it could be the same in other areas.
     
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  3. Arne Saknussemm trying to figure it all out Valued Senior Member

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    So what would you have us do? How can I help?
     
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  5. Bells Staff Member

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    To be honest, I don't think anyone knows.

    The scale of this is obscene. And it goes to the local council, down through the police force and child protection services. All of whom ignored reports, refused to listen to the victims and youth workers, schools and teachers and parents who were reporting the abuse. These weren't one off issues. It was systematic. Researchers who tried to bring this to light were threatened by the police, harassed until they were literally run out of town and told to not complete such studies.

    The council, while trying to cry ignorance, cannot claim they were ignorant of it, as they were clearly told of it in very explicit terms years ago. All was dismissed. Misogyny reigned supreme. In some instances, these girls were being picked up in cars, with incriminating evidence on their abusers (explicit pornographic images taken of the children in that car and with their rapists) and instead of arresting the perpetrators, the girls were castigated and the rapists allowed to continue, sometimes with the girls left with them.

    These young girls were seen by the police, the government and child support services, as being non-persons, not worthy of consideration.. The report lists how the authorities reported that these girls were not victims, but were to blame and that they consented. They openly ignored repeated reports by schools, parents and youth workers that these girls were being groomed. The protection granted to these abuses extended to arresting the parents who tried to rescue their daughters from the homes where they were being kept and sexually abused and exploited. The abusers were, quite literally, given free reign.

    So what can be done? Arrest the perpetrators for one. Counseling, compensation and help for these victims. Educational programs to teach people that this is wrong, illegal and actually carrying through with arresting the men who did this to these children. Better programs and education for the authorities so that they do not blame or dismiss these girls, and certainly so that they stop viewing these girls are being non-entities, not worthy of any consideration. Better programs and dealings with the minority populations, and investigating reports of abuse instead of abusing the victims and their families. Trying to figure out why this was happening in the first place and why it was hidden and protected for so long. In some instances, these girls were being kidnapped and held and kept as sex slaves, sold to others in other counties. This was known to the police, and they did nothing at all.

    I could go on and on.

    I'd suggesting demanding that rapists be brought to justice, that child sex abusers be brought to justice and frankly, the authorities involved in this cover up for over 13 years all deserve to be dismissed. Those victims deserve justice.
     
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  7. Arne Saknussemm trying to figure it all out Valued Senior Member

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    Would it be possible to report them to some international tribunal, such as in The Hague?
     
  8. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

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    I'm wondering if those children grew older and had been let go for they weren't needed by those using them couldn't have said something to the police about their captivity. Since this has been going on for over 20 years many of those children who were held must have gotten out of that situation so why didn't they go to the police and help their other captives. It would seem to me that if hundreds of children came to a police station or called the police that they would have been listened to UNLESS the police were being paid off to not do anything, things like that do happen you know.
     
  9. C C Consular Corps - "the backbone of diplomacy" Valued Senior Member

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    So it's a common view in Rothenham that 11-year olds can have consensual sex with adults? I'm not sure that lower limit has even acquired normal status among the population that The Jerry Springer Show samples from for guests. Legend-wise, even Loretta Lynn was at least thirteen and Doolittle apparently had to be married to her to qualify for being ignored by backwoods law enforcement.

    Not just ominous for children. It hovers along the starting edge of that dystopic future where such a "loophole" in ideological correctness and societal relativism allows the gradual diminishing and eventual withdrawal of decades-achieved women's rights in the West. Via the re-encroachment of pathological, patriarchal subcultures that receive immunity. "Let's leave the cavemen alone if they're an ethnic group outside the white guilt sphere. Last thing we need now is another aura of bigotry hovering over this financially-strapped and litigation-smothered department."
     
  10. wellwisher Banned Banned

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    If you go back into recent time, women and children were put ahead of the men, when it came to push or shove. If the ship went down, it was not every man for himself, but rather women and children first. This was based on masculine and conservative values that got lost with the rise of atheism and liberalism. Without religion, morality became relative, and without conservative values, behavior became relative. It is not women and children first anymore which is reflected in the large number of abandoned families give to the state to raise. The irony is women have more legal rights that even, yet feel more under the gun. This is due to a change of social philosophy away from conservative values.

    If you look those groups, put "in the closet of old fashion morality", many of these group were made acceptable by relative morality. Those groups who remain in the closet are seeking their own legitimacy within the relative morality since that is the path out. They too can demonstrate how their niche occurs in nature and in the human past using the atheists template that helped free others out of the closet. The ancient Greeks not only did homosexuality but also pedophilia, which would often be rape. Since homosexuality could get out of the closet with this historical precedent, the pedophiles and rapists feel they should be allowed to leave the closet also, using the same logic. Only religion was consistent about the flaw of these arguments.

    When the closet was closed, all these behavior existed, but they had to occur in the dark to stay under the social radar. The closet made it harder to teach a larger aspect of the culture, the joys of this closet class, through an osmosis of acceptability. The problem is liberalism is not rational enough to see how they created this by given the closet the revolving door of relativity. Those who remain in the closet can see the hypocrisy of the special interest groups that preach relative for personal gain and then set conditions for less preferred groups based on conservative principles.

    I am not for the groups that remain in the closet but I can see their motivation as stemming from relative morality they were taught. They have learned to extrapolate and don't mind coming out of the closet since that was the template used when the closet first opened.
     
  11. Bells Staff Member

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    The reports state that a lot of them are now into drugs, many became suicidal, homeless, many ended up having their families broken up over the abuse, threats of abuse they were facing if they did not hand over their daughter(s). Others ended up in relationships with domestic violence.

    As for how they got out.. They grew up and were no longer needed. They had served their purpose and the next batch of kids were being groomed and brought into the fray. This has been ongoing for a long time and was a cycle. They were constantly grooming new children, raping them in taxis, etc. What it came down to is that the police did not care and weren't interested and in many instances, blamed the victims. It got to the point where the victims and their families just did not bother calling the police. There was no point. Not only were they not going to investigate it or protect those children, but quite a few times, the girls themselves would be arrested after they had been plied with drugs, alcohol and raped and then left to roam the streets in that state.

    In one case detailed in the report, the police came upon them in a car. The paedophile had lurid photos of the child on his phone. They saw it as being consensual sex. They allowed the child to remain in the car where she was being abused and left him there with her.

    I think that's what appalled me. Even when they came upon these children being raped, they ignored it, blamed the victims and/or arrested the victims and their families who were trying to rescue them.

    It does make me wonder if they were being bribed. I would rather they were being bribed. The alternative is a police force that is so misogynistic that they would willingly force a child to remain in a car with the paedophile that had been raping and abusing her, because they felt that she was asking for it, that she wanted it, that it was consensual and that it was acceptable to treat little girls this way.

    The political correctness by the police and it being used as an excuse into why they never bothered to investigate the many claims and reports they were given... No, really, since when was political correctness more important than protecting children from rape? They did not even try to engage the Pakistani community or even investigate those involved. And it wasn't just white kids. Many Pakistani children were also abused and raped quite brutally. Kids apparently often stated that gang rape was normal in that community if you were a child.

    Good to see that the homophobia and misogyny is still out in force with you. Please stop. I won't ask again.
     
  12. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    Stone by Stone, Brick by Brick, All in All

    As Bells notes, nobody is quite certain what to do because of the scale of this thing. There is a possibility that before this is over the entirety of England itself will be waking under massive moral indictment; it is almost impossible that this would happen only in one place.

    In the meantime, how does one help? I live in the northwest corner of the continental United States; I'm pretty sure I can get significantly farther away from Rothenham without crossing another ocean or passing through Canada, but that would mean going to Los Angeles. My point being that from this distance there is very little I can do to help people in Rothenham. Send my pocket change as a pledge to a survivors' fund? Sure. Hold the line at my computer and argue against the sorts of attitudes so prevalent in allegedly civilized modern societies that empower and even protect these outcomes? Sounds great, but it doesn't do anything to help deal with what has already happened.

    And therein lies the horror for the rest of us. There is nothing we can do for the walking wounded in this.

    From a distance, the only thing one can do is take part in the effort to destroy this massive demon. And in myth, no, this isn't the Devil; this is no "tempter" or "accuser". This is genuine Darkness. This is Aku; this is the permeating, persistent, but ultimately cowardly evil that hides in shadows and reaches out to seek joy in the torment and destruction of innocent people with no power to defend themselves.

    And we have no Samurai Jack. We have no magic katana.

    What can we do? Those in England, those proximal to the survivors, simply follow their proper protocol for sharing the world with a sex abuse survivor. Oh, right, what are those protocols?

    (1) Do no harm.
    (2) This isn't about you.
    (3) Good luck.
    (4) You can't "win"; the only "victory" is that a survivor does not succumb to defeat.
    (5) If everything goes South, someone whose opinion matters to you will blame you.
    (6) Remember that even among survivors trying to help one another, virtually nobody has a clue what to do.
    (7) Good luck.
    (8) This isn't about you.
    (9) You cannot "win".
    (10) Do no harm.​

    In other words ... er ... yeah. Sigh.

    Those proximal to the arena of harm can also resolve to do their part to make certain nothing like this ever happens again.

    I almost vomited on the street the other night, which probably wouldn't have been a big deal except I wasn't drunk. See, I grew up on a lakefront, so I am accustomed to hearing alarming noises—children screaming for help—that did not represent actual crises. (Indeed, whenever a child actually drowned in the lake, there was never any screaming until after.) These days, I live within walking distance of my local pub, which also happens to be next door to the eternally-transforming Claire's/Pilot's/Jet old folks' breakfast destination and late night singles meat market. And you hear all sorts of random shit that might be a crisis, sounds like drunk people reveling in the street, and all that.

    The intersection where the pub and club is also where I go to get cigarettes (a gas station where they're a dollar cheaper and the family owners are delightful folks) and beer (a QFC grocery store).

    The main road is a numbered street that runs between I-5 and a numbered state highway. It is a traffic nightmare on the front and back sides of the rush hours, and also, of course, during the rush hours.

    It is not uncommon to find all sorts of unusual litter along the road, such as, say, a suitcase that fell off a car or, worse yet ... well, right.

    I walked past some detritus as I came back up the hill with a sixer of local brew in my bag, and crossing the small overpass structure over the creek, saw some of the refuse lying off the sidewalk, in the ivy beside the bridge, on the slope down to the creek.

    This is nothing unusual.

    Except ....

    I got to the other end of the bridge and then it hit me. I was afraid to walk back and take a second look. In that flashing second I counted the days, recalled the weather, and made my excuses. And that's when I nearly puked.

    And then I resumed walking back up the hill.

    The evidence was ruined; we had considerable rainfall in between, the cops had no report to work with and can't even file a suspected case out of it, but yes, I know exactly what I saw.

    Because I could count back two nights. And when you walk by that location you can see exactly how it goes. It's an easy snatch for a daring assault.

    And I am absolutely fucking certain that I heard this one.

    And I didn't recognize it, so I did nothing.

    And then, recognizing what had happened, I made my calculations and proceeded to do nothing.

    There's no case there; I can take some comfort in that if I wish.

    But I can no longer simply dismiss the sounds from down the hill. Indeed, I wonder how many more victims there are.

    I can tell myself this is just more detritus from the traffic, but no, you do not see a plastic bag spilling personal effects that way, with various specific pieces of clothing strewn about just so in the flora, and call it trash.

    There is what appears to be a rape factory just down the street from my house, and, frankly, it's a distraction I can appreciate to argue with myself about how this just can't happen despite the growing certainty that it is, indeed, happening.

    And until I can be certain that I haven't just made one of the worst decisions of my life—to simply keep walking—I now have a new duty unto my fellow human beings. And this isn't abot my ego; there is no plastering over that decision.

    But what I can do going forward, since I'm often awake at those hours, is actually get off my ass when I hear these sounds and make the five minute walk down the hill. I owe this to the human species.

    And therein I can offer you an answer to what we can do.

    If one is not proximal to Rothenham, its survivors, and the rapists themselves, there really isn't much that one can do for them.

    But this got so far out of hand because nobody who could have stopped it said or did anything to stop it.

    We all have rational calculations for why we don't take action. And, true, mine is probably accurate under the circumstances, but at the same time that brings no comfort. I am now one of a few people on the planet who know that Something Has Happened, and I convinced myself to walk away from a chance to do anything about it.

    So, right. Never again.

    We all have our reasons. Like I said, I'm accustomed to noises resembling peril that are not attached to any real peril. But now I cannot, and therefore will not afford indifference.

    I made a choice to walk away from psychoemotional futility in my own life. Not only was that an ineffective choice insofar as I'm now awash in both shame and futility, it was also simply the wrong decision to make on behalf of my fellow human beings. We can always excuse ourselves in the moment, but amid all my failings I do still reserve the right to be horrified.

    What have I done by failing to do?

    And that's what we can do. It's time to err on the side of embarrassing ourselves by being wrong—Oh, sorry. I didn't realize you were just out for a lark and fucking where people can see and hear you. That much I can do.

    That survivor and I wouldn't know each other if we were the last people on the planet, but we still share something awful. She knows that nobody helped. And I know that I didn't.

    This is why people have religion: God help me. And this is why those people believe in redemption. They say all sin weighs the same in God's eyes, but in truth all that tells me is that God is clueless.

    The only thing I can do is say, "No more, never again." And, of course, we know what such promises are worth.

    Because it will happen again. I will choose to walk away when I shouldn't. This is part of being human, but that excuse is of no psychomoral comfort, and it shouldn't be.

    So for those of us who are not immediately proximal to any given crisis of such horrifying magnitude, the first thing we can do is be another brick in the wall that holds the raping barbarians at the gate.

    And that means we'll occasionally be wrong, and embarrassingly so. But what would we rather, to be wrong in preventing a crime that wasn't a crime, or to be wrong and accidentally abet a rapist?

    There are reasons I chose as I did, and they might even make sense rationally and psychologically. But there is absolutely no apology on the planet sufficient to cover my wilful neglect.

    And there are reasons I don't discuss this with the people close to me. My daughter would be horrified, but that's because her cognitive development is at a stage in which she is learning how to be properly horrified, and I am perhaps the central role model in that. My mother? She would tell me it's none of my business since I wasn't there and can't know exactly what happened. My brother would explain, in a calm voice suggesting irritation, that I am being irrational, and perhaps he would even pretend offense at the "presumption" that a crime has taken place. My father? Okay, yeah, he would get it. And then he would shrug and say, "I don't know what to tell you. I don't know what I would do."

    And it's true, I could listen to the people who tell me to stay out of it, but there are four words in this world I loathe saying, a custom that developed decades ago in a circle of friends. But if everyone takes their advice, then some evening I will be walking up the street from the grocery store and find a body in the foliage. And, no, I wouldn't say those four words to anyone at that point, either, because frankly it wouldn't matter whether I told them so or not; that simply isn't the important point.

    So the first thing I can do is actually take the chance of embarrassing myself and being wrong. Because being wrong in the other direction means there's one more victim out there with nobody doing anything to help.

    Preventing myself from repeating this mistake is, quite literally, the least I can do. Everything else beyond that? Well, I'm certain there are a few manuals out there to walk me step-by-step, but we also know that such processes are far too general to be applicable across the diverse range of situations we might encounter. It's kind of like having enough first aid training to deal with a broken leg, but not enough to slow the bleeding of an open wound.

    Thing is, I'll carry on. I'll get over this.

    I can't say the same for the nameless victim who still might not make it through. There's nothing I can do, now. I blew my chance, and apparently for the sake of temporarily avoiding psychological distress.

    I will not ... cannot ... make this mistake again.

    And if I care at all about how many of us make such mistakes every day, it would only be to make the point that such outcomes are an integral part of the problem. That is to say, knowing I'm not the only one, that this mistake is common, brings no comfort, but only augments my horror by orders of magnitude.

    It's not certain what can be done for the Rothenham survivors. But it is certain what we can do for other victims and survivors, and for those who would be future victims and survivors.

    I do owe you certain, grim thanks. In truth, the FAQ-style responses, such as your inquiry, often annoy me for various reasons, though generally because the answers usually fall under the rubric of, "How is this still unclear?"

    Yet, even to me, for whom it is clear, it apparently isn't enough.

    I can still tell myself that this was just a site where someone took their hooker, but no, prostitutes generally don't leave that much behind unless they're in really bad shape when they depart.

    But this time—and you can see it in real-time, as this is a one-draft post—the inquiry struck right where it needed to.

    It'll take a couple days before I can look myself in the eye, again, but in truth, that's fine with me. As I said, I will survive and carry on, and largely without any scars. But what have I just done to a fellow human being by walking away from a three day-old potential crime scene? Nobody else has called it in, but so what? Neither did I.

    But I will be able to look myself in the eye, again, and probably much sooner than the survivor.

    It's a disaster, but I will carry this weight because it is the least I can do, and because it is mine to carry. This time it's all on me; I made this decision to walk away.

    I did learn something today, and I will someday be glad to have learned it. But I cannot give anyone a proper moral explanation of why I needed to learn this lesson.

    And, frankly, the tuition on this one is just way too high. That is to say, remedial instruction will cost someone else. And that is an unacceptable price.
     
  13. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

    Messages:
    24,690
    These are "Pakis," dark-skinned "wogs." The British haven't changed much.

    Although they're starting to wonder why so many immigrants from the Middle East are going back to join the jihad.

    Duh?
     
  14. C C Consular Corps - "the backbone of diplomacy" Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,324
    Bribery on an individual basis would probably be a slightly better alternative in another respect, too. In applicable Turkish cities, the trafficking of women and children [largely from Eastern Europe] seems to have the outrageous role of helping to support the economy of some of their inner, local communities. [Or so the few police willing to be discreetly interviewed (at all) submit as an excuse for turning a blind-eye to it]. Also the same neighborhood money-flow concerns with whatever Indian city it was that a documentary explored as a mecca for international paedophilia clients / tourists.
     
  15. Guru Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    311
    I can't believe this thread just has 1 page when over 1400 documented rape by primarily Pakistani men in UK. And out of the 10 responses one is still trying to shame UK for calling out Pakis ( Short for People from Pakistan).
     
  16. exchemist Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    12,453
    And yet it has taken you seven years to bother to make a contribution to it.

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     
  17. C C Consular Corps - "the backbone of diplomacy" Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,324
    The whole establishment is accused of systemic racism (and presumably law enforcement, especially). So the last thing you want to discern is ethnicity, as well as attribute any provenance for such "behaviors" to the thought-orientations and customs of a particular subculture (actually... primarily, the extra nested level of a criminal subculture).

    The motivations of such men (if they are mostly male) must be analyzed from the standpoint of each individual, and not generalized to an overarching population group.

    Yes, it's a shame that police MIGHT be so phobic about being accused of racism that they allow splintered-off _X_ criminal subcultures to indulge in their own "norms", in addition to using that as an excuse to practice any pre-existing misogyny.

    But the pervasive evil of systemic racism afflicting all strata and institutions of UK society receives top priority. Excessive processing of reported crimes (red tape), and hyper-caution with regard to overzealous pursuit of justice in "lesser" matters, is merely one of the potential side effects in the course of trying to remedy that vastly greater horror. (If these interpretations "of what's going on" were indeed the case.)

    - - - Rotsa ruck with one's agency deflecting it, when systemic racism has become a boon in the social sciences for getting papers accepted. ---

    Systemic racism has consequences for all life in cities
    https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/806149

    RST researchers get grant to combat systemic racism in access to nature
    https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/937209
     
    Last edited: Dec 13, 2021
  18. Guru Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    311
    I actually have been absent on this forum for many years - I read another report just recently about 250 girls abused in early 1990s from the same school in India using the same approach by Indian Muslim men. This reminded me about UK abuse of underage girls by Muslim men and came here to research. I think all of us should be highlighting this for the next generation.
     
  19. sculptor Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    8,466
    It seems that if the authorities wanted to do something about these crimes, they could!
    Nullum tempus occurrit regi (time does not run against the crown)

    14 hundred victims
    =thousands of individual criminal acts

    eg:
    circa 2003, I noticed an extra 50 dollars being added to my phone bill
    I complained to the local phone company---which was a waste of time
    So, I called the Iowa attorney general's office, and explained what I knew to the lawyer who worked there.
    He helped me find out who was billing me and why----the company claimed that I had agreed to them representing me on-line for 50 dollars a month and offered to prove it by playing a tape of our conversation wherein they claimed that I had agreed to using their service. The attorney general offered to get a copy of the tape. Meanwhile, I did some research and found out that the Illinois attorney general was suing the company.
    So, I called them and talked to the woman who was suing the company. She had(at that time) filed 1700 individual fraud suits against the company---one for each month's fraudulent billing from dozens of different phone customers-----I laughed and asked her why. And, she said that she wanted to drive them bankrupt, or at least drive them out of Illinois. (restitution, court costs and punitive damages)
    So, I asked if it would be ok to have the Iowa attorney general contact her, and she said "sure, the more the merrier."
    So during my next conversation with the Iowa attorney general, I told him of her actions, and gave him her phone number.
    He called me back a few days later and said that what she knew and was doing was a great help for him, and that the case was settled in my favor.

    OK
    It seems that a dedicated public servant in "Jolly old England" could do much the same thing, and charge each perpetrator with several different counts of rape and child molestation, and torture, and................etc(whatever the law allows).

    Assuming that your average legal public servant is not a total reprehensible putrid slime ball.
    Is that assuming too much?
     
  20. Bells Staff Member

    Messages:
    24,270
    Mod Note

    Reviving a 7 year old thread just so you could have the opportunity to spout racism is what I can't believe at this point in time.

    Thread closed.
     
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