Why as a Muslim and a mother I believe it's so damaging to hide from the truth about Asian sex gangs

A bleak, stomach-turning report on child sex abuse by gangs was published yesterday by the Office of the Children’s Commission.



It recounts how, between 2010 and 2011, more than 2,500 children — mostly girls — were groomed, repeatedly violated, sold, beaten and terrorised.



Thousands more remain invisible and unheard. The report concludes that agencies that should have helped them didn’t hear their stories or look after them as they should have.



Bleak: The Children's Commission has published a report on child sex abuse by gangs

But, ironically, the report writers, too, try hard to side-step some difficult facts and even warn the rest of us from going where they have chosen not to tread.



Here is what Sue Berelowitz, the Deputy Children’s Commissioner who led the inquiry, has to say: ‘Perpetrators come from all ethnic groups, and so do their victims — contrary to what some may wish to believe.’



Yes, we know they come from all backgrounds. But that rather cutting second line is directed at people like me who believe that in some British cities — especially in the North of England — circles of sexual hell for young girls are run by gangs of Muslim men (most of Pakistani or Bangladeshi heritage) who mostly prey on white girls.



The inquiry was led by Deputy Children's Commissioner Sue Berelowitz

To generalise their crimes, and lump them in with all the other abusers across the country, is to deny what the victims of these men and their families are saying about the abuse that has gone on.



As an Asian woman, feminist, mother, Muslim and lifelong anti-racist, I cannot meekly accept Ms Berelowitz’s directive. We need clear and honest figures to show how race and ethnicity are linked to these unspeakable crimes.



After all, we have ethnic details for burglaries, stop-and-search, conviction rates and prison sentencing. Anti-racists base their campaigns on such information.



So why the squeamishness about gang sex exploitation? I think it is because — like a number of police officers and social workers who have been presented with such evidence in the past — the committee in charge of the report are nervous of causing offence to community leaders, of being thought racists.



Perhaps they fear the information will be used by the BNP or English Defence League to whip up hatred.



It is misplaced sensitivity. Committed racists will behave as they wish: we cannot let that determine what the public can or cannot know.

Of course the majority of sex abusers are white because the majority of the population is white. Blond paedophile Jimmy Savile did not hail from Pakistan, but was home-grown.



The report points out that 28 per cent of the victims they found were of black and Asian background.

But it doesn’t state what it should have: that some of the worst long-term abuse is carried out by mainly British Pakistani men targeting lost young white girls, often from troubled or poor families.



A 2010 police intelligence report stated there was a significant problem with gangs of Asian males, most of them Muslim, exploiting young white females.



The children are neglected and hungry for love. The men offer treats, car rides and kebabs, then drugs and alcohol; and then they corrupt them.



Even more tragically, when teachers and doctors express concern, too many in social services and the police dismiss the girls as ‘promiscuous’, ‘available’ and not worth their attention and care.



Of course, the kind of entrapment, grooming and abuse being described here is carried out by white gangs, too, and they are as hateful and bestial as their Asian counterparts.



Public bodies are worried that the racial aspects of child sex gangs will be hijacked by groups such as the English Defence League (pictured)

But with the latter, there has been for too long a suppression of the whole truth.



The reason I feel compelled to write about these particular groomers and rapists is because I am Asian, and I know how their repugnant activities are rebounding on all of us and on good Asian men.



The internet is rife with horrifying stories about such gangs. They are a mix of fact and fiction. More dangerously still, the British public is starting to think that we Asians hide and excuse the child rapists — and, that way, we all become sinners.



Every Asian and Muslim I know, including some imams, want these monsters exposed, named and put away.



But not all of them, I admit, want to delve deeper and confront some of the values that drive such men to prey on white females.



This is where it gets tricky. It is easy to loathe the abusers, but much harder to ask what it is about some Asian cultural assumptions that make the paedophiles feel no guilt or shame about what they do.

Mohammed Shafiq, director of the Lancashire-based Ramadhan Foundation, a charity working for ethnic harmony, has warned: 'The police are over-cautious because they fear being branded racist'

Mohammed Shafiq, director of the Lancashire-based Ramadhan Foundation, a charity working for ethnic harmony, has warned: 'The police are over-cautious because they fear being branded racist'



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Mohammed Shafiq, director of the Lancashire-based Ramadhan Foundation, a charity working for ethnic harmony, has warned: 'The police are over-cautious because they fear being branded racist'



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Mohammed Shafiq, director of the Lancashire-based Ramadhan Foundation, a charity working for ethnic harmony, has warned: 'The police are over-cautious because they fear being branded racist'



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Mohammed Shafiq, director of the Lancashire-based Ramadhan Foundation, a charity working for ethnic harmony, has warned: 'The police are over-cautious because they fear being branded racist'



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Mohammed Shafiq, chief executive of the Ramadhan Foundation, a brave and principled man, is one of the few to examine and question these underlying attitudes.



He acknowledges that to some Muslim men, white females are thought easy game, ‘asking for it’, while those men’s wives or girlfriends are hyper-protected.



Many abusers are sexually frustrated and cannot relate to women except as objects of one kind or another. For this new report to shy away from this vital dimension is cowardly — and, in its way, another betrayal of the victims.



One of these poor girls contacted me after hearing me a few times on a London radio show on which I was talking about gangs of Asian men in Rochdale. She and I met in a small cafe in the summer. She is now 16, but looks much younger, and is painfully thin. A charity is looking after her.



A British Pakistani man who became her pimp (she had to call him ‘Master’) found her outside a chip shop, paid for a big portion of fries, took her for a drive and violently raped her in the back of the car that same night.



She was 14, living with a mother who was an alcoholic and on benefits, and a young half-brother.

Abusers: The men who took part in a child sex ring which exploited vulnerable teenage girls (Top row left to right) Abdul Rauf, Hamid Safi, Mohammed Sajid and Abdul Aziz. (Bottom row left to right) Abdul Qayyum, Adil Khan, Mohammed Amin and Kabeer Hassan

Afterwards, the man gave her a £20 note. She had never had so much cash in her hand.



And so it went on. She was passed from man to man, was infected with a sexually transmitted disease, then told her teacher, who took her to a clinic and tried to get her to tell the police.



But the girl was too scared to do that. The men, by then, were violent and threatened her. She wanted to meet me, she said, to ask why Asian men were ‘like animals’ — a question that felt like a stab through my heart.



They are not, I told her; only a few — but those few were very bad. She will never believe me. And those who came to learn what happened to her now think as she does.



For her sake, and for the sake of others like her, the Children’s Commission report needed to attend to specifics, and not vague generalities about perpetrators.

It does, in fact, acknowledge that ‘there is more than one type of perpetrator, model and approach’.



But then it backs off from giving us details about the different perpetrators, models and approaches, because, I believe, that would mean scrutinising Asian gangs (which some police forces have found commit most sexual crimes against girls in some areas).



Frankly, I think it’s deplorable that the panel chosen to collate this report was almost all white. If they’d had assertive and scrupulous Asian members, perhaps we would have got a more full and truthful document.



I would never betray British Asians and Muslims, or portray them unfairly. They are my people. But breaking the taboo of silence that surrounds the exploitation by Asian men of white girls is a duty we insiders must not shirk.

