Rotherham scandal isn't about political correctness...
Our conservative estimate is that approximately 1400 children were sexually exploited from 1997 to 2013...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
- extract from Professor Alexis Jay's report on child sex exploitation in Rotherham
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
- extract from Professor Alexis Jay's report on child sex exploitation in Rotherham
..it's about chauvinism, class, complacency and incompetence
Wednesday 27 August, 2014
A newspaper never reveals its soul so clearly as in its treatment of a big story with many strands, such as yesterday's Rotherham report. What is the most important factor: the scale of the abuse, the affect on the victims, the perpetrators, the racial element, the authorities' failings, even the geography? Is this a human story, a cultural story, a political story? Or is it just another report of secondary importance to concerns about illegal immigrants, "reality TV", the return of an ageing pop queen and Manchester United's thrashing by the team formerly known as Wimbledon? The "new" news yesterday was the publication of a report by Professor Alexis Jay, who had been asked by Rotherham Council to look into the sexual exploitation of children in the town between 1997 and last year. Her findings were shocking.
The leader of the council resigned yesterday, but no one else has been disciplined. The forrmer councillor responsible for children's services is now the South Yorkshire Police and Crime Commissioner. He has resigned from the Labour Party, but not from his position.
So what did the papers make of all this? 
For the Mirror, i, Guardian and Times, the key point is the scale of the abuse and the failure of anyone in authority to act. The Mirror and Times mention the racial aspect in their subdecks. Neither the Independent nor the Telegraph mentions the number in their main headings, choosing instead to focus on the idea of a town that failed its children. The Independent mentions the Asian angle in the secondary headline, the Telegraph, like the i, doesn't use the line in any head on the front or inside.
The Star, in thrall to Big Brother, has only a teaser on the front, but then it produces what is probably the best at-a-glance precis on page 2.
How fair were these interpretations of the Jay report?
It is true that one of the objectives in Professor Jay's terms of reference was to "consider specifically whether there was evidence of the council or other agency not taking appropriate actions as a consequence of concerns regarding racial or ethnic sensitivities". She clearly concludes that there was such evidence. But she equally clearly does not conclude that 1,400 children were left to be abused because of that failure. Where she does point to nervousness about being seen as racist, it is generally with the caveat "in the earlier years".
She does not suggest anywhere that political correctness allowed abuse to continue unchecked for 16 years. Indeed, she states that her team was confident that in some instances where concerns were raised by staff, ethnic issues had not influenced decision-making. It is apparent from Professor Jay's analysis of the council's workings that the failings were many and widespread. Yet the Mirror, Express and Star all make the same cause-and-effect link between the fear of being seen as racist and the continued failure to tackle the abuse. The Telegraph says the children were exploited after officials turned a blind eye "for fear of being labelled racist". The Times and the Guardian mention this fear in the first few pars, but without making it the main point; the Independent leaves it to the middle of the second leg of its inside spread lead. The ethnicity of the guilty men is a central feature in the pattern of abuse in Rotherham (and in other northern towns), and some council officials were certainly inhibited because of it - not only because they did not want to be branded racist, but also because they were afraid of providing ammunition for far right groups. But this was a regime unwilling to confront the abuse at all - regardless of who was behind it. This was a dysfunctional council that operated in a macho atmosphere of bullying and sexism. In this world women were lesser beings, the girls were treated with contempt and disdain, and discussion of subjects such as sex abuse was almost impossible. One council officer, worried about a budget overspend, ranted for an hour about the cost of "too many looked-after children". In a letter to the chief executive, the outgoing director of safeguarding wrote that when challenged to provide evidence, he became aggressive and antagonistic. Asked to stop shouting, he responded by saying that shouting was the only way to "get through to these people" and he persisted for over an hour, swearing frequently. The director of safeguarding described the experience as "intimidating, humiliating, bullying and entirely professionally unacceptable". If the council was unwilling to confront the whole issue, so, too, are today's papers. For the overwhelming impression from the reports is that the scandal was about Asian men abusing white Yorkshire lasses. Except that they abused Asian girls and Eastern European girls too. This is a story about a group of very nasty people, who happened to be Pakistani in origin, who did some very nasty things to vulnerable children - mostly girls, but some boys as well. They are the guilty men. The Jay report details what they did in a series of case studies that makes horrific reading. The councillors, officials and police who failed to protect so many children are also culpable. But not because they were trying to be politically correct, rather the reverse: there was nothing politically correct about their outlook. They were bigoted, chauvinistic and sexist; they didn't believe - or want to believe - that the abuse was as widespread as it was, and they didn't accept that the children were innocent victims. They were unreliable troublemakers who weren't worth bothering about. Abusers, remember, are smart at picking on the vulnerable. As with Jimmy Savile and other predatory paedophiles, they will prey on children in care who are not seen as credible. Once that culture of disbelief had set in, it was almost impossible to shift. 
It is to our trade's great credit that Andrew Norfolk of The Times, above, pushed and pushed and pushed on this so that this inquiry was set up and we have reached this point today. His investigative work in Rotherham rightly earned him the Paul Foot and Orwell prizes.
So let us not sully his efforts and betray those children again with simplistic "blame the PC brigade" headlines that turn a town's tragedy into an opportunity for a bit of "I'm not racist, but..." propaganda. Child protection is not easy - especially when the children are wilful, deluded, precocious. Rotherham is in the dock today for being too slow, too blind, too complacent. But remember Cleveland was also in the dock once - for being too quick, too all-seeing, too eager. Nor was Rotherham alone in its misunderstanding of (or refusal to acknowledge) the nature of the sexual exploitation that, as Andrew Norfolk uncovered, was replicated in towns across the North of England - Rochdale, Blackburn, Manchester, Derby and south to Oxford. Yes, race was a huge factor in the pattern of abuse, but the fear of being branded as racist was a very small factor in the overall failings of the police, child protection staff and elected councillors. They need to sort themselves out. For the most chilling sentence in the report comes on the opening page: 
This abuse is not confined to the past but continues to this day |
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What Jay said about ethnicity
Within the council, we found no evidence of children’s social care staff being influenced by concerns about the ethnic origins of suspected perpetrators ... In the broader organisational context, however, there was a widespread perception that messages conveyed by some senior people in the council and also the police, were to 'downplay' the ethnic dimensions of CSE. Unsurprisingly, frontline staff appeared to be confused as to what they were supposed to say and do and what would be interpreted as 'racist'... the approach of avoiding public discussion of the issues was ill judged.
There is no simple link between race and child sexual exploitation, and across the UK the greatest numbers of perpetrators of CSE are white men...In Rotherham, the majority of known perpetrators were of Pakistani heritage.
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
[Dr Angie Heal] reported in 2006 that young people in Rotherham believed that the police dared not act against Asian youths for fear of allegations of racism. This perception was echoed by some young people we met during, but was not supported by specific examples.
Staff in children’s social care said that when writing reports on CSE cases, they were advised by their managers to be cautious about referring to the ethnicity of the perpetrators.
All the senior officers we interviewed were asked whether ethnic considerations influenced their decision making. All were unequivocal that this did not happen. However, several involved in operational management of services reported some attempts to pressurise them into changing their approach to some issues. This mainly affected the support given to Pakistani-heritage women fleeing domestic violence, where a small number of councillors had demanded that social workers reveal the whereabouts of these women or effect reconciliation... the inquiry team was confident that ethnic issues did not influence decision-making in individual cases.
Frontline staff did not report personal experience of attempts to influence their practice or decision making because of ethnic issues. Those who had involvement in CSE were acutely aware of these issues and recalled a general nervousness in the earlier years about discussing them, for fear of being thought racist.
The issue of race, regardless of ethnic group, should be tackled as an absolute priority if it is known to be a significant factor in the criminal activity of organised abuse in any local community. There was little evidence of such action being taken in Rotherham in the earlier years.
Several councillors believed that by opening up these issues they could be 'giving oxygen' to racist perspectives that might in turn attract extremist political groups and threaten community cohesion. To some extent this concern was valid, with the apparent targeting of the town by groups such as the English Defence League.
The Deputy Council Leader (2011-2014) from the Pakistani-heritage community was clear that he had not understood the scale of the CSE problem until 2013...he thought the convictions in 2010 were 'a one-off, isolated case', and not an example of a more deep-rooted problem of Pakistani-heritage perpetrators targeting young white girls. This was at best naïve, and at worst ignoring a politically inconvenient truth. |
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