In my 2013 research on grooming gangs, I found that perpetrators saw the exploitation of girls as a lucrative and low-risk alternative to drug dealing. Being caught with a girl was viewed as safer than being caught with drugs.
A hierarchy of risk existed, with Asian girls seen as least likely to report abuse due to shame and fear that they would be blamed by their families. I documented cases where Pakistani and Bangladeshi girls were repeatedly gang-raped by men of various ethnicities – including white men – and silenced through threats of exposure.
Yet, their experiences are largely absent from public discussions on grooming gangs, with few cases ever reaching prosecution.
We are now hearing that there was also a deep-rooted, class-based prejudice at play when it came to the systemic failures of the institutions designed to safeguard vulnerable children. These girls – many of them working-class, in care, or from unstable homes – were not seen as innocent victims. They were viewed as troublemakers, promiscuous, and difficult – and, therefore, easy to dismiss. Instead of protection and compassion, they were met with contempt.
Not only would the establishment’s inaction have emboldened the perpetrators, allowing the abuse to continue unchecked for many years – decades, even – the reasoning for their silence doesn’t stand up.
Are we really to believe they overlooked abused children through fear of being labelled “racist”? That level of honesty is surely far more damaging to their reputations and careers.
As Yvette Cooper rightly pointed out following Baroness Casey’s report, male suspects of Asian and Pakistani heritage are over-represented in cases like this. Muslims – and, by extension, Pakistani men (given they make up the largest demographic of Muslims) – are also over-represented in the prison population.
Muslims currently make up around 18 per cent of the male prison population, despite representing only 6.5 per cent of the general UK population. Fears of racism have not prevented these Muslims being held accountable for their crimes, so why should it be a determining factor in this case?
Organised crime is often fuelled by poverty, unemployment, limited social mobility and under-resourced policing – particularly in deprived urban areas. As around 40 per cent of the UK’s Muslim population – especially Pakistanis – live in some of the poorest neighbourhoods, experience high levels of poverty and have lower education levels, such conditions may have drawn some men towards illegal income – including the exploitation of vulnerable girls.
Of course, social deprivation alone cannot fully explain why in some areas a disproportionate number of Pakistani men have been involved in grooming gangs. Cultural dynamics may have also played a significant role.
In my research into 35 grooming cases, a third of the South Asian girls involved had also experienced sexual abuse within their own families – abuse that often continued unchallenged, even after disclosure. This points to a wider, unaddressed pattern of harm.
Domestic abuse is also a serious and persistent issue. Women regularly contact the Muslim Women’s Network Helpline that I run. While domestic abuse exists across all backgrounds, minority ethnic women (which will include Pakistani women) are one-fifth more likely to be victims of domestic homicide – a deeply troubling statistic that has been consistently overlooked by successive governments.
When it comes to minority ethnic communities, funding tends to focus on high-profile, culturally specific issues, like forced marriage, honour-based abuse and female genital mutilation. While these are important concerns, they often overshadow the more prevalent issues of child sex abuse (sometimes involving multiple perpetrators) and domestic abuse, which continues to claim the lives of women and girls.
When men are not held accountable for abuse committed within their own families, it is unsurprising that some go on to perpetrate harm beyond the private sphere. I would not be surprised if those convicted in grooming gang cases had prior histories of domestic or sexual abuse within their own households – an issue that warrants thorough consideration in any inquiry.
Ultimately, sexual predators do not discriminate by race, faith, or culture. Sexual exploitation is driven by harmful male attitudes towards women and girls. Even if concerns about community tensions held any validity, they never justified abandoning children to abuse.
Baroness Shaista Gohir is the CEO of Muslim Women’s Network UK
