The children were beaten, raped and trafficked.
Conservative estimates put the number of underage victims at about 1,400.
A recently-released report published by an independent auditor describes what happened in Rotherham, England – and it is a difficult read.
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.
Even more shocking, many of the officials charged with protecting these victims looked the other way, allowing the evil to continue largely unchecked for 16 years.
The reason for the silence?
Political correctness.
Misguided priorities
The New York Times sums it up this way:
“The victims identified in the report were all white, while the perpetrators were mostly of Pakistani heritage.”
Even the chief crown prosecutor in charge of sexual violence – himself of Pakistani heritage – said, “There is no getting away from the fact that there are Pakistani gangs grooming vulnerable girls.”
Some local officials were hesitant to identify the “ethnic origins” of the perpetrators because they feared being labeled racist. And those who dared mention race? They were punished. The London Telegraph reports a researcher who drafted a 2001 report on the happenings was told to “never, ever”’ again refer to the race or ethnicity of the suspected abusers
She was later sent to an “ethnicity and diversity course.”
The sad irony in the media’s reporting
Yet, as journalists attempt to shed light on the role political correctness played in enabling gang rape and child abuse, many are also contributing to it.
Political commentator Erick Erickson noted something was awry in the New York Times’ 1,500-plus word article describing the “Years of Rape and ‘Utter Contempt’ in Britain.”
The otherwise strong piece was missing one word: Muslim.
A commentary in Forbes suspects the problem is social workers (and apparently, journalists) will not risk being accused of “the new crime of ‘Islamophobia.’”
But how can we combat a problem as serious as widespread sexual exploitation of children if we can’t even properly identify those who are behind it?
Expose the evil
We need to get to a point in the culture where the safety of the innocent trump the sensitivities of those in power. After all, at its worst political correctness hurts real people and is destroying the lives of innocent children.
Simply reporting the fact that the men perpetrating the crimes were of Muslim background doesn’t imply that all Islamic men are sexual predators.
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