I predict more grooming gangs getting busted, its impossible for police and CPS to ignore any more #edl

Political correctness ‘must not get in the way of police

and social workers investigating child sex abuse’, says

minister

By JACK DOYLE

PUBLISHED: 20:25, 3 July 2012 | UPDATED: 21:35, 3 July 2012

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Warning: Tim Loughton said that social workers and police must not let political correctness get in the way of investigating child sex abuse

Social workers and police must not let political correctness get in the way of investigating child sex abuse, a minister said yesterday.

Tim Loughton said ‘ethnicity’ had been a factor in the scandal of recent cases involving gangs of mostly Asian men abusing vulnerable young girls.

And he warned that more, similar cases were yet to become public – with thousands of sex abuse victims across the country.

Mr Loughton said members of some ‘closed communities’ had been reluctant to come forward and report organised sex attacks. As a result, these were allowed to take place ‘under the radar’ for many years, he said.

He told MPs: ‘If there is some form of political correctness around ethnicity which is getting in the way of police and other agencies investigating, tracking down and nailing these perpetrators, then that needs to be removed and we need to do something about it.’

Earlier this year a gang from Rochdale were jailed for plying teenage girls with alcohol before raping them. All but one gang member was of a Pakistani background.

The court heard up to 47 vulnerable girls were passed around the group and forced to have sex several times a week.

But two years before action was finally taken, police missed an opportunity to stop the gang when a 15-year-old girl told them she had been raped.

A report published yesterday by the Children’s Commissioner said councils were dumping children in care homes in parts of the country that were also centres for paedophiles, rapists and criminal gangs.

As a result, many experienced ‘truly horrific’ levels of violence, sadism and exploitation.

MPs said appalling failings in the care system that allowed a group of Pakistani-born men (pictured) to rape girls in a recent case in Rochdale were common across the country

Mr Loughton told the Home Affairs Committee, which is conducting an inquiry into the child sex abuse scandal, that some communities – while not condoning abuse – had been slow to report it to the police.

Asked whether the cases to date represented the ‘tip of the iceberg’ he said: ‘We are talking about a considerable number of children.

‘I think we are probably talking about thousands of children be it in care or from their own families are in some shape or form the subject of sexual abuse.’

‘We have not seen the half of it yet,’ he added.

Asked if there was evidence of ethnicity being a factor in child exploitation, he replied: ‘Yes, and it is no good pretending otherwise.

Mr Loughton said the majority of child sex offenders in jail are ‘white middle-aged men whose method of choice might be grooming over the internet’.

Jailed: Shabir Ahmed was at the centre of a sex gang that raped and abused up to 47 girls

But he added: ‘What we have seen in high-profile cases in Derby and Rochdale, and other cases still to come fully to court, is that there is a problem around, in most cases, British Pakistani men – there are a few cases of Afghan and Bangladeshi men involved – who, operating in gangs, are preying on mostly teenage white girls.

‘Not exclusively, but that has been a pattern we have seen in high-profile cases.’

He added: ‘I know that in certain more closed communities, people who know about this form of abuse are less inclined or feel threatened about coming forward and reporting it to the authorities.

It is not in the interests of the British Pakistani community or the British Congolese community for these sorts of abuses to be going on by members of their own community, and it is in their interests to make sure it is reported, rooted out and the perpetrators are dealt with as criminals, which they are.’

‘The point the Government is making absolutely clear is that we have got to make sure that the police and social services and other enforcement agencies are using the right tools to nail these perpetrators, regardless of their culture or ethnicity.

‘It all amounts to serious child abuse and they all need to be nailed.”

‘This has been going on for years under the radar. People didn’t come forward and report it, the police – for whatever reason – didn’t investigate it, or certainly didn’t investigate it sufficiently for cases to be brought to court that then stuck.’

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2168365/Tim-Loughton-Political-correctness-way-police-social-workers-investigating-child-sex-abuse.html#ixzz1zbDOFX5d