Elon Musk, the billionaire tech mogul, has thrown himself into British politics in recent weeks, using his social media platform X to attack and spread false information about Prime Minister Keir Starmer and other members of the Labor government.
In a series of vitriolic posts to his 211 million followers in recent days, Mr. Musk falsely accused Mr. The speech refers to a decade-old scandal involving a series of child sexual abuse cases where girls were tortured and raped by gangs of men in several towns and cities. Most of the perpetrators were of British Pakistani heritage.
The post of Mr. Musk included many negatives and treated the widely covered issue as if it had never been mentioned. But the post also sheds light on the harrowing child sex abuse scandal that has plagued Britain and sparked heated debate on issues of race, immigration and abuse.
What was the scandal of gangs?
In 2011, The Times of London published a series of investigative articles about the sexual exploitation of girls by gangs in the north of England and the Midlands from 1997 onwards. Another coroner at the time, chief inspector Alan Edwards, told the newspaper: “Everyone was too afraid to deal with the issue of race.” These cases became known as the “gang” scandal.
In 2014, the findings of a years-long legal inquiry into such abuse in the northern English town of Rotherham began a national reckoning. At least 1,400 children, some as young as 11 years old, were found to have been trained for sexual exploitation between 1997 and 2013, while local authorities looked the other way for years. It was discovered that similar groups were also active in other towns and cities in England.
Grooming in Rotherham, population 257,000, tended to follow a similar pattern: girls being courted by boys in public places such as town centers and shopping centres; gradual introduction of alcohol and other drugs; then had sex with one man, who wanted the girl to show her love by sleeping with her friends.
A local government report found that victims and parents who asked for help were let down by the police and social workers. Some police officers were found calling the victims “tarts” and the molestation of girls as “lifestyle choices.”
The case was particularly heated because of the racial differences between the victims, in the Rotherham case who were mostly white, and the perpetrators. Trials in Oxford and the northern towns of Oldham and Rochdale in 2012 for abusing dozens of girls included Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Afghan men who received long sentences.
What do we know about ethnicity and sexual harassment?
Experts say data on child sexual abuse should be treated with care because many victims do not come forward, or do so years later. However, data on the ethnicity of child sex abuse victims and perpetrators was released by the Labor government in November – the first of its kind published by any British government – showing that 83 per cent of perpetrators convicted in 2023 were white and 7 per cent were Asian, broadly in line with the general demographics of the country. (In UK official statistics, “Asian” is a very broad term that can refer to people of Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi or Chinese heritage, or from other parts of South Asia.)
Nazir Afzal, chief prosecutor for the North West region of England from 2011-2015, himself a Pakistani heritage official, said in 2015: “There is no getting away from the fact that there are Pakistani gangs grooming vulnerable girls.”
He went on to say that South Asians were “disproportionately involved” in some of the forms of street grooming highlighted by the cases in Rotherham, Rochdale and elsewhere, even though the most common forms of child sexual abuse nationally are carried out mainly by white British men.
The racial element in these high-profile cases became a common talking point of the right wing, as experts noted that ethnicity is not a predictor of child abuse tendencies, and widespread child abuse had long been hidden from other communities and institutions including the Roman Catholic Church. The trope has also been appropriated by the far right, including terrorists. The white supremacist who killed 51 people at two mosques in New Zealand in 2019 was carrying a gun with the words “From Rotherham.”
Mr. When did Musk start talking about this?
In October, Jess Phillips, the Labor lawyer and defense minister, rejected a request by the local government in Oldham, a town near Manchester, for a national inquiry into the sexual exploitation of children in the area in the 2000s and 2010s. A 2022 report commissioned by the Labor Mayor of Manchester, Andy Burnham, found that children were failed by the police and local authority in Oldham between 2011 and 2014.
Ms Phillips, who has spent a lot of time advocating for women and victims of sexual violence, said the local council, the council that governs the city, should commission a local inquiry, as many other cities do.
His response was picked up last week by GB News, a hard-right network, which ran an online story headlined: “Labour REJECT Oldham’s call for government inquiry into gang scandal.”
After a while, Mr. Musk weighed in, calling Ms. Phillips a “rape apologist” and a “witch” who “deserves to be jailed,” and insulted Mr. Starmer that he is involved in this practice.
The leader of Oldham Council, Arooj Shah, said in a statement that the council first launched its investigation in October. “We are working closely with the survivors and the families of the survivors to ensure that not only do they have a voice, but they will play a major role in advancing this investigation,” she said. “We expect the terms of operation to be agreed upon in the coming months.”
What role did Keir Starmer play?
Mr. Musk said Mr. Starmer, whose Labor Party won the July election by a landslide, “must go” and lied that Mr. Starmer was “deeply involved in mass rape to get votes.”
Before entering politics in 2015, Starmer served as Britain’s chief prosecutor from 2008 to 2013, when the issue of criminal justice became a national focus.
While in that role, Mr. Starmer oversaw the prosecution of a gang in Rochdale, made up mostly of men of South Asian heritage. In a press conference on Monday, Mr. Starmer called child sexual abuse “absolutely sick” and said too many victims had been let down by “misconceptions about social relations or the idea that institutions should be protected above all else.”
He continued: “When I was the chief prosecutor for five years, I faced this because I saw what was happening. When I left office, we had the highest number of child sexual abuse cases going anonymously.”
Mr. Starmer and his colleagues in the Crown Prosecution Service, Mr. Afzal, were praised in a 2013 parliamentary report published under the previous Conservative-led government. “Mr. Starmer has tried to improve the treatment of victims of sexual assault in the criminal justice system throughout his tenure,” the report said, adding that “his response should set an example for other agencies involved in local corrections.”
What has happened since the abuse cases started?
The issue of gangs has been the subject of many local and national investigations and reports in Britain since the early 2010s.
Since 2015, the state-sponsored national inquiry has held more than 300 days of hearings. Ultimately, it conducted 15 investigations, including networks of abusers and abuse in schools and churches.
A February 2022 report found that child sexual exploitation by organized networks remains a major national issue. The final report of the inquiry in October 2022 set out 20 recommendations to protect children but the government of the time Wakaba took very few steps on them. In a statement issued this week, the Home Office said it was “working swiftly” to implement them.
Prof. Alexis Jay, who led the national review and Rotherham inquiry in 2014, told the BBC on Tuesday that “people should go ahead” with his recommendations. “We have had enough questions, consultations and discussions,” he said, “especially the victims and survivors who have had the courage to come forward.”
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