ÒEasy MeatÓ 

Multiculturalism, Islam and Child Sex Slavery 


Peter McLoughlin 



c

.Peter McLoughlin 2014 
The PDF (Postscript Document Format) version 
of this document may be freely distributed. 

Printed copies of this document may only be 

distributed by Law And Freedom Foundation. 

Cover photo 

By Linsenhejhej (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia 
Commons 

http://commons:wikimedia:org/wiki/File:Autistic_teenage_girl:jpg 

publishing history 
first edition March 2014 

Contents 

1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 

2. The Grooming Gang Phenomenon . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 

2.1 Defining the Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 

2.2 Tip of the Iceberg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 

2.3 Invisible Victims . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 

2.4 National Dimensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 

2.5 International Dimensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 

2.7 Counting the Victims . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 

2.8 Realising the Damage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 

3. Sikh Victims of Grooming Gangs . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 

4. Chronology: Cover-up to Collapse . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 

4.1 1988 Sikh/Muslim violence . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 

4.2 1989 Sikhs convicted . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 

4.3 1991 ÒThe earliest case...Ó . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 

4.4 1995 Bradford: Streets and Lanes . . . . . . . . 67 

4.5 1996 Rotherham . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 

4.6 1998 Sikh Awareness Society starts . . . . . . . . 71 

4.7 2001 Derby and ÒReal CaliphateÓ . . . . . . . . 73 

4.8 2003 Bradford/Keighley . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 

4.9 2004 Edge of the City . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 

4.10 2005 Radio 5 programme . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 

4.11 2005 Luton and ÒReal CaliphateÓ . . . . . . . . . 83 

4.12 2007 Julie Bindel: a lone voice . . . . . . . . . . 85 

4.13 2008 My Dangerous Loverboy . . . . . . . . . . 87 

4.14 2008 BBC Panorama: Teenage Sex For Sale . . . 91 

4.15 2009 Rise of English Defence League . . . . . . 97 

4.16 2011 Andrew NorfolkÕs pivotal article . . . . . . 99 

3 



5. Systemic Institutional Failure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 

5.1 Schools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 

5.2 Local Councils . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 

5.3 Police . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 

5.4 Criminal Justice System . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 

5.5 Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre . 136 

5.6 Serious Organised Crime Agency . . . . . . . . . 151 

5.7 ChildrenÕs Commissioner . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 

5.8 Home Affairs Select Committee . . . . . . . . . 173 

5.9 BarnardoÕs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180 

5.10 Academic Experts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190 

6. Abuse of the Narrative of Racism . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201 

6.1 Political Correctness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201 

6.2 Muslims, not ÒAsiansÓ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204 

6.3 ÒRacismÓ Protected the Rapists . . . . . . . . . . 206 

6.4 Racist Aspects of Grooming . . . . . . . . . . . . 214 

7. Islamic Cultural Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222 

7.1 ÒAsian gangÓ: racist duplicity . . . . . . . . . . . 223 

7.2 Islamic Morality, Muslim Culture . . . . . . . . . 232 

7.3 Koranic Instructions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235 

7.4 Stories from the Hadith . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247 

7.5 The Life of Mohammed (Sira) . . . . . . . . . . . 248 

7.6 Sharia Law: Child Marriage . . . . . . . . . . . . 251 

7.7 Sharia Law: Legality of Slavery . . . . . . . . . . 255 

8. The Scale of the Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269 

9. Victims of Multiculturalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297 

10. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310 

11. Appendix 1: Grooming Gang Convictions . . . . . . . . 320 

12. Appendix 2: Grooming Gang Chronology . . . . . . . . 323 

13. Appendix 3: Name Distribution of Convicts . . . . . . . 324 

14. Appendix 4: Leeds School Warning . . . . . . . . . . . 325 

15. Appendix 5: Sheffield School Warning . . . . . . . . . 326 

16. Appendix 6: Real Khilafah -Letter to Moslem Youth . . 327 

17. Appendix 7: Luton Article on Real Khilafah . . . . . . 328 


18. Appendix 8: ChildrenÕs Commissioner Charts . . . . . 329 

19. Appendix 9: Victims to Perpetrators . . . . . . . . . . 330 

17. Appendix 10: Police Report on EDL . . . . . . . . . . 331 

20. Appendix 11: Transcription Real Khilafa Letter . . . . 332 


Foreword 


This is a shocking report. It is written with care, but the evidence 
is hard to believe. Readers should beware, because there is something 
to feel angry about on most pages: the prevalence of the crime; the 
length of time that it has continued; its blatancy; the lengths our 
authorities have gone to in order to cover up for it; but most of all, the 
vulnerability and suffering of the victims. 

That anger is going to spread as awareness of this crime spreads. 
Denial and damage limitation wonÕt work any more. 

It is hard to think of something more calculated to incite public 
violence than the targeting of native girls for rape by an immigrant 
population. The use of inter communal rape in the most savage 
territorial conflicts testifies to its perception as a weapon, and the fear 
of it evokes the most primal instincts. 

And this is the basis for our plea to our civil authorities to stamp 
out this crime by any lawful means: if the suffering of the victims 
canÕt motivate you, then consider the threat to your grip on power. 

Vigilante violence disables its own society, and is one of the 
short-cuts from QueenÕs peace to all-against-all. The self-appointed 
doer of justice tears a hole in the entire fabric of the law. He is 
accountable to no one, and if his violence can be inflicted on child 
rapists then thieves and debtors will be next. 

The danger of vigilante justice. 

Let me tell a story, some hypothetical events to illustrate how 
quickly power can spin out of the authoritiesÕ hands. 

It may be argued that the situation is too violent, but violence is 
what happens when ethnic hostility meets civil disorder. I have tried 
to underplay the descriptions, to assuage the sensitive. I hope the 
passage of time wonÕt reproach me for failing to point out the dangers 
in clear enough words. 

6 



Suppose a group of former soldiers, with weapons and 
intelligence training, are bored with their post-service jobs for 
security companies and print shops, and tired of the pub going which 
keeps them in touch with each other and with what bestowed a sense 
of pride and purpose. Their patriotism is frustrated by their impotence 
in the face of predatory criminality. They gained a none-too-rosy view 
of Islamic culture during their tours of Iraq and Afghanistan, and its 
presence in Britain has become a frequent topic of conversation. 

Fuelled by beer and boredom, their conversation turns to outrage 
at the failure to eradicate child rape gangs, and to boasts about how 
quickly they could eradicate them. One of them points out the number 
of Muslims among those convicted for grooming crimes, relative to 
the proportion of Muslims in Britain: heÕs been looking through the 
convictions and realised that almost everyone convicted for these 
crimes has a Muslim name, when Muslims are only 5% of the 
population. They do some quick calculations, and conclude that 
Muslims are 154 times likelier to be perpetrators of these crimes than 
non-Muslims.1 Another points out that itÕs worse than that: thereÕs 
not been one case where the victim was a Muslim and the paedophiles 

1 Some of the calculations get lost in the bar room hubbub, but they were as follows: 
muslims made up 89% of offenders from the most reliable lists, i.e. the lists of convictions 
as compiled by Andrew Norfolk, where guilt and innocence had been tested in 
the glare of a courtroom, uninfluenced by the professional self interest of social workersÕ 
feedback forms. But muslims made up 5% of the population. Their calculations 
were: 
The likelihood of individual Muslims to commit this offence is: 

89 Ö 
5% = 
1, 
780:00 
The likelihood of individual non-Muslims to commit this offence is: 

11 Ö 
95% = 
11:58 
So the likelihood of individual Muslims to commit this offence, compared to individual 
non Muslims, is: 

1;780 Ö 
11:58 = 
153:73 

I.e. Muslims are roughly 154 times more likely than non-Muslims to commit this 
crime. There is some squabbling, and much mathematical to-ing and fro-ing, as to 
whether the figure can really be so steep. But, after much swearing at mobile phone 
calculator apps, that is the figure settled on... 
7 



were non-Muslims. ÒTheyÕre raping our kids, weÕre not raping their 
kids. ThereÕs something wrong with Muslims,Ó he says. 

They say they could put an end to this problem. They mean if they 
were given the chance, like. Infuriated by each new crop of bearded 
paedophiles glowering from the front pages, their talk becomes more 
sober and less boastful. 

Prompted a few weeks later by reports of a particularly 
incompetent police investigation, idle talk turns to not-so-idle 
planning. 

Tipped off by a disillusioned child protection worker or police 
officer as to the location of a B nÕ B establishment used for this crime, 
they decide to put their plans into action. 

Instead of planning a reprisal raid Ð as one or two Sikh groups 
appear to have done in response to the abuse of Sikh girls Ð they 
decide that prevention is better than cure. Acting on information 
received, they surveil the premises, noting when the 13 year old girl is 
led into the building, and when the clients follow. 

One evening they lay in wait, force their way inside the building, 
and into the room where a semi comatose girl is held. 

A terrible massacre follows: they shoot dead all the men in that 
room, without warning, at point blank range. 

They are caught, arrested, charged with murder, and plead not 
guilty. 

The appalling aftermath leaves no room to deny the killings. So, 
at trial, they admit the facts but claim their actions were justified 
because they were done in the prevention of a crime. 

The prosecution are left with the unenviable task of rebutting this 
defence beyond reasonable doubt, and argue that the DefendantsÕ 
actions were not Òreasonable in all the circumstancesÓ because lesser 
force would have sufficed. 

8 



The Defendants cite the fact that American states specifically 
sanction citizensÕ use of Òdeadly forceÓ against home invasion, 
whether or not the life of the householder is threatened, and even in 
some car chases. Similar laws have been proposed for this country in 
the case of burglary, and would enjoy substantial public support. They 
argue that most people agree that the gang rape of children is more 
serious than burglary. They refer to the BBCÕs ÒNo charge for Texas 
dad who killed daughterÕs rapistÓ story, and the comments beneath.2 

The prosecution also submit that the killers failed to inform the 
authorities before taking the law into their own hands, to which the 
killers point out that the authorities already knew Ð since they got 
their information from a disaffected member of one such authority Ð 
and that nothing had happened so far. 

The judge is more conscious of the dangers of DIY justice than 
many people, so she is perturbed by the defence. But she is unable to 
prevent it going to the jury. She gives the correct guidance to the 
twelve men and women that it is hard to see how such extreme force 
can be considered reasonable when civil authorities such as police and 
child protection units are paid to prevent these crimes. And that whilst 
the crime of child rape is a terrible one, massacre is out of all 
proportion to it. 

The jury retire and are unable to reach a verdict. Anonymous 
reports in some newspapers suggest later that half of the jurors 
refused to see anything wrong with killing members of a child rape 
gang. A retrial is held, followed, unusually, by a second retrial. But 
no verdict is ever reached, and the judge at the second retrial instructs 
the foreman to acquit the defendants. Picture the enthusiastic 
celebrations outside the court Ð based more on soccer chants than 
study of the dovetail joint between law and civil society. 

News of the acquittal spreads fast. Other groups of would be 
vigilantes, take on board that it is OK to kill child rapists, especially 

2 20 June 2013 http://www:bbc:co:uk/news/world-us-canada-18522383. 

9 



them Muslim ones. The more buccaneering gangs soon branch into 
other areas of enforcement and dispute resolution. Before long they 
become the people to report crimes and quarrels to in certain areas. 
They even open their own brothels, some of which are sometimes 
somewhat casual about age restrictions Ð an irony that the liberal 
press are quick to spot, but which the police are slow to risk enforcing 
against for fear of upsetting the calm stalemate. 

This situation is not so far-fetched as you might hope. The 
fragility of civilisation, the basic human need for security, plus an 
absence of law (to say nothing of budget constraints) enable the 
violent to pull in those around them like a fire-storm. It is, therefore, 
essential that our authorities stamp out these offences visibly, 
aggressively, and fast. They need to be seen to break with their 
previous inertia in doing so. 

It is not realistic merely to condemn this crime. It must be 
suppressed. If not, those of us who are now execrated as firebrands, 
but who later try to preach restraint, will be brushed aside with the 
simple words: ÒThey rape our children.Ó 

Gavin Boby 

Law And Freedom Foundation 

10 



Preface 


We recognise that this report covers a complex area, and that some 
of its conclusions rely on extrapolations. We are confident that there 
are many professionals in the UK who are better financed, have better 
contacts, and who have more experience in this area. We wish that 
they had written this report. But it is precisely their silence on this 
subject for the last 20 years which has required us to write this report, 
with any inadequacies you may find therein. 

If you would like to help improve the quality of this report, please 
feel free to contact us with corrections. If you are aware of 
information which weÕve missed, weÕd be grateful to receive that 
information too. We intend to update this report every few years, until 
this grooming phenomenon reaches a satisfactory conclusion. 

Since we started to write this report, the Serious Organised Crime 
Agency has been wound up, and the evidence from their website has 
gone. More of the evidence referred to in this report may disappear 
with time. But at least this mark in the sand has been made. 

Please send corrections or additional information to 
petermcloughlin@lawandfreedomfoundation.org . We would like to 
thank all those people who contributed information to this report. 

11 



1. Introduction 
Many girls are terrified and with reason... a girl had 
her tongue nailed to the table when she threatened 
to tell. 

Ð former government advisor, Daily 
Mail, 2008 
The sexual abuse of children takes different social forms: from 
sporadic child abductions, to organised child pornography rings, to 
abuse by parents or care-home staff. All of it is awful, and none of it 
should be ignored. The phenomenon of gangs of men who loiter with 
impunity around schoolgirls, luring them into a life of addiction and 
prostitution is a distinct category of child sexual abuse, but a category 
that the authorities in Britain have deliberately ignored for 25 years. 
They ignored it, despite it being clearly put on the national agenda as 
long ago as 2003. 

There are some specific features and events which should have 
made it obvious to the authorities and the media that a new social 
phenomenon was occurring in Britain. What should have been of 
interest to the authorities? 

. 
gangs of Muslim men hanging around school gates in cars 
. 
schoolgirls contacting police and social services and telling 
them that they had been abused 
. 
parents contacting police and social services with their fears 
and accumulated evidence 
. 
extended families of Muslim men being associated with this 
child abuse 
. 
schoolgirls being abducted or going missing for days on end 
12 



1. 
INTRODUCTION 
. 
stories of the men luring the girls with gifts, then turning them 
into addicts 
. 
families having to abandon their daughters to stop the daughter 
luring other relatives into the clutches of the gangs 
. 
connections between the grooming gangs and drug dealers 
What should have been of interest to the media and academics? 
. 
gang violence between Sikhs and Muslims over claims about 
grooming 
. 
Sikhs creating organisations to teach their girls what the gangs 
were doing 
. 
reports that devout Muslim organisations were instructing 
Muslim men to deceive and subjugate non-Muslim women 
. 
refusal of the Muslim community to condemn these crimes and 
their failure to inform police that they were going on 
. 
international parallels between this phenomenon in Britain and 
its occurrence in the Netherlands 
Between 1988 and 2003, evidence of all of these things must have 
been known by many police officers, social workers, academics and 
journalists. Yet we will show that, with very few exceptions, these 
incidents were rarely publicised in the national media, by the 
campaigns of child-care charities, by official reports, or in academic 
books. On the rare occasion when the phenomenon would be 
discussed in more than the briefest details, political activists and the 
authorities would come together to stop the public from knowing 
more. Political correctness would be used to make sure that people did 
not speak about this phenomenon, enabling the perpetrators free rein 
to sexually abuse schoolgirls for decades. Yes, decades. We know that 
in an age where parents are not allowed to smack their children, this 
sounds unbelievable. But finally, by 2011 the conspiracy of silence 
was broken. And in September 2012, The Times newspaper carried an 

13 



1. 
INTRODUCTION 
extensive overview of what had been going on. It stated that Òfor more 
than a decade organised groups of men were able to groom, pimp and 
traffic girls across the country with virtual impunity.Ó1 The Times 
went on to quote a welfare expert describing this as Òthe biggest 
child protection scandal of our time.Ó2 We will show that even the 
coverage in The Times has understated the scale of the problem. 

There is far more to this story than has come out so far. The 
population are already outraged by what they have learned in the last 
year or two, but know only a fraction of the scandal.3 In England, this 
epidemic of child-rape by grooming gangs has been going on since at 
least 1988; moreover, the victims have not only been white 
schoolgirls. Despite more than a decade of disinformation by 
child-care professionals, academics, and political activists, the earliest 
claims (1988 to 2003)4 were that the gangs were overwhelmingly 
Muslim.5 This massive over-representation of Muslim men in this 

1Andrew Norfolk, ÒPolice Files Reveal Vast Child Protection ScandalÓ, The Times, 
24 Sep 2012 http://www:thetimes:co:uk/tto/news/uk/crime/article3547661:ece. 
2Andrew Norfolk, ÒPolice Files Reveal Vast Child Protection ScandalÓ, The Times, 
24 Sep 2012 http://www:thetimes:co:uk/tto/news/uk/crime/article3547661:ece. Emphasis
 added. 
3We made a decision that this study would attempt to avoid sensational detail, and 
would provide the minimum amount of detail required to indicate the horrors involved. 
Mostly this study confines itself to exposing where organisations have failed, who 
must have known what and when; to evidence-gathering and statistical extrapolation; 
and forays into areas of theology and cultural analysis where others will not tread. 
4See 4.1 1988 Sikh/Muslim violence, and 4.8 2003 Bradford/Keighley. In 2003, 
Muslims were less than 3% of the UK population, yet already reports of these gangs 
stated the gangs were Òoverwhelmingly Asian.Ó Anna Hall ÒHunt For BritainÕs Sex 
Gangs, C4Ó Broadcast 2 May, 2013 http://www:broadcastnow:co:uk/in-depth/hunt-f 
or-britains-sex-gangs-c4/5054504:article. We will see below whether or not it was 
reasonable for all the principle figures involved in this 2003 controversy to have stated 
that the gangs were ÒAsianÓ rather than ÒMuslim.Ó 
5CROP (Coalition for the Removal of Pimping) is the only charity to work exclusively 
with the schoolgirl victims of pimping and their families. CROP was set-up in 2002. 


the families had suffered mainly at the hands of Pakistani men. "The 
vast majority are white families and the perpetrators are Pakistani 
Asians," the organisationÕs chair of trustees, Hilary Willmer, was 

14 



1. 
INTRODUCTION 
crime spree has been borne out by the prosecutions of the last three to 
four years,6 but it is clear that it must have been known long ago and 
should have been made public. Because the predators were Muslims, 
the agencies who are responsible for child-protection have almost 
entirely failed in their job to protect vulnerable children. From a fear 
of being called ÒracistÓ, police forces across the country have buried 
the evidence.7 National agencies busied themselves with cybercrime, 
bullying in schools, and the trafficking of children into Britain almost
 anything to avoid attending to this serious sexual and violent 
abuse going on across England. 

Even documents that supposedly address the problem have 
gone out of their way to avoid discussing why some Òethnic 
groupsÓ are massively over-represented as perpetrators, whilst 
the schoolgirl victims are overwhelmingly of a different ethnic 

quoted as saying. Sources inside Crop placed the percentage as high 
as 80 per cent, although Kurdish, Romanian and Albanian gangs were 
also involved. 

Paul Vallely, ÒChild Sex Grooming: the Asian QuestionÓ, The Independent, 10 
May 2012 http://www:independent:co:uk/news/uk/crime/child-sex-grooming-the-A 
sian-question-7729068:html. Thus, an organisation which has worked exclusively 
in this area for over a decade says that 80% of the perpetrators are Pakistanis. 
What the journalist does not make clear in the above article, is that Kurdistan, Romania
 and Albania are areas which have been Islamised for centuries. Albania is 
60% Muslim, and Kurds do not have their own country, but are spread out over 
many Muslim countries, and the vast majority of Kurds are Muslim. See also 
http://en:wikipedia:org/wiki/Islam_in_Romania. 
6See 11. Appendix 1: Grooming Gang Convictions, and notice almost all of those 
convicted have Muslim names (non-Muslim names in the list of convictions have been 
rendered in italics). 
7Following an inquiry in 2013 into the events in Rochdale, the socialist MP for the 
town said that the police had been actively ignoring reports by the victims. ÒThe 
biggest issue to come out of this report is that Greater Manchester Police (GMP) were 
effectively discriminating against poor, white, working-class girls, so thatÕs not about 
a failure to spot abuse, that is about actively ignoring abuse that was going on when it 
was brought to their attentionÓ, ÒRochdale grooming: ÔShockingÕ failure over sex 
abuseÓ BBC News, 20 Dec 2013, http://www:bbc:co:uk/news/uk-england-mancheste 
r-25450512. 

15 



1. 
INTRODUCTION 
group. The perpetrators have been overwhelmingly men from 
Muslim communities, and the victims have been overwhelmingly 
girls from non-Muslim communities (Sikhs, Christians, Atheists). Yet 
the professionals never deemed it important to declare this, or even 
denied the pattern existed. Until 2012, the media in Britain did not 
once discuss the similarities between Muslim grooming gangs here 
and Muslim grooming gangs in the Netherlands (even though 
English-language media in the Netherlands were reporting on these 
gangs as early as 2001).8 

Throughout the last twenty years, no ordinary member of the 
British public had any reason to associate the town of Rotherham in 
South Yorkshire with systematic, organised child abuse.9 Despite 
government agencies in Rotherham knowing about (and privately 
discussing) the Muslim grooming gangs from 1996, a 2010 document 
by Rotherham Safeguarding Children Board stated that Ògreat care 
will be taken in drafting . . . this report to ensure that its findings 
embrace RotherhamÕs qualities of diversity. It is imperative that 
suggestions of a wider cultural phenomenon are avoided.Ó10 

The 2012 analysis in The Times focused on Rotherham, where 200 

8Carin Tiggeloven, ÒChild Prostitution in the NetherlandsÓ, Radio Netherlands, 
18 Dec 2001 http://web:archive:org/web/20080627112924/http://www:radionetherla 
nds:nl/currentaffairs/region/netherlands/netherlands011218:html. 
9A search of national news databases, going back to 1985, did not turn up any relevant 
results until the year 2010. 
10From the 2010 report, found in Andrew Norfolk, ÒPolice Files Reveal Vast Child 
Protection ScandalÓ, The Times, 24 Sep 2012 http://www:thetimes:co:uk/tto/news 
/uk/crime/article3547661:ece. This quotation encapsulates the problem: despite all 
the evidence that different parts of RotherhamÕs ÒdiverseÓ community had conflicting 
cultural values, leading to serious harm for the vulnerable parties in this conflict (the 
schoolgirls), political correctness and the doctrine of multiculturalism meant that the 
professionals whose job it was to help the vulnerable were consciously commanding 
that these diverse cultural values could not be discussed. Multiculturalism came about 
in order to deny that there is any significance to cultures having different values and 
to conceal that there will be conflict when these incompatible values come together. 
Political correctness is the means by which such denial is enforced. 

16 



1. 
INTRODUCTION 
Òrestricted-access documentsÓ showed that, in that borough alone, 
Òpolice and child protection agencies have held extensive knowledge 
of this crime model for ten years, yet have never publicly 
acknowledged its existence.Ó11 Back in 1996, Rotherham Council 
conducted an investigation into the organized grooming activities of 
gangs. The report identified that most of the perpetrators were 
Pakistani Muslim men (Kurdish Muslims and Kosovan Muslims were 
also identified as perpetrators.)12 The Times article states that in 2002, 
Rotherham Council produced a report which identified 3 brothers 
from one Pakistani Muslim family as being linked to the sexual 
exploitation of 54 girls from the area. The Muslim men in this case 
seem typical of many of the men involved in this crime. And we 
believe that the behaviour of Rotherham council is typical of the 
behaviour of many, perhaps most, councils. 

Many people who are not involved in a professional capacity with 
child-care might think that this phenomenon came about because the 
child-protection agencies were under-staffed. However, the website of 
the National Society for the Protection of Children (NSPCC) refers to 
a ÒNational Working Group... [which] links over 1000 practitioners 
who are working on the issues of child sexual exploitation (CSE) and 
trafficking in the UK.Ó13 Considering there are so many paid 
professionals working on trafficking and the sexual exploitation of 
children, we should be asking very serious questions about how and 
why these grooming gangs have been allowed to operate with 
impunity for 10 to 25 years. That same page from the NSPCC website 

11Andrew Norfolk, ÒPolice Files Reveal Vast Child Protection ScandalÓ, The 
Times, 24 Sep 2012 http://www:thetimes:co:uk/tto/news/uk/crime/article3547661:e 
ce. 
12Andrew Norfolk, ÒPolice Files Reveal Vast Child Protection ScandalÓ, The 
Times, 24 Sep 2012 http://www:thetimes:co:uk/tto/news/uk/crime/article3547661:e 
ce. 
13NSPCC ÒResearch on child sexual exploitationÓ, Jul 2013, http: 
//www:nspcc:org:uk/Inform/resourcesforprofessionals/sexualabuse/sexual_explo 
itation_research_wda85130:html. 

17 



1. 
INTRODUCTION 
lists the research available in this field, and it is a pitifully small list of 
documents, considering the decades of evidence of the gangsÕ 
existence, the thousands of victims, and the surge in historical 
prosecutions since 2010.14 

The book you are reading is an attempt to fill in the gaps left 
by researchers in accounting for this phenomenon. We will expose 
the scale of the problem, how some government agencies have 
done almost nothing to expose the massive criminality and 
exploitation, how Islamic theology and history can explain the rise 
of this phenomenon, and how political activists have obfuscated 
the problem through the misuse of the narrative of Òracism.Ó Acts 
of omission and acts of concealment occurred to prevent the 
public from realising that multiculturalism is a fundamentally 
incoherent doctrine, invented to conceal the serious conflicts 
which have arisen when peoples from vastly different cultures, 
with different values, are forced to live together. Over the past few 
years the victims of the grooming gangs, or their parents, have started 
to publish their own stories.15 We dwell as little as possible on the 
gruesome details of what happened to the victims. Instead we try to 
show the complicity and denial of the agencies and authorities. 

We believe that our analysis will show that there are indeed prima 
facie reasons for considering Islamic doctrine to be at the root of this 
problem, both in Britain and in the Netherlands. We are not making 
any claim that our brief examination of Islamic doctrine and Muslim 
culture is the last word on these matters. We are prepared to be the 
first to look into this subject, something which none of the experts 
have dared consider. Sometimes we will refer to discussions by 
Muslims who are not experts on Islam. Some critics will argue that 

14See section 12. Appendix 2: Grooming Gang Chronology. 
15See Emma Jackson, The End of My World: The Shocking True Story of a Young 
Girl Forced to Become a Sex Slave, Ebury Press, 2010. See also Kris Hollington, Unthinkable:
 The Shocking Scandal of BritainÕs Trafficked Children, Simon & Schuster, 
2013. 


18 



1. 
INTRODUCTION 
the opinion of such people should not count. However, we are 
interested to show how Muslims are interpreting their own religion 
and culture, and we are not necessarily interested in the casuistry of 
some Sheikh. We will also use references to statements by Sultans 
and Sheikhs where appropriate. We will show that there are good 
reasons to believe that the values found in Islamic doctrine pervade 
Muslim communities, in Britain and elsewhere. 

Given the way in which this debate has been framed, we cannot 
help but make much reference to ÒraceÓ and to distinctions such as 
ÒwhiteÓ, ÒblackÓ, ÒAsianÓ, etc. Let us state clearly from the outset: it 
is our opinion that the concept of ÒraceÓ is a concept with no 
biological foundation. And the social significance of this destructive 
concept is maintained principally by the left-wing racism industry. 

It should go without saying, but most Muslims in Britain are not 
involved with the grooming gangs. There may even be Muslim 
communities where there are no grooming gangs operating.16 

16However, there is strong evidence to show that the problem now extends across 
England. Vicky Smith, ÒChild sex slave gangs in EVERY city in Britain: Police 
chiefÕs warning after Oxford grooming horrorÓ, The Mirror, 15 May 2013, http:// 
www:mirror:co:uk/news/uk-news/child-sex-slave-gangs-every-1891898; Justin Pen-
rose & Vicky Smith, ÒPolice probe at least 54 more evil child sex grooming gangsÓ, 
The Daily Mirror, 19 May 2013, http://www:mirror:co:uk/news/uk-news/police-pro 
be-least-54-more-1896991. It is notable in the preceding report that the police forces 
of West and East Midlands did not report any on-going investigations; yet a Muslim
 womenÕs organisation has recently presented claims that there are huge problems
 with ÒAsianÓ grooming gangs in the Midlands and says: Òcommunity leaders, 
schools and families need to stop dismissing the sickening attacks or covering them 
up.Ó Neil Elkes, ÒShocking report claims young Asian girls are being groomed for 
rape in BirminghamÓ, Birmingham Mail, 20 Feb 2014, http://www:birminghammai 
l:co:uk/news/midlands-news/shocking-report-claims-young-asian-6728673. Despite 
London having a population of 7 million, and a very large Muslim community, 
our table of convictions 11. Appendix 1: Grooming Gang Convictions might lead 
one to believe that the grooming gangs are operating mostly in the north of England.
 However it looks as though the police and social services in London might 
have been ignoring a huge problem: a recent report claims that police in London
 were notified of 500 victims in just 6 months, with 10% of the cases be


19 



1. 
INTRODUCTION 
However, the massive over-representation of Muslim men among 
those convicted for these kinds of crime seems to indicate that being 
male and being Muslim are the most significant characteristics when 
it comes to identifying the motivation of these gangs and their 
customers. Where the gangs are operating, it is clear that there are 
significant numbers of Muslims who are either actively protecting the 
gangsÕ activities, or who know what the men in their community are 
doing and are silent about it.17 Every decade, the Muslim population 
of Britain almost doubles in size, so there is every reason to believe 
that without some massive changes in our society, the activities of 
these gangs will grow and grow.18 We hope that the information 
contained in this report will help inform the public and professionals 

ing described as Òvery seriousÓ. Justin Davenport, ÒDetectives investigating 50 
Ôvery seriousÕ child grooming sex cases in LondonÓ, London Evening Standard, 3 
Feb 2014, http://www:standard:co:uk/news/crime/detectives-investigating-50-very-s 
erious-child-grooming-sex-cases-in-london-9103637:html. 
17At the conclusion of a trial in the north-east of England in 2014, the 
judge stated that the behaviour of the gang revealed a Òprofoundly worrying
 attitude about the offending.Ó Joe Willis, ÒThree Middlesbrough men 
jailed for grooming under-age girls for sexÓ, 13 Feb 2014, The Northern
 Echo, http://www:thenorthernecho:co:uk/news/11009663:Three_Middlesbrough 
_men_jailed_for_grooming_underage_girls_for_sex/. After all the publicity surrounding
 convictions of gangs in Oxford, Rotherham and Rochdale in recent years, 
it seems as though the gangs are not stopping their activities. Moreover, the above 
news report states 

The court heard that the girls [the victims] had been taunted and insulted
 by friends and family of the defendants since coming forward, 
including being bombarded by obscene messages, called sluts and accused
 of being racist. 

Which shows that the Muslim community continues to see the non-Muslim victims as 
the problem, not the Muslim perpetrators. This is a distinctive feature of the grooming 
gang phenomenon throughout its history. 
18Some 30 miles north of Middlesbrough, police have arrested another 30 men for 
grooming activities. ÒNorthumbria Police want to speak to 80 female victims 
or witnesses to sexual exploitation in NewcastleÓ, 7 Feb 2014, http://www:chron 
iclelive:co:uk/news/north-east-news/northumbria-police-want-speak-80-6684173. It 
is very likely that the majority of those arrested are Muslim. 

20 



1. 
INTRODUCTION 
about the true scope of this problem. 


21 



2. The Grooming Gang Phenomenon 
One [schoolgirl] was still so frightened of her 
attacker that she initially refused to give evidence 
for fear he would hurt her again. She had been 
raped and prostituted at 11 by a man who bought 
her little gifts and showed her the first affection she 
had known. 

Ð Daily 
Express, 2013 
One of the defining features of this crime is the ethnic/cultural 
homogeneity of the gang members, and the refusal of other 
members of their community to speak out about them or to 
condemn their behaviour. The gangs are often made up of brothers 
and members of their extended family, who take part in the grooming 
and/or rape of the schoolgirls.1 In both Britain and the Netherlands, 
the gangs appear to be overwhelmingly men who are Muslim. 
Through the doctrine of multiculturalism, enforced via political 
correctness, the gangs in Britain were basically operating with 
impunity between 1988 and 2009.2 

Typically the gangs target young girls, aged between 11 and 

1A glance down the list of convictions, comparing the surname and the towns in 

11. Appendix 1: Grooming Gang Convictions reveals that many of those convicted in 
a particular town are almost certainly members of the same family. We are informed 
that this kind of phenomenon does not occur in other cases where adults are grooming 
children for sex. In those cases, the adults are either unrelated or are working alone 
(for fear of exposure or criticism from their friends or relatives). The grooming gang 
phenomenon thus shows distinctive new characteristics. 
2See the dearth of convictions before 2009 12. Appendix 2: Grooming Gang Chronology. 
22 



2. 
THE 
GROOMING 
GANG 
PHENOMENON 
16. 
The gangs want virgins and girls who are free of sexual 
diseases. Most of the men buying sex with the girls have 
Muslim wives and they donÕt want to risk infection. The 
younger you look, the more saleable you are.3 

The schoolgirls they target are overwhelmingly non-Muslim, while 
the gangs are overwhelmingly Muslim. The girls are often lured 
into the clutches of the gang using a young Muslim man who 
befriends/seduces the girl. None of this is accidental; here we are 
not talking about cross-cultural romantic relationships. What is 
so unusual about this disparity in ethnicity, is that mostly 
Muslims in Britain have little or no interaction with the 
indigenous population. 

The grooming and abuse was said to be systematic, 
tactical and repetitive. The defendants had family or 
friendship links. Younger boys were the girlsÕ initial 
point of contact... 4 

The schoolgirl will be given money and presents, flattered by 
compliments and by being taken into a world of adults. She will 
be introduced to drugs and alcohol. And once she is manipulated 
into considering the initial, alluring youth as her ÒboyfriendÓ, she 
will be persuaded/coerced into having sex with his 
relatives/friends. From there it is a downward spiral of rape and 
prostitution, often with the schoolgirl suffering severe mental and 
physical pain, even torture.5 If the girl tries to escape, the gang will 

3Julie Bindel, ÒGirls, Gangs and Grooming: The TruthÓ, Standpoint Magazine, 
Dec 2010 http://www:standpointmag:co:uk/node/3576/full. 
4Andrew Norfolk, ÒPolice Files Reveal Vast Child Protection ScandalÓ, The Times, 
24 Sep 2012 http://www:thetimes:co:uk/tto/news/uk/crime/article3547661:ece. 
5See Julie Bindel, ÒMothers of PreventionÓ, The Sunday Times, 2007 http://www:t 
hesundaytimes:co:uk/sto/news/uk_news/article72310:ece; Andrew Norfolk, ÒPolice 
Files Reveal Vast Child Protection ScandalÓ, The Times, 24 Sep 2012 http://www:t 
hetimes:co:uk/tto/news/uk/crime/article3547661:ece. 


23 



2. 
THE 
GROOMING 
GANG 
PHENOMENON 
punish her with various forms of physical and mental abuse, threats 
and intimidation, and even brutal violence. ÒThe pimps even use 
pregnancy as a form of punishment... girls who were made pregnant 
by customers and then forced to have backstreet abortions.Ó6 The 
gangs are clearly not just doing this for sexual pleasure. They are 
criminal gangs, making money from the schoolgirls they pimp out. If 
a schoolgirl gets out of their clutches, they stand to lose large amounts 
of money, so they go to extreme lengths to ensure the schoolgirls are 
compliant and available. The victims keep acceding to the gangÕs 
demands, because they are threatened with their home being bombed, 
or their mother being gang-raped.7 

The Muslim grooming gangs are systematic and well-organised in 
their behaviour, and the collusion of the community is extensive: 
ÒTaxi drivers, shop owners and security guards who work in the 
shopping arcades where the girls are recruited are also involved.Ó8 
The gang members exploit the opportunities in our society where 
schoolgirls are least protected, such as girls who are living in 
childrenÕs homes, or who are in some form of local authority care 
(often in towns some distance from their biological family).9 Some of 

6CROP (Coalition for the Removal of Pimping) spokesman quoted in Julie Bindel, 
ÒMothers of PreventionÓ, The Sunday Times, 2007 http://www:thesundaytimes:co:u 
k/sto/news/uk_news/article72310:ece 
7http://www:youtube:com/watch?v=RFIfcTqBsZc&t=184. 
8Julie Bindel, ÒMothers of PreventionÓ, The Sunday Times, 2007 http: 
//www:thesundaytimes:co:uk/sto/news/uk_news/article72310:ece. See also ÒTaxi 
driver in Rochdale sex grooming gang case Ôplied girl with vodkaÕ court toldÓ, 
Manchester Evening News, 20 Mar 2012, http://www:manchestereveningnews:co:u 
k/news/greater-manchester-news/taxi-driver-in-rochdale-sex-grooming-684881; 
James Tozer, ÒPolice ÔhidÕ abuse of 60 girls by Asian takeaway workers
 linked to murder of 14-year-oldÓ, The Daily Mail, 7 Apr 2011, 

http://www:dailymail:co:uk/news/article-1374443/Police-hid-abuse-60-girls-Asi 
an-takeaway-workers-linked-Charlene-Downes-murder:html. 
9In September 2013, the government produced a report which criticised social services 
departments in councils 

for the ÒindefensibleÓ practice of ÒdecantingÓ problem children to far-
flung homes, away from friends and family, and routinely located in 

24 



2. 
THE 
GROOMING 
GANG 
PHENOMENON 
the politicians whose constituencies were among the first places for 
this phenomenon to emerge, claimed the perpetrators were Òlike any 
other young men, theyÕre fizzing and popping with testosteroneÓ (Jack 
Straw),10 or that they didnÕt want an arranged marriage (Ann 
Cryer).11 However, some Muslims (who spoke on the condition of 
anonymity) painted a very different picture. 

The men explain that some of the grooming was initiated 
on the instructions of older relatives. Other young men 
were seeking kudos. Some clients were paying customers 
-perhaps £10 for sex with a 14-year-old white girl. 
Others were being repaid a favour.12 

It is hard to know if it was wishful thinking, naivety or political 
correctness that led politicians to make out that this was more like 
Romeo and Juliet than the white slave trade. If one calculates the 
average age of those convicted of grooming offences, their average 
age is 29 years, old enough to have daughters the same age as the 

some of the countryÕs worst crime hot spots.... the majority of childrenÕs
 homes are situated in neighbourhoods blighted by crime. Three 
out of 10 are located in the worst crime hot spots in the country. It 
also reveals the locations of the 1,718 childrenÕs homes in England, 
showing how they are heavily concentrated in just two areas: the 
North West and the West Midlands, both of which have been at the 
centre of grooming scandals. John Bingham, ÒGove: ÔAbsurdÕ secrecy
 left care children at mercy of paedophilesÓ, The Telegraph, 
12 Sep 2013, http://www:telegraph:co:uk/news/politics/10305488/Go 
ve-Absurd-secrecy-left-care-children-at-mercy-of-paedophiles:html. 

The dearth of prosecutions in the West Midlands demands investigation. 
10David Batty, ÒWhite girls seen as Ôeasy meatÕ by Pakistani rapists, says Jack 
StrawÓ, The Guardian, 8 Jan 2011, http://www:theguardian:com/world/2011/jan/08/ 
jack-straw-white-girls-easy-meat. 
11Channel4 ÒAsian Rape AllegationsÓ, Channel 4 News, 27 Aug 2003, (from 
archive.org) http://web:archive:org/web/20100620042427/http://www:channel4:com 
/news/articles/society/law_order/Asian+rape+allegations/256893. 
12Andrew Norfolk, ÒÔSome of these men have children the same ageÕÓ, The Times, 
5 Jan 2011. Other reports have claimed that the pimps can make hundreds of pounds 
a day for a girl. 


25 



2. 
THE 
GROOMING 
GANG 
PHENOMENON 
schoolgirls they have groomed.13 Looking at the characteristics of 
those convicted, it is clear the vast majority of these Muslim men 
were already married or in relationships; they were far from being 
adolescents who were unsure of what was right and what was wrong. 

If the girls are not already estranged from their parents when the 
gang first ensnare them, the gang will use techniques to drive a wedge 
between the girl and her parents, e.g. by exploiting teenage rebellion 
and encouraging the girl to believe her family are trying to 
control/constrain her. If the parents find out what is going on and try 
to intervene, the gang can alienate the schoolgirl from her parents by 
accusing the parents of being racists: ÒThe pimps are adept at trading 
on teenage rebellion and use similar methods... of convincing the girls 
all white people are racist.Ó14 If none of this works, and the parentsÕ 
intervention looks like it will threaten the gangÕs activities, then the 
parents too may be subject to blackmail, intimidation or violence: 
Òthe family was even forced to leave their home leading to her 
daughter receiving a phone call in which she was threatened with 
having her face cut off, and members of her family having their throat 
slit and being decapitated.Ó15 Often the gangs threaten to set fire to the 
familyÕs home.16 

Some of the people we have spoken to have lost relatives to the 
gangs, and these family members have told us, that to avoid 
relatives of the schoolgirl from being ensnared, some families 
have had to cut off all contact between the groomed schoolgirl 

13 See 11. Appendix 1: Grooming Gang Convictions. 
14Julie Bindel, ÒMothers of PreventionÓ, The Sunday Times, 2007 http://www:thesu 
ndaytimes:co:uk/sto/news/uk_news/article72310:ece 

15Arthur Martin, ÒFaces of True Evil: Judge Jails Depraved Sex Gang for 95 Years 
After they Committed Grotesque Abuse on Girls as Young as 11Ó, The Daily Mail, 
27 Jun 2013 http://www:dailymail:co:uk/news/article-2349784/Sadistic-paedophile-s 
ex-gang-brothers-given-lengthy-prison-sentences-exploiting-underage-girls:html. 
16We have no doubt that the gangs are threatening to set the house ablaze with the 
family inside. Andrew Norfolk, ÒÔSome of these men have children the same ageÕÓ, 
The Times, 5 Jan 2011. 

26 



2. 
THE 
GROOMING 
GANG 
PHENOMENON 
and the extended family, to prevent the gangsÕ tentacles reaching 
further into their family. This experience of secondary ensnaring is 
recognised by others: 

Jean was soon to find out just how indoctrinated her 
daughter had become when she discovered SallyÕs 
photographs and profile were posted on a website. She 
was posing with the flag of Pakistan. There were 97 
names of Asian men posted on it who had made contact 
with her. She was asking for Asian men to Òdate.Ó She 
said she hated white people. There were other girlsÕ 
photographs on the site, one of whom Sally had recruited, 
as were other girls who were being pimped.17 

In these situations families feel guilt because they failed to prevent 
their daughter being ensnared. But those feelings of guilt are 
increased by them having to leave their daughter in the clutches of the 
gang in order to protect female siblings and cousins of their daughter. 
If they do not do this, their problems will be magnified, as the gangs 
will use one groomed girl to ensnare other girls.18 

A girl who is considered to be the property of one of the gangs 
can face extraordinary violence if she should try to leave or to tell the 
police what is being done to her. Sara Swann, who has worked 
extensively with the victims, has told of a girl who had her tongue 
nailed to the table when she told a grooming gang that she would go 
to the police.19 Another girl was threatened with having her face 
blown off with a gun, whilst another girl was pinned down and a 

17Julie Bindel, ÒMothers of PreventionÓ, The Sunday Times, 2007 http://www:thesu 
ndaytimes:co:uk/sto/news/uk_news/article72310:ece. 
18ÒWoman lured girls to be raped by three menÓ, BBC News, 2 Aug 2011 http: 
//www:bbc:co:uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-14381083. 
19Kathryn Knight, ÒIs political correctness stopping police ending the misery of 
the teenage sex slaves?Ó, Daily Mail, 27 Mar 2008, http://www:dailymail:co:uk/fema 
il/article-546809/Is-political-correctness-stopping-police-ending-misery-teenage-s 
ex-slaves:html. See also http://www:youtube:com/watch?v=RFIfcTqBsZc&t=1806. 


27 



2. 
THE 
GROOMING 
GANG 
PHENOMENON 
kettle of boiling water held over her face.20 

If, by some extraordinary circumstance, a schoolgirl manages to 
get away from the gang before she has outlived her usefulness to 
them, if she manages to get the police and the court system to initiate 
a prosecution, the intimidation of the gang will intensify as they face 
the prospect of conviction and exposure. 

The court heard how a 16-year-old girl was bombarded 
with 350 text messages and phone calls and given money 
in an attempt to stop her giving evidence. She was 
coerced into travelling to Bradford where she was told to 
write a letter to say she had made up allegations that she 
had been abducted and sexually abused when she was 
12...21 

Because these gangs are well-organised and have systematically 
manipulated the behaviour and mind of their schoolgirl victims, 
and since they are prepared to use violence and intimidation to 
interfere with the legal process, the chances of getting a conviction 
are very slim. But that should never have been a reason for the 
authorities to choose to ignore the problem. These threats and 
violence should make it clear that the those who have been convicted 
are almost certainly the tip of the iceberg. 

A recent parliamentary report (Home Affairs Select Committee, 
June 2013) into these criminal gangs said: 

There is no guidance specific to localised grooming or 
child sexual exploitation cases. Many of the issues which 
are hallmarks of localised groomingÑvictims returning 
to their attackers, the length of time it takes victims to 
report the crime, previous interaction with the police and 

20http://www:youtube:com/watch?v=RFIfcTqBsZc&t=1845. 
21Lancashire Telegraph ÒGrooming victim got 350 phone threats from Brierfield 
menÓ, 19 Jul 2013, http://www:lancashiretelegraph:co:uk/news/10560927:Groomin 
g_victim_got_350_phone_threats_from_Brierfield_men/ 


28 



2. 
THE 
GROOMING 
GANG 
PHENOMENON 
social services, the use of drugs and alcohol by 
perpetrators to strip their victims of their inhibitions, 
which lead to inconsistent recollections of events Ñ are 
what led the Crown Prosecution Service to deem 
witnesses unreliable in the Rochdale case when it was 
first presented for prosecution. As such, it may be 
necessary for the Crown Court Bench Book to include 
directions relating to these sorts of cases to ensure that 
juries are made aware the witnesses ÒunreliabilityÓ is 
often behaviour which may be, directly or indirectly, a 
result of their being groomed and sexually exploited.22 

It is time the authorities finally recognised the extent and seriousness 
of this problem, and if necessary made changes to judicial procedure 
or even changes to the criminal law. The scandal is that it should have 
taken 25 years to even reach the stage we are at. 

That Parliamentary report on grooming gangs recognised that 
ÒAsiansÓ are hugely over-represented in these gangs: 

with this specific model of offending, there is a 
widespread perception that the majority of 
perpetrators are of Asian, British Asian or Muslim 
origin. This would certainly seem to be the case from 
the major grooming prosecutions which have gone to 
court so far... 23 (emphasis added) 

It appears Parliament thinks that if there were more information about 
the number of those perpetrating this crime, then perhaps ÒAsiansÓ 
would not be so over-represented in the statistics. The Parliamentary 
investigation began at the end of 2012 and finished in June 2013, and 

22Home Affairs Select Committee report ÒChild Sexual Exploitation and the Response
 to Localised GroomingÓ 10 Jun 2013 http://www:publications:parliament:u 
k/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmhaff/68/68i:pdf p.43. 
23Home Affairs Select Committee report ÒChild Sexual Exploitation and the Response
 to Localised GroomingÓ, 10 Jun 2013 http://www:publications:parliament:u 
k/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmhaff/68/68i:pdf, p.52. 

29 



2. 
THE 
GROOMING 
GANG 
PHENOMENON 
throughout 2013 more convictions have taken place, with no sign that 
the phenomenon is any different than that accepted by Parliament. 
Indeed, what is notable about the names of those convicted is not that 
they are just ÒAsianÓ names, but most of those convicted have Islamic 
names (the name ÒMohammedÓ is, by a very long way, the single 
most common name among the men convicted of these types of 
crime; see 11. Appendix 1: Grooming Gang Convictions). 

2.1 Defining the Problem 
When the Child Exploitation and Online Protection agency (CEOP) 
finally came to publicly offer expert guidance on the subject of the 
grooming gangs, they defined the problem of Òlocalised groomingÓ 
thus: 

a form of sexual exploitation, previously referred to as 
Òon street groomingÓ in the media, where children have 
been groomed and sexually exploited by an offender, 
having initially met in a location outside their home, 
usually in a public place (such as a park, cinema, on the 
street or at a friendÕs house). Offenders often act in 
concert, establishing a relationship with a child or 
children before sexually exploiting them. Some victims 
of Òstreet groomingÓ may believe that the offender is in 
fact an older ÒboyfriendÓ, introducing peers to the 
offender group who may also be sexually exploited.24 

This is the barest possible definition of the problem, and is only useful 
to distinguish between this type of grooming and online grooming of 
children via websites, or grooming where the perpetrator is a family 
member (or known to the child on the basis of a fiduciary relationship 

e.g. a teacher, football coach, social worker etc.) There are many 
24CEOP, Out 
of 
Mind, 
Out 
of 
Sight 
-Breaking 
Down 
the 
Barriers 
to 
Understanding 
Child 
Sexual 
Exploitation, Jun 2011, http://ceop:police:uk/Publications/, p.5 

30 



2. 
THE 
GROOMING 
GANG 
PHENOMENON 
more aspects to the problem, which also make Òlocalised groomingÓ a 
new and distinctive phenomenon. 

The specific phenomenon of Òlocalised groomingÓ requires the 
offender to inhabit a culture or milieu where it is acceptable to broach 
to friends, colleagues and relatives the possibility of raping under-age 
girls. 

The groomers were men in their early twenties. Their 

customers were older relatives, friends or contacts. They 

travelled to the girlsÕ home town to have sex with them or 

had their victims delivered by car to Pakistani 

communities in northern England and the Midlands.25 

A man who canÕt take part in the sexual abuse of children for fear 
of disapproval or fear of being reported to the police, must seek 
like-minded people anonymously, typically online. In Britain, this 
kind of crime mostly involves white men, because 90% of the men 
in Britain are white: race or ethnicity tells us nothing about this 
crime or who is more likely to be involved. With the grooming 
gangs, the prevalence of one ethnicity is so out of proportion with 
their numbers in Britain, that ethnicity becomes highly 
significant. This reality behind ÒlocalisedÓ grooming means that 
cultural factors are all important (only a racist would think that 
race is a determining factor). Far from being swept under the 
carpet, such cultural factors need to be addressed first and 
foremost when dealing with this crime. The fact that an Islamic 
background dominates the profiles of Òlocalised groomersÓ, whilst 
online groomers are predominantly white males, indicates that 
Muslim culture finds this crime to be far more acceptable than do 
other ethnicities in Britain. 

25Andrew Norfolk, Andrew Norfolk, ÒÔSome of these men have children the same 
age; they are bad applesÕ; Sexual grooming; The grooming of white girls by gangs 
of Pakistani heritage is an issue that few in the community will addressÓ, The 
Times, 5 Jan 2011. 

31 



2. 
THE 
GROOMING 
GANG 
PHENOMENON 
No mention is made in the CEOP definition of the inverse 
relationship between the ethnicity of the perpetrator and that of the 
victim. No mention is made of the way in which the Muslim 
community closes ranks, supporting the perpetrators rather than the 
victims. No mention is made of the pimping of the victims by the 
gang. No mention is made of the violence and threats made against 
the child and/or her family. Whilst the report is entitled Out of Mind, 
Out of Sight, this sexual exploitation was out in the open for all to see; 
it was just that fear of being accused of ÒracismÓ prevented people 
from acting on what they could see going on. Disentangling the 
concepts of ÒraceÓ and ÒreligionÓ is central to dealing with this 
problem. Our report will address specific components of Islam and 
Muslim culture which explain why it is that these crimes should have 
Muslim men so overwhelmingly represented amongst the 
perpetrators. 

Greater Manchester Police (GMP) claim that part of the difficulty 
in identifying Òlocalised groomingÓ is because: 

it is not a crime per se. It is made up of a number of other 

offences. The challenge is joining together those links 

and identifying it as child sexual exploitation.26 

It is for this reason that the definition of the problem should not just 
be defined in the most general way, but should include as many 
pertinent and specific features as possible, in order to overcome the 
problem in identifying when it is going on. Thus, when reporting to 
the Home Affairs Select Committee on Òlocalised groomingÓ, GMP 
estimated that in the previous 2 years alone, they had more than 30 
prosecutions which fit the category of CSE, but Òthey were unable to 
record how many of the number of rape and other sexual offences 

26Home Affairs Select Committee report ÒChild Sexual Exploitation and the Response
 to Localised GroomingÓ 10 Jun 2013 http://www:publications:parliament:u 
k/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmhaff/68/68i:pdf p.33. 

32 



2. 
THE 
GROOMING 
GANG 
PHENOMENON 
cases prosecuted were related to child sexual exploitation.Ó27 That is, 
many convictions for other sex and drug-related crimes have not been 
identified conclusively as part of the activities of a grooming gang, 
but if more information was acquired, the police think that many of 
these ÒisolatedÓ incidents would actually be part of a pattern of 
grooming activity. That is, sustained surveillance and the systematic 
collation of information is important not just for successful 
convictions, but also in establishing that these crimes are actually 
being committed in the first place. However, the dependence of the 
police on information-gathering and deduction would be of far less 
importance, if the Muslim community had been prepared to inform on 
their brethren to the police, and they had been willing to testify in 
court about what they knew was going on. Moreover, if from 1995 
schoolgirls in towns with significant Muslim populations had been 
forewarned about what the grooming gangs were doing and how they 
operate, the victims themselves might have been able to alert the 
police to grooming activities, long before the victims had been 
seduced and entrapped. In the absence of specific laws, the absence of 
help from Muslim communities, and absence of knowledge on the 
part of the schoolgirls which would enable them to realise they were 
being groomed, the police must rely on expensive and complicated 
information-gathering and analysis. 

Appended to our document is a list of convictions (since 1997)28 
which meet the criteria used by Andrew Norfolk in his 2011 study, 
which clearly identified the Òpattern of exploitation.Ó29 Whilst 119 

27Home Affairs Select Committee report ÒChild Sexual Exploitation and the Response
 to Localised GroomingÓ, 10 Jun 2013, http://www:publications:parliament:u 
k/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmhaff/68/68i:pdf p.33. 
2811. Appendix 1: Grooming Gang Convictions. 
29Andrew Norfolk, ÒThe 17 cases identified by The Times which showed a pattern 
of exploitationÓ, The Times, 5 Jan 2011, http://www:thetimes:co:uk/tto/news/uk/crim 
e/article2863078:ece. This article also appears in some on-line news databases under 
the title ÒOrganised gangs, vulnerable girls: a pattern of exploitation unfolds; Sexual 
grooming; The Times identified 17 cases in which men groomed girls they met on the 
street. Most of the offenders were of Pakistani origin and most of the victims were 

33 



2. 
THE 
GROOMING 
GANG 
PHENOMENON 
individuals are listed in our table (around 90% having Muslim 
names), we must conclude they are just the tip of the iceberg. As the 
comments from Greater Manchester Police make clear, there are other 
convictions for rape and other sexual offences which will not meet the 
strict criteria for inclusion in that table, but which are very likely signs 
of the activities of grooming gangs. Thus, there was a conviction in 
Manchester which we exclude from our list because there was only 
one man involved in the abduction and one schoolgirl, but there were 
many other men involved in the rape/pimping of that schoolgirl, but 
from the many men involved in that schoolgirlÕs ordeal, only that one 
perpetrator was prosecuted (the other perpetrators were never caught, 
because the convicted man refused to identify them).30 

2.2 Tip of the Iceberg 
Even when a case can be considered as being within the parameters of 
our class of convictions for Òlocalised groomingÓ, there are many 
other men who are caught up in these prosecutions, but who are not 
found guilty. Thus, in his retrospective survey of convictions, Andrew 
Norfolk provides some details about court cases which show that 
those convicted are but a small section of other men who are 
implicated along with the convicts.31 

white.Ó 
30ÒPervert sentenced after raping 12-year-oldÓ, Manchester Evening News, 13 
Sep 2007 http://www:manchestereveningnews:co:uk/news/local-news/pervert-sente 
nced-after-raping-12-year-old-1003364. 
31Andrew Norfolk, ÒRevealed: conspiracy of silence on UK sex gangsÓ, The Times, 
5 Jan 2011 http://www:thetimes:co:uk/tto/news/uk/crime/article2863058:ece. 


34 



2. 
THE 
GROOMING 
GANG 
PHENOMENON 
year arrested charged convicted 
1997 23 5 3 
2005 10 2 
2007 20 3 2 
2009 7 4 
2010 8 5 

We can conclude, that for every man convicted there are 
probably between 2 to 10 other men who were directly implicated, 
but for whom there was insufficient evidence to secure a 
conviction. If this is true, it means that with this crime there are 
very many perpetrators getting away with it. It is not just that there 
are convictions for sexual crimes (or drug-crimes) which may also be 
connected to a grooming gang: even when a grooming gang is 
identified and a case can be built up against some of the 
gang-members, many of those arrested are never charged, many of 
those charged are never even convicted, many more escape being 
arrested or charged. There is a strong incentive for the gang to use 
violence or intimidation to stop their victims from testifying or from 
even identifying other gang members. Even members of the Muslim 
community who played no part in a gangsÕ activities have gone out of 
their way to protect the gang members.32 

This difficulty in securing convictions serves as a negative 

32A trial in Burnley, Lancashire concluded in April 2013, with a Muslim man named 
Mohammed Imran Amjad being jailed for the sexual abuse of a child. However, 
months later a Muslim woman receptionist who worked for that council was Òjailed 
for attempting to derailÓ the trial of him and other men for grooming. Five other 
men in that trial were cleared of rape, sexual assault and child abduction at Burnley 
Crown Court in April 2013: Òshe accessed a confidential database 60 times over 15 
days to find details of the witness and her family.Ó ÒLancashire Council receptionist
 jailed after attempting to derail grooming trialÓ, BBC News, 30 August 2013, 
http://www:bbc:co:uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-23907268. This demonstrates the 
way in which the Muslim community helps not only to cover up this crime during the 
months and years in which the schoolgirl is being raped, but they also actively work 
to destroy the case once a prosecution is initiated. 

35 



2. 
THE 
GROOMING 
GANG 
PHENOMENON 
feedback-loop to police and social services, who think it is not 
worth identifying that a crime is taking place, when the chances 
of stopping it or achieving justice are so slight (and the likelihood 
of being accused of ÒracismÓ is so high). Part of the problem in 
securing convictions is that the accused get away with claiming that 
the schoolgirls were consenting, rather than groomed and exploited. 
This means that quite often a case collapses with none of the accused 
being found guilty. In 2010, police in Rotherham managed a 
successful prosecution of a gang, but two subsequent cases there 
failed.33 In a separate part of the country, another large-scale 
prosecution failed in July 2013.34 In between, another trial at Stafford 
Crown Court collapsed in September 2011. Throughout all these 
failed prosecutions, police risk being accused of Òracism.Ó When the 
risk of a prosecution failing because of witness/victim intimidation 
from criminals, what the police need is public support, not false 
accusations of ÒracismÓ. 

2.3 Invisible Victims 
One of the popular misconceptions is that the victims are all from 
childrenÕs homes or are under the guardianship of social services. 
However, it seems that the majority of the victims are not in state 
control, with only 14% being Òin care.Ó35 In many discussions of this 
grooming phenomenon, people have been all too happy to blame the 
victim for her abuse and to blame the victim for coming from a 

33Andrew Norfolk, ÒPolice Files Reveal Vast Child Protection ScandalÓ, The 
Times, 24 Sep 2012 http://www:thetimes:co:uk/tto/news/uk/crime/article3547661:ece 
34ÒRibbon trial: Jury discharged -no verdict on three menÓ, Bucks Free Press, 24 
Jul 2013 http://www:bucksfreepress:co:uk/news/10568337:Ribbon_trial__Jury_disch 
arged___no_verdict_on_three_men/ 
35Julie Bindel, ÒMothers of PreventionÓ, The Sunday Times, 2007 http://www:thesu 
ndaytimes:co:uk/sto/news/uk_news/article72310:ece Whilst only 14% of the victims 
are living in childrenÕs homes, this still shows that gangs are more successful at luring 
such schoolgirls, as not 14% of all children are in childrenÕs homes. 

36 



2. 
THE 
GROOMING 
GANG 
PHENOMENON 
dysfunctional family. But in such cases, the child should not be 
blamed for coming from a dysfunctional family. Moreover, in some 
cases, the child has been put into care by her family, because she was 
already in the clutches of the grooming gangs. With no assistance 
from the police or social workers, parents sometimes would try and 
put their children Òin careÓ with the council, in a vain hope that in this 
way their daughters would be protected and beyond the reach of the 

36

gangs.

Even if the girls were mostly under the guardianship of the state, 
that should have been all the more reason for the social workers to 
intervene. Such children have often been not only taken away from 
their biological family, but are often relocated to towns a long way 
from any relatives. These towns often have a high Muslim population. 
It could hardly have been designed to be more dangerous for these 
schoolgirls: predatory men, social workers who are politically correct, 
girls who maybe be headstrong, wayward or abused, far away from 
anyone with real concern for the girlsÕ well-being. It is a recipe for 
disaster. 

Wherever there is the opportunity for the gangs to intervene 
beyond the watchful eye of parents/carers, they will use that 
opportunity. There is much evidence that the gangs station themselves 
outside schools and takeaways, and inside shopping malls. They will 
repeatedly importune schoolgirls walking between home and school, 
not taking ÒNoÓ for an answer. Many parents will have no idea that 
their daughter is being subjected to the wiles and lure of the gangs. 
And if the politically-correct brainwashing has been successful, a 
schoolgirl may even consider herself ÒracistÓ for refusing the 
advances of these Muslim men. 

36ÒI wanted the three of them [my daughters] to be put into child protection but 
they wouldnÕt do it. I must have called in to social services eight or nine times 
and phoned them lots of times.Ó Nigel Bunyan, ÒRochdale Grooming Trial: 
Police Knew about Sex Abuse in 2002 but Failed to ActÓ, The Telegraph, 
9 May 2012 http://www:telegraph:co:uk/news/uknews/crime/9254982/Rochdale-gro 
oming-trial-police-knew-about-sex-abuse-in-2002-but-failed-to-act:html. 

37 



2. 
THE 
GROOMING 
GANG 
PHENOMENON 
By the time you are reading this, it might be hard to grasp how 
deep and how enduring was the silence around these grooming gangs 
and their victims. But in 2012 Andrew Norfolk, a principal 
journalist for The 
Times, stated Òwhen we first started to 
investigate this 2 years ago, no-one [from the child-care 
professions] would speak to us.Ó37 A journalist of long-standing, 
with an impeccable record, working for one of the most respected 
newspapers in the world, could not get professionals in 21st century 
Britain to speak to him about a phenomenon that is probably the worst 
child-care scandal in the country in 40 years. It is a situation which 
defies belief. These were public servants, who would not talk about 
child-rape and prostitution, which they knew had been going on for 
years. They were not the rapists. They were not being paid by the 
criminals. But political-correctness and multiculturalism had left 
them too scared to speak about these horrific crimes. No wonder these 
grooming gangs felt untouchable. The conflicts and confusions 
caused by multiculturalism left the staff unsure of their moral and 
professional values; the tyranny of political correctness meant they 
did not dare articulate or even acknowledge what they were seeing 
and hearing. 

When he testified before parliament, Andrew Norfolk said that 
after he published his analysis of the pattern of exploitation in January 
2011, showing that Muslim men were massively over-represented as 
the perpetrators, suddenly he: 

was contacted by so many people who had refused to 

speak to me before. When you have a Director of 

ChildrenÕs Services ringing and saying, ÒMy staff are 

jumping for joy in the office today because finally 

somebody has said what we have not felt able to say,Ó 

and when you have very senior police officers saying 

37Andrew Norfolk, ÒReality of Sexual Grooming Gangs in the UK -interview of 
Andrew Norfolk and Sikh 
Awareness 
SocietyÓ, http://www:youtube:com/watch?fea 
ture=player_detailpage&v=WbUIfvYbjRc&t=1180. 

38 



2. 
THE 
GROOMING 
GANG 
PHENOMENON 
exactly the same.38 (emphasis added) 

Those who are responsible for instilling such fear into public officials 
should be held accountable. 

In a later analysis, Andrew Norfolk reported on the hundreds 
of unpublished reports on Muslim grooming gangs in Rotherham 
by police and social services. For example, in 2002 a Home Office 
funded research project showed that 56 schoolgirls had sexual links to 
3 Pakistani brothers. This had all the hallmarks of Òlocalised 
grooming.Ó Police and social services discussed this case for years 
without ever identifying that the men were Muslims; they never 
acknowledged publicly what was going on and, according to Andrew 
Norfolk, they never did anything to stop it.39 They were ÒterrorisedÓ 
by political correctness and multiculturalism. 

The refusal of academics, social services, police and media to 
attend to this subject from 1988 to 2011 ensured that the victims 
remained invisible, and ensured that the gangs could extend their 
reach across the entire country. We will show, that by 1996, it was not 
only in South Yorkshire but also in West Yorkshire where police, 
social services and child-care professionals knew what were the 
characteristics of this crime. We cannot calculate the harm done by 
refusing to publicly identify this problem by the mid 1990s. 

2.4 National Dimensions 
Whilst police forces in the North-West of England are considered the 
most expert in dealing with this type of criminal activity, the problem 
is now nationwide. The grooming problem appears to have started 

38Home Affairs Select Committee report ÒChild Sexual Exploitation and the Response
 to Localised GroomingÓ, 10 Jun 2013, http://www:publications:parliament:u 
k/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmhaff/68/68i:pdf p.56 
39Andrew Norfolk, ÒReality of Sexual Grooming Gangs in the UK -interview of 
Andrew Norfolk and Sikh 
Awareness 
SocietyÓ, http://www:youtube:com/watch?fea 
ture=player_detailpage&v=WbUIfvYbjRc&t=1230. 

39 



2. 
THE 
GROOMING 
GANG 
PHENOMENON 
with Muslim gangs grooming Sikh girls in Birmingham in the 1980s, 
but by the the start of the 21st century it appears to have extended to 
include all the major towns of Lancashire and Yorkshire. And given 
recent convictions in Oxford, Barking, Ipswich and the north-east of 
England, it looks like the gangs are working in most of the country. 
An absence of gang members being convicted in an area does not 
mean they do not operate in that area: the gangs are known to traffic 
the girls from their home town across the country (to Bristol, 
Manchester, Birmingham, Bradford and Dover) to offer the 
schoolgirls up for sexual services to a network of customers.40 And 
there are areas of the country with large Muslim populations but 
relatively few prosecutions (for example, London and the West 
Midlands). There are indications that this lack of prosecutions is not 
because the gangs are not operating in those areas (it was recently 
announced that police in London had uncovered around 500 victims 
in a mere 6 months). 

Recently, one newspaper took the initiative of asking all the police 
forces in England and Wales whether or not they had current 
investigations into specific grooming gangs.41 Whilst 1 in 3 forces did 
not respond, from those organisations who did respond, it transpired 
that in early 2013 there were at least 54 on-going investigations 
into different grooming gangs in various parts of the country. 
Some of these investigations concerned grooming gangs in Devon, 
Kent and Suffolk, counties far away both geographically and 
demographically from the towns of Lancashire and Yorkshire, the 
type of towns which people might imagine would be the scene of 
these crimes. Often we have heard reports of related events which 
strongly indicate that gangs are operating in an area, even when we 

40Andrew Norfolk, ÒPolice Files Reveal Vast Child Protection ScandalÓ, The 
Times, 24 Sep 2012, http://www:thetimes:co:uk/tto/news/uk/crime/article3547661:e 
ce. 
41Justin Penrose & Vicky Smith, ÒPolice probe at least 54 more evil child sex 
grooming gangsÓ, The Daily Mirror, 19 May 2013 http://www:mirror:co:uk/news 
/uk-news/police-probe-least-54-more-1896991. 

40 



2. 
THE 
GROOMING 
GANG 
PHENOMENON 
have been unable to locate even a failed prosecution of a grooming 
gang in that area.42 

2.5 International Dimensions 
The problem of Muslim grooming gangs is not confined to 
Britain: it also exists in the Netherlands. In the Netherlands, their 
existence has been publicly acknowledged by their national media 
since at least 2001. A report by Radio Netherlands said: 

Another large group (also 5,000) are ÒordinaryÓ Dutch 
schoolgirls, aged 13 or 14 from a Òregular home 
environmentÓ who are lured into prostitution by so-called 
Òlover-boysÓ... handsome-looking [male] adolescents 
who appear to have made it in life. TheyÕre well-dressed, 
drive expensive cars and lavish presents on these young 
and susceptible girls, who will quickly fall in love with 
them. ÒOf course, theyÕll have sex and after a while the 
girl will be forced to have sex with one of his friends, 
which will open the way for prostitution.Ó 43 

It took the British media until 2011 to truly acknowledge what the 
Dutch were discussing from 2001.44 ÒLast year, 242 lover boy crimes 
were investigated by police, half of them involving the forced 

42ÒTeenager groomed to sell drugsÓ, The Bolton News, 10 Mar 2011, http://www:t 
heboltonnews:co:uk/news/8900946:Teenager_groomed_to_sell_drugs/. 
43Carin Tiggeloven, ÒChild Prostitution in the NetherlandsÓ, Radio Netherlands, 
18 Dec 2001 http://web:archive:org/web/20080627112924/http://www:radionetherla 
nds:nl/currentaffairs/region/netherlands/netherlands011218:html. 
44See also Frank Bovenkerk et. al, ÒÔLoverboysÕ of modern pooierschap in 
AmsterdamÓ, Willem Pompe Instituut voor Strafrechtswetenschappen, Utrecht, 
2004 http://www:prostitutie:nl/fileadmin/nl/6:_Studie/6:3_Documenten/6:3g_Mense 
nhandel/pdf/onderzoeksrapport-loverboysinamsterdam:pdf; Linda Terpstra and Anke 
van Dijke en Marion van San Loverboys, een publieke zaak. Tien portretten, Amsterdam,
 SWP, 2004; Linda Terpstra and Anke van Dijke Loverboys: 
Feiten 
en 
cijfers. 
Een 
quick 
scan, Amsterdam, SWP, 2005. 


41 



2. 
THE 
GROOMING 
GANG 
PHENOMENON 
prostitution of girls under 18. Campaigner Anita de Wit says this is a 
fraction Ñ Ôone per centÕ Ñ of the true number.Ó45 This is yet more 
evidence that a decade has been lost in pursuing these criminals, 
because those speaking out about these abusive gangs were accused of 
Òracism.Ó The Dutch were admitting to a huge problem, and working 
out ways to tackle it, a decade before the authorities in Britain would 
even publicly admit the problem existed. 

The story from Holland is almost identical to the problem here. 
Young girls are seduced by a ÒboyfriendÓ, then prostituted far and 
wide (Holland, Belgium, France). The victims were ignored by the 
police: ÒVictims who have the courage to report the crime are often 
not taken seriously and are sent away.Ó46 As in Britain, even if the 
gangs got to court, they get away with it because of a lack of 
evidence, or because the victim withdraws her testimony.47 The 
ÒLoverboysÓ also exhibit shocking levels of cruelty towards the 

45Sue Reid ÒA Feminist Revolution that Cruelly BackfiredÓ, The Daily Mail, 
23 Nov 2012 http://www:dailymail:co:uk/news/article-2237170/Why-Amsterdams-l 
egal-brothels-lesson-Britain-telling-truth-sex-gangs-race:html. 
46Loretta van der Horst,ÒVictims of ÔloverboysÕ not taken seriously by Dutch policeÓ,
 Radio Netherlands Worldwide, 16 Jun 2009, http://www:rnw:nl/english/article/ 
victims-%E2%80%9Cloverboys%E2%80%9D-not-taken-seriously-dutch-police. 


In May 2009, Dutch writer and victim of a loverboy Maria Mosterd 
claimed 74,000 euros in compensation from the Thorbecke school, her 
former high school in Zwolle, in the north west of the Netherlands. Ms 
Mosterd says that the school failed to provide a safe learning environment
 and ignored her frequent absences... she describes how at the age 
of twelve she was captured by a loverboy and the subsequent struggle 
to cut herself loose from him. 

. 
47Ibrahim Wijbenga, ÒLover BoysÓ, Al Jazeera, 15 May 2012, http://www:aljazee 
ra:com/programmes/witness/2012/05/201251115345899123:html. Interestingly, Wijbenga
 says ÒIn the Netherlands, many ÔLover BoysÕ -and some of their victims -are 
of Moroccan origin. It was this connection to the country of my own roots that inspired
 me to gather more information on them and their practices.Ó Other reports we 
have read state that the number of Moroccan victims is less than five in total. 

42 



2. 
THE 
GROOMING 
GANG 
PHENOMENON 
schoolgirls they have ensnared.48 One brutal gang of Muslim brothers 
tattooed their names onto the women they Òowned.Ó The pair Òwere 
found guilty of leading an international human smuggling gang, 
thought to be responsible for forcing more than 100 women into 
prostitution in the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium.Ó49 

It is estimated that in the Netherlands, at least 40% of the 
ÒLoverboysÓ are Moroccan, with most of the others being from the 
Dutch Antilles and the Dominican Republic.50 Because the police are 
hesitant to pursue the criminals, often families end up moving across 
Holland to live in a different city, just to get their child away from the 
gang. 

Muslim grooming gangs are thus operating at a national level in 
two neighbouring countries.51 But until 2011, our media were not 

48ÒIn July 2007, a Moroccan loverboy named Abdessamad was sentenced to 12 years 
in prison. He frequently tortured and raped his victim, a Dutch teen-age girl. One 
of the cruel things he did to this defenseless girl was causing small knife injuries 
and then pouring vinegar and chlorine into the wound. When she became pregnant 
he subjected her to forced abortion. She was not his only victim. Abdessamad was 
not in Holland during the trial, so he was sentenced in absentia. He is probably in 
Morocco now.Ó Emerson Vermaat, ÒCrime and Terrorism: The Role of Moroccan 
Immigrants In Holland, Belgium and SpainÓ, Militant Islam Monitor, 25 Sep 2008, 
http://www:militantislammonitor:org/article/id/3640. 
49ÒConvicted human trafficker vanishesÓ, Dutch News, 16 Sep 2009, http://www:d 
utchnews:nl/news/archives/2009/09/convicted_human_trafficker_van:php. 
50Emerson Vermaat, ÒCrime and Terrorism: The Role of Moroccan Immigrants 
In Holland, Belgium and SpainÓ, Militant Islam Monitor, 25 Sep 2008, http://ww 
w:militantislammonitor:org/article/id/3640. However, another analysis, on an Arabic 
website, says that the majority of the perpetrators are ÒDutch-Moroccan.Ó Ibrahim 
Wijbenga, ÒLover BoysÓ, Al Jazeera, 15 May 2012, http://www:aljazeera:com/progr 
ammes/witness/2012/05/201251115345899123:html. Wijbenga also notes that Turks 
are to be found among the men being prosecuted for these kinds of crimes. Muslims 
(mostly Moroccans and Turks) are thought to be 5% of the population of Holland. 
http://en:wikipedia:org/wiki/Islam_in_the_Netherlands#Demographic_situation. 
51It also appears that the phenomenon may exist in Germany too. Dialika
 Krahe, ÒSchoolgirls Controlled by Loverboys: Math Class in 
the Morning, Turning Tricks at LunchtimeÓ Der Spiegel, 9 Jul 2010, 

http://www:spiegel:de/international/europe/schoolgirls-controlled-by-loverboys 

43 



2. 
THE 
GROOMING 
GANG 
PHENOMENON 
discussing this similarity between Britain and Holland at all. 

In a chilling parallel to the scandal sweeping BritainÕs 
towns and cities, where a multitude of girls have been 
lured into sex-for-sale rings run by gangs, the Dutch 
pimps search out girls at school gates and in cafes, 
posing as ÒboyfriendsÓ promising romance, fast car 
rides and restaurant meals. The men ply their victims 
with vodka and drugs. They tell them lies: that they 
love them and their families donÕt care for them. 
Then, the trap set, they rape them with other gang 
members, often taking photos of the attack to 
blackmail the girl into submission. Befuddled, 
frightened, and too ashamed to tell parents or teachers, 
the girls are cynically isolated from their old lives and 
swept into prostitution.52 (emphasis added) 

The typical behaviour of the Muslim grooming gangs (targeting 
non-Muslim girls, getting them addicted to drugs and/or alcohol, then 
pimping them out) has also been seen among Muslims in the United 
States.53 Since there are few Muslim enclaves in the United States, 
we should expect such activity to be far less prevalent there than in 
Britain or the Netherlands. 

2.7 Counting the Victims 
Having established that the cases which end in convictions are just the 
vaguest indication of the true scale of the problem, let us try to assess 

-math-class-in-the-morning-turning-tricks-at-lunchtime-a-705104:html. 
52Sue Reid ÒA Feminist Revolution that Cruelly BackfiredÓ, The Daily Mail, 
23 Nov 2012 http://www:dailymail:co:uk/news/article-2237170/Why-Amsterdams-l 
egal-brothels-lesson-Britain-telling-truth-sex-gangs-race:html. 
53ÒSioux Falls Man Convicted in Sex Trafficking CaseÓ, FBI, 06 Dec 
2013, http://www:fbi:gov/minneapolis/press-releases/2013/sioux-falls-man-convict 
ed-in-sex-trafficking-case. 


44 



2. 
THE 
GROOMING 
GANG 
PHENOMENON 
the number of victims in Britain affected by these gangs. One thing is 
clear to us: the grooming gangs have been active for (at least) 25 
years in England; yet at most, the experts and the media are now 
talking about this being a problem that has existed for 10 years. Thus, 
when we use numbers here, they are derived from 
statements/estimates made by these experts working with the 
assumption that the gangs have been operating for 10 years. We 
contend that the true duration of this phenomenon is more than twice 
what the media and experts will admit. 

Andrew Norfolk disclosed that there are hundreds of internal 
reports by police/social services into these grooming gangs, and most 
of these reports have never been made public. Norfolk cites a 2010 
report by the police intelligence bureau Òwarning that thousands of 
such crimes were committed in the county [of South Yorkshire] each 
year.Ó54 Thus, we have one expert report asserting that, in just one 
county of England, there are thousands of these crimes each year. 
Rather than publish these reports and bring the subject into the public 
domain, the police and local council chose to keep parents in the dark, 
leaving schoolgirls unprotected and parents unaware of the risks and 
threats their daughters faced. Schoolgirls were leaving the security of 
their family to get an education, but if the girls were getting any 
education about the dangers of these grooming gangs lurking outside 
school and on the streets, that education was not coming from the 
schools or the authorities. Rather than have the families or the wider 
community know what was going on, the schoolgirls were left to fend 
for themselves. 

The Coalition for the Removal of Pimping (CROP) is the only 
charity which has focused on working with the victims of localised 

54Andrew Norfolk, ÒPolice Files Reveal Vast Child Protection ScandalÓ, The 
Times, 24 Sep 2012 http://www:thetimes:co:uk/tto/news/uk/crime/article3547661:e 
ce. Without having access to these reports, we will assume that the Òthousands of 
crimesÓ relates to hundreds of girls, being raped multiple times in just one year. 

45 



2. 
THE 
GROOMING 
GANG 
PHENOMENON 
grooming and their families.55 The estimate by CROP is that there are 
10,000 children who are the victims of sexual exploitation across the 
country. 56 Many of the schoolgirls are victims of the grooming gangs 
for more than 1 year. Taking the shortest period in which this 
phenomenon of grooming gangs has existed (a window of 10 years), it 
would be reasonable to say that CROP are referring to 1000 new girls 
being groomed by these gangs each year in that 10 year period. 
Another report that would seem to indicate the feasibility of these 
estimates state that ÒPolice found 2,409 children and young people 
had been confirmed as victims of sexual exploitation in gangs or 
groups between August 2010 and October 2011.Ó57 Further 
investigation may lead us to conclude that CROP meant that at any 
one time, there were 10,000 schoolgirls who were currently in the 
clutches of the gangs. However, that is such a shocking figure, we will 
err on the side of conservatism and scale it down by a factor of ten. 
We can then make the guarded estimate that each year 1000 new 
victims are acquired by the gangs. 

Assuming that each year there are 1000 new victims, how many 
prosecutions are there each year? According to the parliamentary 
report into localised grooming, ÒIn 2012, Lancashire police had had 
100 successful prosecutions relating to child sexual exploitation 

55CROP is now known as PACE, Parents Against Child Sexual Exploitation. 
56Paul Vallely, ÒChild Sex Grooming: the Asian QuestionÓ, The Independent, 
10 May 2012 http://www:independent:co:uk/news/uk/crime/child-sex-grooming-the 
-Asian-question-7729068:html. 
57David Barrett ÒThousands of Child Sex Abuse Victims, says MinisterÓ, The Telegraph,
 21 May 2013, http://www:telegraph:co:uk/news/uknews/crime/10071898/Th 
ousands-of-child-sex-abuse-victims-says-minister:html. This statistic was based on 
a belated analysis by The ChildrenÕs Commissioner, whose report confused matters 
by conflating the phenomenon of localised grooming with that of black gang culture. 
Thus, The ChildrenÕs Commissioner statistic may not just include those schoolgirls 
who are the victims of the grooming gangs. 

46 



2. 
THE 
GROOMING 
GANG 
PHENOMENON 
whereas South Yorkshire had had none.Ó58 But it needs to be borne in 
mind that this figure of 100 convictions by one police force alone 
should not lead us to have any confidence that even the best force in 
the country has got this problem under control.59 Those 100 
convictions could relate to girls who were being exploited years 
before the trial; and in the year of the trial perhaps the gangs across 
the country acquired 1000 new victims. 

2.8 Realising the Damage 
Having covered the numerical scale of the problem, we need to turn 
our attention to understanding the scale of the problem when it comes 
to the actual physical, mental or social suffering of the victims and 
their families. 

Because of the normal operations of the grooming gangs, 11 to 15 
year old schoolgirls are deliberately addicted to alcohol and serious 
drugs as both ÒrewardsÓ and as means of control by the gangs.60 The 
most obvious physical damage to the schoolgirls is that they suffer 
physical trauma from rape and multiple sexual infections.61 Some of 
them get pregnant, and undergo backstreet abortions (sometimes it 
seems that pregnancy and abortion is used by the gangs as a form of 

58Home Affairs Select Committee report ÒChild Sexual Exploitation and the Response
 to Localised GroomingÓ, 10 Jun 2013, http://www:publications:parliament:u 
k/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmhaff/68/68i:pdf p34. 
59A BBC documentary from 2008 tracked the actions of Lancashire PoliceÕs dedicated
 unit, a unit which amounted to one-and-a-half officers, who bemoaned the need 
for hugely-improved intelligence resources. See section 4.14 2008 BBC Panorama: 
Teenage Sex For Sale. 
60ÒTeenager groomed to sell drugsÓ, The Bolton News, 10 Mar 2011, http://www:t 
heboltonnews:co:uk/news/8900946:Teenager_groomed_to_sell_drugs/ 

61One 13 year old victim, when examined by a nurse, was thought to have been raped 
more than 50 times. Andrew Norfolk, ÒRevealed: conspiracy of silence on UK sex 
gangsÓ, The Times, 5 Jan 2011, http://www:thetimes:co:uk/tto/news/uk/crime/articl 
e2863058:ece. 

47 



2. 
THE 
GROOMING 
GANG 
PHENOMENON 
punishment).62 Some of the girls have been branded by their 
Òowners.Ó63 In some cases, what the girls have gone through has been 
described as Òtorture.Ó64 In short, the schoolgirls suffered a 
catalogue of physical abuse: Òhad been scratched, choked, beaten, 
branded, gang raped, burnt, and sexually assaulted with knives 
and a baseball bat.Ó65 It goes without saying, that schoolgirls could 
not undergo all these violent and sexual abuses, and live in fear of 
reprisals, without suffering immense psychological damage: one 
psychiatrist said Òmore than two-thirds had depression and 
post-traumatic stress disorder.Ó 66 

When parliament finally looked into this problem in late 2012, 
their report summarised the manifold ways in which the victims are 
damaged mentally and emotionally (and not just by the grooming 
gangs, but by the justice process itself): 

The nature of child sexual exploitation can have a 
catastrophic effect on the victim with evidence showing 
that victims have been diagnosed with borderline 
personality disorder and emerging psychosis as a result of 
their experiences... Victims often suffer with feelings of 
trauma, betrayal and stigmatisation. They may also 
blame themselves. The court process itself can often 

62ÒOxford exploitation trial: Girl had Ôback-room abortionÕÓ, 17 Jan 2013, http: 
//www:bbc:co:uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-21059681. 
63Allison Pearson, ÒOxford grooming gang: We will regret ignoring Asian thugs 
who target white girlsÓ, 15 May 2013, http://www:telegraph:co:uk/news/uknews/cr 
ime/10060570/Oxford-grooming-gang-We-will-regret-ignoring-Asian-thugs-who-t 
arget-white-girls:html. 
64Sandra Laville ÒOxford gang found guilty of grooming and sexually exploiting 
girlsÓ, The Guardian, 14 May 2013, http://www:theguardian:com/uk/2013/may/14/ 
oxford-gang-guilty-grooming-girls. 
65Ben Wilkinson, ÒGrooming gang face sentencing hearingÓ, Oxford Mail, 26 Jun 
2013, http://www:oxfordmail:co:uk/bullfinch/10507248:Grooming_gang_face_sente 
ncing_hearing/. 
66ÒGrooming: a Life SentenceÓ, BBC File on Four, Jun 2013, http://news:bbc:co:u 
k/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/11_06_13_fo4_grooming:pdf, p.7. 


48 



2. 
THE 
GROOMING 
GANG 
PHENOMENON 
compound this trauma with victims feeling as though 

they can make a choice between seeking therapy and 

perusing [sic] justice.67 

The damage to the schoolgirls is also of great significance when it 
comes to the judicial process. These victims have already been so 
confused and abused by the gangs, it can be hard for the schoolgirls 
to grasp that they are the victims, that they have been consciously 
and systematically exploited. The gangs have had control over them 
for so long, and have often managed to destroy the girlÕs relationship 
with her carers, such that, even in adult life, these girls can often not 
even be considered as independent adults. Then the judicial process 
can be used by the gangs to affect the outcome of the trial, either 
by threatening the girls in the lead up to the trial, or by 
intimidating them within the court room. During one recent trial, 
one of the victims attempted suicide following her first day of 
testimony.68 In another case, a girl received 350 phone threats from 
the brother of a man on trial for grooming her, in his attempt to stop 
her testifying against the accused.69 

We must also consider something even more gruesome: it is 
entirely possible that some girls who have Ògone missingÓ have in 
fact been murdered by the gangs, with the possibility that their 
bodies will never be found. The grounds for considering that the 
gangs could take their threats this far are based on the cases of 
Charlene Downes, Paige Chivers, Fiona Ivison and Laura Wilson. 

67Home Affairs Select Committee report ÒChild Sexual Exploitation and the Response
 to Localised GroomingÓ, 10 Jun 2013, http://www:publications:parliament:u 
k/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmhaff/68/68i:pdf p.36 
68Martin Robertson ÒGirl, 17, tried to kill herself after first day in witness box 
during trial of ten men accused of grooming her for sex at 11Ó, The Daily Mail, 
6 Aug 2013, http://www:dailymail:co:uk/news/article-2385239/Teenager-17-accused 
-gang-men-grooming-sex-11-tried-kill-day-witness-box:html. 
69ÒGrooming victim got 350 phone threats from Brierfield menÓ, Lancashire Telegraph,
 19 Jul 2013, http://www:lancashiretelegraph:co:uk/news/10560927:Groomin 
g_victim_got_350_phone_threats_from_Brierfield_men/ 

49 



2. 
THE 
GROOMING 
GANG 
PHENOMENON 
Laura was groomed, and when she got pregnant by an older Asian 
man, he stabbed her and threw her body in a canal.70 When it wasnÕt 
social workers ignoring or concealing such evidence, it was the police 
turning a blind eye. Paige Chivers was groomed, and went missing in 
2007. Four years before Paige Chivers went missing, Charlene 
Downes also went missing. Both were among 60 girls who were 
identified in a police report as being groomed in Blackpool by ÒAsian 
menÓ.71 Fiona Ivison was killed by a ÒcustomerÓ at the age of 17, 
having been groomed by a gang when she was 14.72 

As more information is coming into the public domain with each 
trial, the authorities seem to be giving more seriousness to the threats 
and violence of these gangs. In a case that is scheduled to come to 
trial soon, ten men from Coventry are being held on remand and the 
alleged victims/witnesses are living under Òsafeguarding 
arrangements... being supported by specially-trained police officers 
from the public protection unit.Ó73 

Whilst the victims have suffered tremendous damage, their 
families too have often suffered alongside them. The threats made to 
the victims are extended to their family too: Òhe threatened to 
firebomb my home and rape my own mother if I tried to escape.Ó74 It 

70Daniel Miller, ÒSocial workers hid fact they knew teenage mother was at risk 
from sex grooming gangs SIX YEARS before she was brutally murderedÓ, The 
Daily Mail, 7 Jun 2012, http://www:dailymail:co:uk/news/article-2155823/Social-w 
orkers-hid-fact-knew-teenage-mother-risk-sex-grooming-gangs-SIX-YEARS-bruta 
lly-murdered:html. 
71James Tozer, ÒPolice ÔhidÕ abuse of 60 girls by Asian takeaway workers
 linked to murder of 14-year-oldÓ, The Daily Mail, 7 Apr 2011, 

http://www:dailymail:co:uk/news/article-1374443/Police-hid-abuse-60-girls-Asi 
an-takeaway-workers-linked-Charlene-Downes-murder:html. 
72Julie Bindel, ÒMothers of PreventionÓ, The Sunday Times, 30 Sep 2007, http://ww 
w:thesundaytimes:co:uk/sto/news/uk_news/article72310:ece. 
73Les Reid, ÒTen charged with trafficking teen girls in Coventry Ôsex gangÕ 
probeÓ, Coventry Telegraph, 2 Aug 2013, http://www:coventrytelegraph:net/news/ 
coventry-news/ten-charged-coventry-sex-gang-5429952. 
74Julie Bindel, ÒGirls, Gangs and Grooming: The TruthÓ, Standpoint Mag


50 



2. 
THE 
GROOMING 
GANG 
PHENOMENON 
appears that most of the schoolgirls who were lured into this abuse did 
NOT come from broken homes or childrenÕs homes, and the popular 
belief that this is the case (and that thus somehow the schoolgirl and 
the family deserve what they get) is emotionally and psychologically 
damaging to the family. The family may well have been powerless to 
stop the gangs, and their attempts to get police and social services 
involved fell on deaf ears. They have to try and rescue their child, 
endure threats of violence, try to put their family back together, and 
then they face the claim that somehow it was the schoolgirl and/or her 
parents who were to blame for this abuse taking place.75 It is hardly 
surprising that given the failure by the state and the media to take 
these gangs seriously, many parents developed racist or phobic 
attitudes to anyone Asian.76 Some of the parents have spoken of 
homicidal feelings instead of feelings of powerlessness. Parents have 
suffered in frustration as they were ignored by the police and social 
services; maybe they had to abandon a child to stop her dragging her 
sisters or cousins into the gangsÕ clutches; some put their children 
Òinto careÓ, often in the vain hope that this would protect their child 
when the family could not. Out of frustration and anger, ordinary 
law-abiding citizens felt like they wanted to kill the gang members. 

We now have some sense of the scale of the problem (although no 

azine, Dec 2010 http://www:standpointmag:co:uk/node/3576/full (See also Rachel 
Halliwell ÒMy daughter came home drunk so I grounded her, unaware paedos
 had threatened to kill her. Evil was always going to winÓ, The Sun, 
5 Feb 2013, http://www:thesun:co:uk/sol/homepage/woman/real_life/4779384/PARE 
NTS-speak-out-against-paedo-gang:html). 
75Rachel Halliwell ÒMy daughter came home drunk so I grounded her, unaware
 paedos had threatened to kill her. Evil was always going to winÓ, The 
Sun, 5 Feb 2013, http://www:thesun:co:uk/sol/homepage/woman/real_life/4779384/ 
PARENTS-speak-out-against-paedo-gang:html. See also Daniel Trilling, ÒHow 
the Rochdale grooming case exposed British prejudiceÓ, New Statesman, 15 
Aug 2012, http://www:newstatesman:com/2012/08/how-rochdale-grooming-case-e 
xposed-british-prejudice. 
76Julie Bindel, ÒGirls, Gangs and Grooming: The TruthÓ, Standpoint Magazine, 
Dec 2010 http://www:standpointmag:co:uk/node/3576/full 

51 



2. 
THE 
GROOMING 
GANG 
PHENOMENON 
doubt these words must only skim the surface of the deep suffering of 
the schoolgirl and her family). As we will see next, in Britain this 
grooming phenomenon appeared to start with Muslims grooming 
Asian (Sikh) victims in the West Midlands in the 1980s. But it has 
spread to engulf most of the cities and large towns of England, and 
now the victims are overwhelmingly Caucasian. Every convicted man 
probably correlates with 2 to 10 other men who have not been 
convicted yet who were involved with the same systematic abuse for 
which any single gang member was convicted. And even the experts 
agree that there are at least 1000 new victims each year. The damage 
to the schoolgirls and to their families is immense. The damage to 
communities is immeasurable. And as indicated by the photographs 
in 14. Appendix 4: Leeds School Warning and 15. Appendix 5: 
Sheffield School Warning, there is no end in sight with this problem. 

52 



3. Sikh Victims of Grooming Gangs 
this issue is about the Muslim community. 

Ð Sikh Media Monitoring, Daily 
Mail, 2011 
ÒA factor that may reinforce the perception of localised grooming 
being carried out by Asian men against white girls could be the 
under-reporting of offences against children from ethnic minorities.Ó1 
The refusal of the police, child protection services and the media to 
acknowledge that Muslim gangs have been grooming Sikh girls is a 
significant part of the phenomenon. By ignoring this factor, those who 
protect the grooming gangs have been able to project the image that 
such Muslim gangs were a fantasy of white racists. 

From the earliest evidence in the 1980s, it seemed that Muslim 
gangs were targeting Sikh girls in the Midlands. The Muslim 
gangs could have singled out Sikh girls due to the long-standing 
resistance of Sikhism to Islamic domination. Or it could have been 
more contingent: that Sikh girls were nearby and it would be easier 
for the Pakistani Muslims to minimise suspicion by pretending they 
were Sikhs, luring Sikh girls more easily than white girls with this 
deception. Whatever the root cause, the available historical evidence 
currently points to Sikh girls being the first victims of the Muslim 
grooming gangs in Britain. 

There is no indication whatsoever that the authorities or the media 
took these crimes seriously at the time, resulting in Sikhs taking the 
law into their own hands. As time has gone on, and the Muslim 

1Home Affairs Select Committee report ÒChild Sexual Exploitation and the Response 
to Localised GroomingÓ, 10 Jun 2013, http://www:publications:parliament:u 
k/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmhaff/68/68i:pdf p.55 

53 



3. 
SIKH 
VICTIMS 
OF 
GROOMING 
GANGS 
population of Britain has increased and spread across the 
country, the gangs appear to have turned their attention to young 
girls from the indigenous population. Considering the expert 
estimates of the number of victims, and the number of prosecutions 
since 2010, the lack of prosecutions between 1988 and 2010 is 
appalling. The signal that police, social services and the media sent to 
these gangs was: carry on with what you are doing, we are not going 
to stop you, we are not going to expose your crimes. 

A Sikh media group says that Britain cannot defeat the 
Muslim grooming gangs Òunless the politically correct lobby stop 
putting up a smokescreen to hide the fact that this issue is about 
the Muslim community.Ó2 Other Sikh organisations have claimed 
that Muslim men were going to great lengths in order to seduce and/or 
convert Sikh girls (the Muslim men would change their names to Sikh 
names, wear jewellery that indicated the wearer was a Sikh).3 Sikh 
websites have claimed that, as far back as 1992, Muslim men were 
given specific instructions from Islamic fundamentalist organisations, 
groups which seeks to re-establish the Caliphate. We have been not 
been able to refute or verify these allegations. The idea that a devout 
religious organisation would encourage such behaviour is very 
difficult to believe.4 What can be objectively verified, is that these 

2Rebecca Camber & James Tozer, ÒTeenager who Lured Girls into House to 
be Raped by Asian Gang is Jailed for Seven YearsÓ, The Daily Mail, 3 Sep 
2011, http://www:dailymail:co:uk/news/article-2033022/Teenager-lured-girls-house 
-gang-raped-Asian-gang-jailed-seven-years:html. 
3http://www:whyichoseSikhism:com/?p=know&s=10secrets. 
4Andrew Norfolk thinks that the idea that pro-Caliphate groups were encouraging this 
is ÒnonsenseÓ. https://www:youtube:com/watch?v=RZCQ9ZWfCuQ#t=503. WeÕre 
not aware of any proof by Norfolk that the documents discussed in section 4.7 2001 
Derby and ÒReal CaliphateÓ and section 4.11 2005 Luton and ÒReal CaliphateÓ are 
fake, or the claims by Sikh organisations that pro-Caliphate organisations were doing 
this as early as 1990 are false. Norfolk has mentioned Òsharia lawÓ as an explanation 
for why these grooming gangs were targeting young girls, but appears to have no explanation
 for why the Muslim community have done nothing about these gangs in the 
past 25 years. We wonder how he would account for the failure of 75% of mosques to 
read out a sermon condemning the grooming gangs? Reading out a sermon condemn


54 



3. 
SIKH 
VICTIMS 
OF 
GROOMING 
GANGS 
claims were to be found on Sikh websites as long ago as 2004 (and 
possibly much earlier).5 Thus, in 2004, at the height of the 
controversy concerning the Muslim grooming gangs in Bradford, 
there were good reasons for the media, the multiculturalists and the 
child-care professionals to have known about the claims being made 
by Sikhs. Any group who claims to believe in multiculturalism should 
have been paying attention to what the Sikh victims were saying 
about gangs preying on Sikh schoolgirls. 

Serious attention needs to be paid to the decades-long abuse of 
Sikh girls by Muslim gangs: they were being abused by Muslim 
gangs in the 1980s and are still being abused in 2013. Sikhs took 
many steps to try to warn society about this, from creating pressure 
groups to risking imprisonment. Other non-Muslim communities 
never responded in the same way; when white non-Muslims spoke of 
the overwhelmingly Muslim grooming gangs, they were accused of 
ÒracismÓ, and thus marginalised and ignored. Some of this must come 
down to greater solidarity within the Sikh community, and with them 
having their own organisations (such as the Sikh Awareness Society) 
dedicated to warning Sikh schoolgirls and their parents. But also that 
the narrative of racism could not be used to sow doubt among them, 

ing the rape of schoolgirls seems to be a very small step for religious organisations to 
take, yet despite all the bad publicity around the Islamic association with the grooming
 gangs, the vast majority of mosques did not take part. There are 1500 to 2000 
mosques in Britain, and only 500 read the sermon. http://news:bbc:co:uk/1/hi/magaz 
ine/7118503:stm. Other mosques ÒshunnedÓ the sermon: Ben Wilkinson, ÒNational 
sermon on child grooming shunned as a stunt by many Muslims in OxfordÓ, Oxford
 Mail, 29 Jun 2013, http://www:oxfordmail:co:uk/news/10516465:National_ser 
mon_on_child_grooming_shunned_as_a_stunt_by_many_Muslims_in_Oxford/. 
5Independent historical archives of websites show that this page could be found on 
that Sikh site on 3 Aug 2004, before the time that the Channel 4 programme was being
 attacked by the Left as Òracist.Ó That is, Sikhs were warning that they had evidence 
that devout Muslim groups in Britain were organising systematic grooming campaigns 
against non-Muslim girls, both Caucasian and Asian. http://web:archive:org/web 
/20040803070716/http://www:whyichoseSikhism:com/?p=know&s=10secrets. The 
document may well have existed before that, but the internet archive may not have 
taken copies before 2004. 

55 



3. 
SIKH 
VICTIMS 
OF 
GROOMING 
GANGS 
the way the Left used it to marginalise any white person who spoke 
about the grooming gangs. Whilst CROP existed locally in Leeds 
before going national, it is likely to be much harder for CROP to 
reach every teenage girl in Britain than for Sikhs to use networks 
within their much smaller community to raise awareness of the 
problem. As we will show later, there is every indication that our 
national agencies have shamefully failed when it comes to developing 
an awareness campaign directed at schoolgirls. But if the media and 
the Left had not spent so much time ignoring the Sikh victims and 
vilifying the white victims, both CROP and SAS would presumably 
be much better financed and have far greater reach. 

Even in January 2013, when a group of 40 Sikh men attacked a 
Muslim restaurant (because they thought it was the workplace and 
home of one of the Muslim men who had groomed and raped a Sikh 
schoolgirl), the police did not disclose that the men who attacked the 
restaurant were Sikhs.6 A few days after the attack, the local 
newspaper reported that the city police commander had stated that the 
attack was Òsparked by misinformation regarding the rape of a 
teenage Sikh girl.Ó The police commander went on to say there was Òa 
rumour that a Sikh girl has been raped and Leicestershire Police has 
done nothing despite being in possession of video evidence of that 
rape. This is not true.Ó7 

Yet within weeks of the attack on this restaurant, five men were 
being prosecuted for 22 charges of sexual exploitation of a girl. In 
reports on the trial, the ethnicity of the victim was not specified, and a 

6The police stated they had CCTV imagery, but would not release it; they stated 
they wanted witnesses to come forward, but would not describe the attackers or 
the victims of the attack. Peter Warzynski, ÒDiners flee as mob of 40 men 
attack Moghul Durbar restaurant in LeicesterÓ, Leicester Mercury, 16 Jan 
2013, http://www:thisisleicestershire:co:uk/Diners-flee-mob-40-men-attack-Moghu 
l-Durbar/story-17863811-detail/story:html. 
7Peter Warzynski, ÒPeace talks held after rampage at Moghul Durbar restaurantÓ,
 17 Jan 2013, Leicester Mercury, http://www:thisisleicestershire:co:uk/Peace-t 
alks-held-rampage-Moghul-Durbar-restaurant/story-17880361-detail/story:html. 

56 



3. 
SIKH 
VICTIMS 
OF 
GROOMING 
GANGS 
banning order had been issued to prevent the names of the men from 
being published (even though all of the men were adults, and were not 
apparently awaiting trial for other offences, which might have been an 
excuse for withholding their details). The police and/or the CPS had 
gone to great lengths to conceal any details about the men, requiring 
the local newspaper to get the judge to disclose these facts.8 In 
reporting on the case at the beginning of February, we were told that 
one of the men, Wajid Usman, was Òof no fixed abodeÓ, yet in 
subsequent court appearances, it was stated that the some of the 
sexual abuse had occurred in a flat above the Moghul Durbar 
restaurant, where Wajid Usman had been living.9 That a Sikh girl was 
being raped and prostituted by some Muslim men associated with the 
Moghul Durbar restaurant might not have been 100% accurate. 
Instead of being ÒmisinformationÓ and ÒrumourÓ, the full truth was 
possibly worse.10 

The convicted men were Muslim, the girl was Sikh, and some of 
the abuse had indeed taken place at the restaurant the Sikhs attacked.11 
Furthermore, if the police did know about these crimes, it is clear that 
nothing was being done about this, before the Sikhs attacked the 
restaurant: the predatory Muslim men were only prosecuted once the 
Sikhs had drawn attention to these crimes by taking the law into their 
own hands. As one Sikh organisation stated about this case in 

8ÒAt their two previous court appearances, an order was imposed banning publication
 of their names, addresses and dates of birth. The Mercury, however, has successfully
 challenged this order, which was removed yesterday by District Judge John 
Temperley.Ó ÒChild Exploitation Case Ð Five in CourtÓ, Leicester Mercury, 9 
Feb 2013, http://www:thisisleicestershire:co:uk/Child-exploitation-case-ndash-court 
/story-18100272-detail/story:html. 
9Suzy Gibson, ÒMen Ôexploited vulnerable teenagerÕ, court toldÓ, Leicester Mercury,
 30 Jul 2013, http://www:leicestermercury:co:uk/Men-exploited-vulnerable-tee 
nager-court-told/story-19583988-detail/story:html. 
10ÒLeicester child prostitution trial: Six men jailedÓ, BBC News, 30 Aug 2013, 
http://www:bbc:co:uk/news/uk-england-23896937. 
11Whether or not all the Muslim men were in fact connected with that restaurant has 
never been disclosed. 

57 



3. 
SIKH 
VICTIMS 
OF 
GROOMING 
GANGS 
Leicester in 2013: Òit appears that racially motivated grooming of 
girls by groups of Pakistani Muslim men stems from 1990s onwards 
and is being underplayed by the Police, media and politicians fearing 
political correctness.Ó12 Another significant feature of this case is that 
the victim Òtold police that boys at college had paid her for sex before 
she met the menÓ,13 which suggests she may already have been the 
victim of Muslim grooming activities before she met these six men. 

On 2 Sep 2013, BBCÕs Inside Out programme focussed on the 
forgotten Sikh schoolgirl victims of the grooming gangs.14 Whilst the 
BBC should be commended for finally making this programme, they 
made no mention of the history of the predations of Muslim grooming 
gangs on Sikh girls between 1988 and recent years. Furthermore, 
considering that these grooming gangs have been in operation in 
Britain for so long, it is only since 2011 that there has been any 
admission by the media that the gangs truly existed. And it is only 
since the Home Affairs Select Committee reported in July 2013 that 
we can say that the government has acknowledged that the Muslim 
grooming gangs existed. Even then, we saw that some left-wing 
members of the committee attempted to get the committee to deny 
there was any association at all between Asians (i.e. Muslims) and 
these grooming offenders. Significantly, when the BBC news website 
reported on the programme, not once did the BBC website report 
mention that the claims made by the Sikhs in the programme were 
that the perpetrators are overwhelmingly Muslim.15 The BBC news 
report implies that it was Sikh men who were grooming Sikh girls! 

12ÒUnderage Sexual Grooming: Five Arrested in UKÓ, Sikh24, Jan 19 2013, http: 
//www:Sikh24:com/2013/01/underage-sexual-grooming-five-arrested-in-uk/. 
13ÒLeicester child prostitution trial: Six men jailedÓ, BBC News, 30 Aug 2013, 
http://www:bbc:co:uk/news/uk-england-23896937. There are many times since 1988 
when Sikhs have attempted to stop Muslims grooming Sikh girls in schools and colleges
 for sex. See section 4.1 1988 Sikh/Muslim violence, section 4.6 1998 Sikh 
Awareness Society starts, section 4.7 2001 Derby and ÒReal CaliphateÓ. 
14http://www:youtube:com/watch?v=7hXTM7ehvtk. 
15Zack Adesina, ÒSexual grooming victims: Is there Sikh code of silence?Ó, BBC 
news, 2 Sep 2013, http://www:bbc:co:uk/news/uk-23921570. 


58 



3. 
SIKH 
VICTIMS 
OF 
GROOMING 
GANGS 
So, as one part of the BBC is giving coverage to Sikh activity to stop 
gangs of Muslims grooming Sikh schoolgirls, another arm of the BBC 
is trying to conceal what the programme was actually about. 

59 



4. Chronology: Cover-up to Collapse 
the authorities did not understand what was 
happening to us, either because they did not believe 
us or because they could not comprehend that 
something as serious as this was possible. 

Ð grooming victim, The 
Times, 2012 
In 2011 a wave of reports swept across the news media, indicating 
that they had finally woken up to the phenomenon of the Muslim 
grooming gangs. This was followed in 2012 by the Home Affairs 
Select Committee undertaking an investigation into this scandal (with 
the CommitteeÕs report finally being published in June 2013). 
However, it was not always so, and between 2004 and 2011, there 
was only one journalist who stuck with this story. We are going to 
disclose what was allowed to be said in the national debate at various 
points since the earliest manifestations of this problem. In the very 
limited debate on these grooming gangs in Britain, the self-censorship 
of the media can be directly traced back to the early part of the 21st 
century. Until the last few years, it has been very rare indeed for the 
news media to report that these crimes were going on at all. And even 
now when the media are discussing the grooming gangs, it is 
exceptional for a reporter to mention that the phenomenon goes back 
into the last century.1 For the sake of posterity, and so that the 

1One rare exception to this is a report on Russia Today in May 2013, where Sean 
Thomas says that the crimes of the grooming gangs go back to Òthe early 1990s, if not 
beforeÓ. https://www:youtube:com/watch?v=RZCQ9ZWfCuQ#t=81. In this report, 
Andrew Norfolk of The Times says that the metropolitan elite in London chose to 
ignore this problem for 20 years. https://www:youtube:com/watch?v=RZCQ9ZWfCu 
Q#t=517. 

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necessary corrective action can be taken in Britain, we will document 
the evidence that shows that the phenomenon was identifiable by 1988 
at the latest. The media, politicians, Muslim organisations, and 
child-care professionals marginalised and ignored the problem for the 
following 20 years. 

As late as December 2010, the feminist author Julie Bindel was a 
lone voice stressing that there was an urgent need to acknowledge 
these Muslim grooming gangs exist, and that white liberals were 
still in denial. 

These gangs will be allowed to operate with impunity if 

we deny their existence in some sort of twisted attempt to 

be anti-racist and culturally sensitive. Some people, 

including many white liberals, are loath to admit what it 

is going on.2 

In 2007 Bindel was writing for The Times about the grooming gangs, 
but by 2010 writing about this phenomenon was so taboo that 
BindelÕs piece appeared not in The Times, nor The Guardian, nor The 
Independent, but in a very minor publication called Standpoint (a 
conservative magazine, prioritising freedom of speech). It is a credit 
to a radical feminist like Bindel that she stood by the story rather than 
worried about what was good for her career. That she should be 
writing this in such a minor publication at the end of 2010 shows the 
determination to ignore it by the politically-correct elite in the media. 
Andrew NorfolkÕs pivotal article appeared in January 2011, and marks 
the point at which the establishment started to talk about the 
phenomenon in a more open manner. 

By 2013 CROP/PACE noted: ÒSuddenly, professionals are waking 
up to the nature of grooming under-age children, and how they are 
prepared for a life of sexual assault, rape and the enforced selling of 

2Julie Bindel, ÒGirls, Gangs and Grooming: The TruthÓ, Standpoint Magazine, 
Dec 2010, http://www:standpointmag:co:uk/node/3576/full 

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sexual services to adult males.Ó3 To most members of the public who 
have any knowledge of this crisis, they think it goes back to 2003, 
when it was first broached explicitly in the national media, and which 
point the subject was suddenly controversial and then suddenly 
silenced. However, our investigations show that the problem goes 
back at least 25 years. Indeed, there are even statements from some 
retired policemen who say that there were cases in the 1970s of 
Muslims in Britain grooming young non-Muslim girls.4 We believe it 
will be some time before the full chronology of this scandal comes to 
light, but at the moment, the earliest contemporary record we can find 
for the grooming gangs, is from 1988. 

4.1 1988 Sikh/Muslim violence 
The earliest manifestation of the Muslim grooming gangs, which we 
can establish with some objectivity, is in 1988. That year, in 
Wolverhampton, there were violent confrontations between Muslims 
and Sikhs. Sikhs formed into gangs to protect young Sikh girls from 
being groomed by gangs of Muslim men. The main Sikh gang was 
called Shere Punjab. Some of the gang members received criminal 
convictions because of their attacks on Muslim gangs. 

In 1988 Look East, the BBC current affairs programme 
concentrating on Asian issues, included a segment on the 
Ògang-warfareÓ in Birmingham between Sikh gangs and Muslim 

5

gangs.
Here is a list of some of the incidents of violence in 1988 

3PACE, ÒThe grooming of children for sexual exploitation is largely misunderstoodÓ,
 21 Jan 2013, http://www:paceuk:info/the-grooming-of-children-for-sexual-e 
xploitation-is-largely-misunderstood/. 
4Jaya Narain ÒPolice chief: ÔWe couldnÕt speak out on Asian sex gangs 
for fear of appearing institutionally racistÕÓ, The Daily Mail, 12 Jan 
2011 http://www:dailymail:co:uk/news/article-1346291/Police-chief-We-speak-Asi 
an-sex-gangs-appearing-racist:html. 
5BBC Look East, 1988 http://www:youtube:com/watch?v=MJoWIHlPmp8 

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between Muslims and Sikhs cited in that programme: 

. 
Feb 19, disorder in Handsworth, Sikh versus Muslim 
. 
May 21, 3 Muslims attacked in Soho Rd. by Sikhs 
. 
May 27, Sikh youth stabbed following fight at daytime disco in 
Hurst St. 
. 
May 30, violent disorder outside the Milestone pub 
. 
May 30, incident on Ladypool Rd. Sparkbrook, 1 Muslim 
received wounds 
. 
Jun 2, Sikh charged for possession of pump-action shotgun 
. 
Jun 2, 24 arrested following fight between Muslims/Sikhs 
It seems clear that the violence was not short-lived, and that it was 
escalating (24 arrested, pump-action shotgun found). The violence 
came to an end in the summer of 1988, when the police arrested and 
charged Sikhs and Muslims. 

According to a Muslim youth worker in the programme, it all 
started when the Sikh gang Òhanded leaflets out saying that 
Muslim youths are coming round our schools... they are 
abducting our girls... and they are raping them an putting them 
into prostitution.Ó6 The description in this written warning to the 
Sikh community (and maybe Muslim community) about the 
behaviour of the Muslim grooming gangs is entirely consistent with 
the phenomenon as it extended its reach across the whole country 
over the next 25 years. 

The Sikh gang Shere Punjab said they gave the police the names 
and car registration details of those Muslims involved in grooming 
non-Muslim girls.7 Police claimed they would sort out the problem, if 

6BBC Look East, 1988 http://www:youtube:com/watch?feature=player_detailpag 
e&v=MJoWIHlPmp8&t=107. 
7http://www:youtube:com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=MJoWIHlPmp8&t= 

301. 
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Shere Punjab Òstepped out of the way.Ó Chief Superintendent David 
Love is interviewed in the programme and denies that they were ever 
given any of this information, and denies that they ever received any 
information about the girls being abducted. After 25 years, it may be 
impossible to establish the truth about these claims. However, the 
story from these Sikhs seems credible, since 20 years later police 
forces in other parts of the counter were also refusing to act on 
information supplied by the family of grooming victims, including 
photographic evidence and car registration numbers.8 

4.2 1989 Sikhs convicted 
Following the violence cited in the BBC programme from 1988, there 
was a report in The Independent newspaper in June 1989: 13 Sikh 
men were on trial for vigilantism, (presumably a prosecution carried 
over from the previous year). Note how the headline of this 1989 
report (quoted below) describes the Sikh girls being Òused as sex 
slavesÓ by the Muslim gangs, and in the body of the story the Sikhs 
describe how the Muslim gangs use these Indian girls for Òsex and 
prostitution.Ó Here is an extract from that article: 

Sikh girls Òused as sex slavesÓ 

GANGS OF Muslim men toured daytime discotheques 

kidnapping Sikh girls to use as sex slaves, a court was 

told yesterday. 

The jury at the trial of 13 Sikh men at Birmingham 

Crown Court heard claims that one gang forced girls into 

prostitution and blackmailed their parents. 

The Sikhs were said to be members of the Shere Punjab, 

a vigilante gang, who were arrested -armed with sticks 

and bottles -while on their way to confront the rival 

8Julie Bindel, ÒMothers of PreventionÓ, The Sunday Times, 2007 http://www:thesu 
ndaytimes:co:uk/sto/news/uk_news/article72310:ece. 

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Muslim gang, the Aston Panthers, in Handsworth, 

Birmingham, last June. 

Gurmek Singh Chahal, 20, told the court the Panthers 

9

used Indian girls for sex and prostitution... 

We can find no record that Muslim grooming gangs were ever the 
target of arrests and prosecutions at this time, and none of the expert 
reports describe any prosecutions before the early to mid-1990s. We 
can find no evidence that the authorities did anything to stop the 
Muslim grooming gangs, but came down heavily on the Sikhs when 
they tried to intervene in their absence. Three of the Sikh men in this 
case received criminal convictions for trying to stop the Muslim 
grooming gangs. One would expect the police to have prosecuted 
members of the Muslim gangs too (after all, 24 were arrested in the 
summer of 1988). However, there is no sign that the police, the media 
or the child-care professionals took any notice of the SikhsÕ 
allegations of Òsex slaveryÓ. There is every reason to believe that in 
these circumstances, the Muslim grooming gangs continued, and if 
anything were emboldened by the success of their operations. As we 
will discuss later, Sikhs in Wolverhampton using violence to stop a 
Muslim grooming gang in 1988 was repeated again in 2013, only this 
time in Leicester. 

4.3 1991 ÒThe earliest case...Ó 
Between 1989 and 2003, there was virtually no national media 
attention concerning these Muslim grooming gangs.10 However, in an 
interview with the Sikh Awareness Society, Andrew Norfolk does 
indicate that there is evidence that the grooming activities were 

9ÒSikh girls Ôused as sex slavesÕÓ, The Independent, 24 Jun 1989 
10The only exception was an apparently context-less story from 2001: The Telegraph 
carried a report on Muslims in Derby attacking ÒAsiansÓ in a school, over claims that 
Muslims had been instructed to groom Sikh schoolgirls. See section 4.7 2001 Derby 
and ÒReal CaliphateÓ. 

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known about in Bradford in 1991: the gang were taking girls from a 
childrenÕs home, prostituting them, then returning them to the 
childrenÕs home at night.11 There were no criminal convictions arising 
from these events in 1991, but it seems clear from this story that the 
child-care professionals knew what was going on (whether they 
notified the police is another matter, and thereÕs no indication that the 
media reported on this case). Norfolk says: ÒThese were Pakistani 
men doing it -that was never made public at the time.Ó12 

Norfolk points out that a few years after this Òearliest caseÓ, in 
1995 Bradford was the first city in Britain where a project was set up 
to help the victims of the grooming gangs. When this interview with 
Norfolk took place in 2012, he points out how strange it is that 
Bradford had not had a single prosecution of a grooming gang despite 
the city having a bigger problem with this phenomenon than probably 
anywhere else in the country.13 A grooming gang in Bradford was 
convicted later in 2012; more than twenty years after cases were first 
being discussed by child-care professionals in that city.14 

11Andrew Norfolk, Òthe first one that fits the pattern IÕm studying is 1991Ó, ÒReality 
of Sexual Grooming Gangs in the UK -interview of Andrew Norfolk and Sikh 
Awareness 
SocietyÓ, http://www:youtube:com/watch?v=WbUIfvYbjRc&t=1325. 
12http://www:youtube:com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=WbUIfvYbjRc#t= 
1366. 
13Andrew Norfolk, ÒReality of Sexual Grooming Gangs in the UK -interview of 
Andrew Norfolk and Sikh 
Awareness 
SocietyÓ, http://www:youtube:com/watch?v= 
WbUIfvYbjRc&t=1385. 
14There is much evidence of other ÒloneÓ Muslim male paedophiles who were raping 
under-age girls. Here is one case, where a Pakistani was able to flee the country half 
way through his trial for child-rape. ÒAll-ports alert as East Bowling child rapist 
could try to flee countryÓ, Telegraph and Argus, 15 Oct 2010, http://www:thetelegrap 
handargus:co:uk/news/local/localbrad/8454127:Hunt_for_man__58_:::/. It is entirely 
possible that this man was also connected to grooming gangs, and if not, he was most 
certainly aware of them getting away with their activities. 

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4.4 1995 Bradford: Streets 
and 
Lanes 
In 2011, when reports on the Muslim grooming gangs could no longer 
be kept out of the media, the childrenÕs charity BarnardoÕs published 
a report entitled Puppet on a String: the Urgent Need to Cut Children 
Free From Sexual Exploitation.15 The report says 

at BarnardoÕs, we know from our 16 yearsÕ experience 
operating specialist services in the UK that it is far more 
widespread than is generally recognised. And we are 
finding that the victims are becoming younger and the 
exploitation more sophisticated, involving organised 
networks that move children from place to place to be 
abused... There is a shocking lack of awareness that 
stretches from the front-line of practice to the corridors of 
government... Urgent action is required to address this, 
which is why BarnardoÕs is publishing this report and 
launching a campaign calling for reform.16 

The report goes on to say that the Streets 
and 
Lanes 
project has 
existed in Bradford since 1995, 17 and it seems clear that BarnardoÕs 
is alluding to this project when they refer to their 16 years of 
experience in this area. 

In 1995 BarnardoÕs created this Streets and Lanes project in 
Bradford with £677,000 funding from Òstatutory agencies.Ó18 The 
local media in Bradford reported that the purpose of this project was 
Òto help teenage girls, usually run-aways, picked up at Bradford 

15Puppet 
on 
a 
String: 
the 
Urgent 
Need 
to 
Cut 
Children 
Free 
From 
Sexual 
Exploitation,
 2011, http://www:barnardos:org:uk/ctf_puppetonastring_report_final:pdf. 
16Puppet 
on 
a 
String: 
the 
Urgent 
Need 
to 
Cut 
Children 
Free 
From 
Sexual 
Exploitation,
 2011, http://www:barnardos:org:uk/ctf_puppetonastring_report_final:pdf p.1. 
17Puppet 
on 
a 
String: 
the 
Urgent 
Need 
to 
Cut 
Children 
Free 
From 
Sexual 
Exploitation,
 2011, http://www:barnardos:org:uk/ctf_puppetonastring_report_final:pdf p.2. 
18Sara Swann, ÒHelping girls involved in ÔprostitutionÕ: a Barnardos ExperimentÓ, 
pg.277 of Home Truths About Child Sexual Abuse: Policy and Practice, Catherine 
Itzen (ed.), Routledge, London, 2000. 

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Interchange by unscrupulous men and groomed for prostitution.Ó19 
According to BarnardoÕs this was a project aimed at educating 5 to 13 
year old children about: 

Girls and young women who already know the 

experience of being exploited have space to talk alone, in 

groups, in safety at the drop-ins and outside the building 

in other safe spaces... They can be immediately be 

screened for sexual health services... in this young 

woman friendly environment.20 

Sara Swann, who was the director of the Streets and Lanes project, 
points out that the victim of this sexual exploitation is normally 
ensnared by a ÒboyfriendÓ (aged 18 to 25, but even as old as mid-40s) 
who showers her with gifts, collecting her in his car outside the school 
on an almost daily basis. He proceeds to make her dependent on him, 
perhaps changing her name, but proceeding to destroy her connections 
with other people. He ends up furthering his control of her, often by 
humiliation, threats and fear, all the while pretending that this is a 
loving relationship. The final stage is that he has total control when 
she becomes a Òwilling victimÓ: she will end up having sex for him, 
without even seeing any of the money herself. She will even lure 
others into the clutches of her controller and his network.21 In a report 
from the local newspaper in 1998, BarnardoÕs staff talk about the 
Streets and Lanes project, and it looks remarkably like the Muslim 

19Jim Greenhalf, ÒHow do we Make the Streets Safer?Ó, Telegraph & Argus, 1 
Jun 2010, http://www:thetelegraphandargus:co:uk/news/news_behind/8194620:How 
_do_we_make_the_streets_safer_/. 
20ÒCase Study: BarnardoÕs Street and Lanes Multi-agency ServiceÓ, 
2004, http://www:doh:gov:uk/children/nsfcasestudies:nsf/5084709fa3844fc680256f 
2c00339f59/28bdb53249f6fa2380256f6a003f240a?OpenDocument. This document 
has now disappeared from the internet. 
21Sara Swann, ÒHelping girls involved in ÔprostitutionÕ: a Barnardos ExperimentÓ, 
pp.278-282 of Home Truths About Child Sexual Abuse: Policy and Practice, Catherine
 Itzen (ed.), Routledge, London, 2000. It is clear that, by the year 2000, Swann 
is describing something indistinguishable from the phenomenon which came to be 
known as Òlocalised groomingÓ, which CEOP claim was not identified until 2011. 

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grooming gang phenomenon.22 We can find no evidence where 
either Swann or BarnardoÕs 
refer to the ethnicity of the men who 
groomed these schoolgirls in this, the first project dealing with the 
victims of the grooming gangs in Britain, a project located in the 
borough with the greatest concentration of Muslims in Britain.23 

Nevertheless, subsequent remarks by others who worked with them, 
state that the men were ÒoverwhelminglyÓ Asian.24 

4.5 1996 Rotherham 
By the mid 1990s there was undeniable evidence available to police 
and child-care professionals that the grooming gangs were operating 
on a large scale. In a 2012 report, Andrew Norfolk had access to huge 
numbers of unpublished reports by police and social services, dating 

22 ÒScandal of child-sex on Bradford streetsÓ, Telegraph & Argus, 14 Jul 
1998, http://www:thetelegraphandargus:co:uk/archive/1998/07/14/8075434:Scandal 
_of_child_sex_on_Bradford_streets/ 

Children as young as 11 are enslaved in a squalid life of prostitution 
in Bradford -and the law is failing to protect them, a shocking report 
reveals today...Of 100 under-18-year-olds in touch with project workers
 last year, the average age was 14 and the youngest was 11. And 
this is just the tip of the iceberg, workers say. Teenagers are being exploited
 by older pimps who lock them up like animals in bedsits and 
deny them access to food or a toilet... Most of the youngsters are too 
scared to fight back against their violent pimps... BarnardoÕs is demanding
 a change in the law so that men who seek sex with children 
are prosecuted for the serious crime of unlawful sex...And they are 
warning parents to be aware of the risk to their children -as a third of 
the youngsters seen by the scheme are still living at home with their 
unwitting mums and dads. 

. 
23ÒUK Muslim DemographicsÓ, The Telegraph, 4 Feb 2011, http://www:telegraph 
:co:uk/news/wikileaks-files/london-wikileaks/8304838/UK-Muslim-DEMOGRAPH 
ICS-C-RE8-02527:html. 
24Anna Hall ÒHunt For BritainÕs Sex Gangs, C4Ó, Broadcast, 2 May 2013, http:// 
www:broadcastnow:co:uk/in-depth/hunt-for-britains-sex-gangs-c4/5054504:article. 


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from 1996 onwards. Furthermore, it was in 1998 that the Sikh 
Awareness Society was founded, which was started specifically to 
educate Sikh girls about how the grooming gangs work. Norfolk says 
that in Rotherham in 1996: 

a social services investigation uncovered concerns that 
girls were being coerced into Òchild prostitutionÓ by a 
small group of men who regularly collected them from 
residential care homes. Two years later, 70 girls from the 
town were said to be involved. The findings led to a 
one-year, Home Office-funded research project on the 
Òdetection, investigation and prosecution of offenders 
involved in sexual exploitation in Rotherham.Ó25 

The Home Office report was apparently completed in 2001.26 The 
report was never published. Muslim-operated taxi firms and 
takeaway shops were a significant part of the grooming/pimping 
operation.27 The pimps were collecting girls from Òoutside 
schools, bus and train stations, residential homes and homeless 
projects.Ó28 Numerous multi-agency forums and meetings were held. 
Nothing significant came of this report, and it never received the 
media attention which it should have received. 

Norfolk says that even while the Home Office report was being 
written, Òthe headmaster of a Rotherham secondary school sent a 
letter to parents warning that some of his pupils were being used 

25Andrew Norfolk, ÒPolice Files Reveal Vast Child Protection ScandalÓ, The 
Times, 24 Sep 2012, http://www:thetimes:co:uk/tto/news/uk/crime/article3547661:e 
ce 

26If it is true that it took 5 years to publish this one-year study, then it really does 
indicate that the Home Office did not take this problem seriously. 
27As we see in later cases in other parts of the country, this is a common theme. 
28Andrew Norfolk, ÒPolice Files Reveal Vast Child Protection ScandalÓ, The 
Times, 24 Sep 2012, http://www:thetimes:co:uk/tto/news/uk/crime/article3547661:e 
ce 

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by adults for sex.Ó29 So, police, social services, and schools knew 
about the grooming gangsÕ activities, but still there was no media or 
political attention being paid to what was going on. How were the 
innocent victims supposed to protect themselves from being ensnared 
by the well-rehearsed and sophisticated techniques of organised 
adults, when no-one was prepared to tell these schoolgirls or their 
parents how the gangs operated? 

4.6 1998 Sikh 
Awareness 
Society 
starts 
In 1998 the Sikh Awareness Society was set up to educate Sikhs (and 
the wider community) about the continuing activities of the Muslim 
grooming gangs. Clearly, the problem with the grooming gangs in the 
West Midlands had not gone away. Here is what the SAS website said 
in 2007:30 

The Sikh Awareness Society (SAS) was established in 

1998 amongst growing concerns of the ÒgroomingÓ of 

our youth. 

In Britain today Sikh youth are still actively targeted on 

the basis of their religion and history. This historically 

linked hate-crime causes much emotional distress to the 

families involved with the majority of these cases 

29Andrew Norfolk, ÒPolice Files Reveal Vast Child Protection ScandalÓ, The 
Times, 24 Sep 2012, http://www:thetimes:co:uk/tto/news/uk/crime/article3547661:e 
ce. Even today when there is some media and political attention being paid to these 
grooming gangs, schools are sending home notices to parents, warning them that 
gangs of ÒAsian menÓ are sitting in cars outside the school gates. Sometimes the 
schools doing this are sending home letters to parents whose children are 11 years old 
or younger (see section 14. Appendix 4: Leeds School Warning and section 15. Appendix
 5: Sheffield School Warning below). 
30ÒAbout Sikh Awareness SocietyÓ This is from the Internet Archive copy of the 
SAS website of 2007. (The earliest archived copy of the SAS website we can find 
is from 2007). http://web:archive:org/web/20070707161016/http://www:sasorg:co:u 
k/about:html. 

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ending up in abuse... 

The SAS originally operated as a discreet, confidential 
service, providing counselling and support to the West 
Midlands Sikh community. 

Due to an increasing number of calls from distressed 
Sikh families; in April 2006 we decided to expand our 
services and go nationwide... 

We initially started out in Òproblem areasÓ i.e. 
towns/cities where we knew of serious hate-crime in the 
past. We quickly came to realise it is a national 
problem and far more deep-rooted. 

It is interesting to note that SAS started in the West Midlands, the 
area where Muslim grooming gangs were operating in 1988. What is 
also of note, is that by 2006, SAS were recognising that these gangs 
were operating at a national level (something that the rest of the 
country is perhaps only now realising). From other reports by SAS, it 
is clear that the Muslim grooming gangs were targeting girls as young 
as 12.31 

It is to the shame of journalists, feminists, socialists and 
multiculturalists that from the late 1990s they did not amplify the 
message of Sikh Awareness Society. We have reason to believe that 
the childrenÕs charities and other agencies were aware of the extent 
and nature of the problem by the time that SAS was set up, but chose 
to remain publicly silent because of the discrepancy between the 
ethnicity of the perpetrators and the ethnicity of the victims.32 If the 

31http://www:youtube:com/watch?v=PRtWcyo-xj8. 
32 The director of Edge of the City later told this story: 

In October 1996... I met Sara Swann, who ran BradfordÕs BarnardoÕs 
Streets and Lanes project. BarnardoÕs was interested in making a film 
to warn teenagers and educate parents ... the girls were white and living
 in multi-cultural Bradford and the perpetrators were Asian... everybody
 wanted to pretend it wasnÕt happening. All anyone seemed 

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media had picked up on the work of SAS in the late 1990s, then the 
entire debate on the grooming gangs would never have blamed 
ÒAsiansÓ in general. That the problem was fundamentally religious 
rather than racial would have been clear to all. 

4.7 2001 Derby and ÒReal CaliphateÓ 
Sikhs were also involved when violence erupted at a school in Derby 
in 2001. This violence occurred because of the existence of a 
document where devout Muslim fundamentalists appeared to be 
encouraging young Muslims to seduce Sikh and Hindu girls into 
Islam.33 Thus, according to a report in The Telegraph at the time: 

A Muslim group calling itself Real Khilafa [sic] has been 
trying to whip up trouble by distributing a letter 
encouraging young Muslims to take out Sikh girls to get 
them drunk and convert them to Islam. The letter has 
incensed the considerable Sikh community and the police 

concerned about was the risk of a race riot if we mentioned it. 
Anna Hall ÒHunt For BritainÕs Sex Gangs, C4Ó Broadcast 2 May 
2013, http://www:broadcastnow:co:uk/in-depth/hunt-for-britains-sex 
-gangs-c4/5054504:article 

Since child-care professionals were privately informing journalists like Anna Hall of 
this problem, we cannot believe that they were not discussing it with other journalists, 
government agencies, academics, political activists, etc. See section 5.9 BarnardoÕs 
and section 4.13 2008 My Dangerous Loverboy. 
33Section 16. Appendix 6: Real Khilafah -Letter to Moslem Youth contains a facsimile
 copy of what is claimed to be the letter distributed by a devout Muslim organisation, 
encouraging Muslim men to deceive and seduce non-Muslim girls. We have found a 
transcript of this letter from a Pakistani internet forum from 2 Nov 2001, which does 
at least establish that the copy we have included in the Appendices was known about 
in 2001: http://groups:yahoo:com/group/PakistanForum/message/24491. The copy of 
the letter found on that Pakistani forum is dated Ò13 April 2001.Ó The letter is also 
mentioned on a Sikh website in 2001: http://fateh:sikhnet:com//sikhnet/discussion:n 
sf/By+Topic/9a6a5f28a8d544ff87256af8006e9709?Open. A readable version of this 
letter can be found in section 20. Appendix 11: Transcription Real Khilafa Letter. 

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have been present at meetings called by community 

leaders.34 

The letter claims that the Koran authorises Muslims to use 
violence or deceit in order to convert or subjugate Òkafirs.Ó35 

4.8 2003 Bradford/Keighley 
After all these supposedly unrelated, local reports indicating 
grooming activity in Wolverhampton, Rotherham and Derby, the 
problem in Bradford appeared in the national news agenda. How the 
phenomenon of the grooming gangs was treated in the coverage of 
Bradford at this time was eventually to shape the reporting of the 
problem for almost 10 years. 

On 22 August 2003, Channel 4 News announced that they had 
Òuncovered details of an 18 month police and social services 
investigation into allegations that young men are targeting under-age 
girls for sex, drugs and prostitution in the West Yorkshire town of 
Keighley.Ó36 

In that story, the Labour MP for Keighley, Ann Cryer is quoted as 
saying ÒI believe there is a very strong cultural reason, itÕs nothing to 
do with the religion lets [sic] make it quite clear, its [sic] to do with 
the Asian culture, which wants these young men to marry these very 
young girls from their village...Ó37 Cryer said that it is because they 

34Nick Britten, ÒChildren Injured in School RampageÓ, The Telegraph, 17 Oct 
2001, http://www:telegraph:co:uk/news/uknews/1359683/Children-injured-in-schoo 
l-rampage:html. 
35In Islam ÒKafirÓ is an abusive Arabic term for Sikhs, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists 
etc. 
36ÒAsian Rape AllegationsÓ, Channel 4 News, 27 Aug 2003, (from archive.org) 


http://web:archive:org/web/20100620042427/http://www:channel4:com/news/articl 
es/society/law_order/Asian+rape+allegations/256893. 
37ÒAsian Rape AllegationsÓ, Channel 4 News, 27 Aug 2003, (from archive.org) 


http://web:archive:org/web/20100620042427/http://www:channel4:com/news/articl 
es/society/law_order/Asian+rape+allegations/256893. 


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do not want arranged marriages with Òvery young girls from their 
villageÓ in Pakistan that Muslim men Òlook for very young girls 
through this organised sex ring that we are seeing in Keighley.Ó She 
does not explain what part of ÒAsian cultureÓ would lead the parents 
to want their sons to marry Òvery young girlsÓ from Pakistan, nor why 
this should lead to ÒorganisedÓ rings of men who seek to exploit Òvery 
youngÓ, non-Muslim girls near Bradford, and get them addicted to 
drugs and alcohol and then turn them into prostitutes. Ann Cryer left 
it up to the population of Britain to assume that Hindu and Sikh and 
Buddhist men were also doing this, as these activities were 
supposedly part of ÒAsian cultureÓ,38 rather than men from one 
specific religious group. 

A few days later the local newspaper reported that Ann Cryer: 

called on members of the townÕs Asian community to 

work together against alleged criminal activity involving 

some young men in the area. Police and social services 

have launched an inquiry after parents reported concerns 

about the welfare of their daughters in the town.39 

Ann Cryer is reported as saying ÒMy hope is that this adverse 
publicity will embarrass these young men into more appropriate 
behaviour.Ó Ten years later, we know that this was a vain hope. 

Even though no Muslims are named in this news report, it is 
interesting how much care is taken not to offend the community 
which was protecting the grooming gangs. Note how the above 
quotation from the local newspaper ÒallegesÓ that these crimes have 
taken place, and how the parents ÒconcernsÓ are merely Òreported.Ó 
The article went on to say: ÒIt is claimed more than 30 white 

38ÒAsian Rape AllegationsÓ, Channel 4 News, 27 Aug 2003, (from archive.org) 

http://web:archive:org/web/20100620042427/http://www:channel4:com/news/articl 
es/society/law_order/Asian+rape+allegations/256893. 
39ÒMPÕs appeal after abuse allegationsÓ, Telegraph & Argus, 26 Aug 
2003, http://www:thetelegraphandargus:co:uk/archive/2003/08/26/8010529:MP_s_a 
ppeal_after_abuse_allegations/ 

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girls, some said to be as young as 11 or 12, have been raped, 
abused and prostituted by Asian men in their late teens and 
twenties over the last 18 months.Ó40 These are incredibly serious 
crimes, yet the local newspaper talks about it as if the claims came 
from nowhere, and have no substance, possibly casual calumny. 
Yet only a few days earlier, Channel 
4 
had said that they had 
details of an investigation by police and social services that had 
lasted almost 2 years! Would the police and social services spend 
so much time investigating this, if there was no evidence for it? In 
a town which had seen massive Òrace riotsÓ by Muslims 2 years 
earlier, would Channel 
4 
have risked reporting on the grooming 
gangs if the evidence looked dubious or insubstantial? And if this 
investigation into such serious criminality had been going on for 
18 months in Bradford, shouldnÕt the local newspaper and the 
local Member of Parliament have known something about it 
before the story was broken by a national TV company? In 
hindsight, given the recent Òrace riotsÓ by Muslims, it seems that 
Channel 4 showed great courage in exposing the grooming gangs in 
Bradford in 2003. 

Once the media and politicians had turned their attention to these 
grooming gangs in 2012, the public learned some more about the 
events in Bradford at this time. Around the time of the Parliamentary 
investigation, Cryer is quoted as having said that in 2003 Òshe was 
approached by about six mothers who said their daughters were being 
groomed for sex by Pakistani men.Ó41 In that later report it says that 
back in 2003 ÒAnn Cryer had tried to intercede with the community 
by asking a councillor to speak to Muslim elders, but the Muslim 
elders had said it was not their affair.Ó But the quotations of 
contemporaneous reports of what Cryer actually said in 2003 show 

40ÒMPÕs appeal after abuse allegationsÓ, Telegraph & Argus, 26 Aug 
2003, http://www:thetelegraphandargus:co:uk/archive/2003/08/26/8010529:MP_s_a 
ppeal_after_abuse_allegations/. 
41ÒMuslim gang Ôwhite rapeÕ claim prompts rowÓ, BBC News, 13 Nov 2012, http: 
//news:bbc:co:uk/1/hi/uk_politics/2102470:stm. 


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that in claiming that it was to do with ÒAsian cultureÓ rather than 
religion, she had led the public to believe the problems were 
nothing to do with Islam. Since Islam comes from Arabia rather than 
Asia, and since Asia has many religions and cultures other than those 
of Muslims, the public was led to believe that what was happening in 
Bradford involved criminal grooming gangs of many different 
religions. But Cryer was talking to Muslim leaders in order to get the 
grooming gangs to stop; there was apparently no need for her to talk 
to Hindu or Sikh leaders to get their youths to stop grooming young 
white girls. Thus, even at the time, Cryer should have been able to 
perceive the difference between Muslim culture and Asian culture. 

We are aware of no evidence showing that Ann Cryer spoke out 
about the activities of the grooming gangs before August 22 2003, 
when Channel 4 news disclosed the existence of the 18-month 
investigation into the grooming gangs by Bradford Council and West 
Yorkshire Police, although surely as the MP she must have known 
about such a major investigation into their activities. Perhaps she had 
known about this investigation, but had chosen to remain silent, as the 
previous year she came under criticism from left-wing Muslims for 
Òdamaging race relationsÓ, when she stated that ÒAsian gangsÓ in her 
constituency were out of control.42 Reflecting on these events now, it 
seems likely that the ÒAsianÓ gangs who were out of control were 
probably also connected to the grooming gangs (although this 
connection may not have been known to Ann Cryer at the time). 

4.9 2004 Edge of the City 
The events around Bradford in 2004 were to bring about nearly a 
decade of media silence on the grooming gangs. Throughout 2003, 
Channel 4 had been making a documentary in the ÒDispatchesÓ series 
which dealt with the Muslim grooming gangs in the Bradford area. 

42ÒÔAsian GangsÕ out of ControlÓ, BBC News, 6 Jul 2002, http://news:bbc:co:uk/1/ 
hi/uk_politics/2102470:stm. 

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The item that appeared on Channel 4 News in the above section 
probably came about because of the research that had gone into this 
Dispatches documentary. But in 2004 the entire documentary was 
withdrawn from broadcast, simply because part of the documentary 
re-iterated the claim that Muslims were grooming white children for 
sex.43 Pressure was brought to bear on Channel 4 by the West 
Yorkshire Police and an organisation calling itself ÒUnite Against 
Fascism.Ó 

Anna Hall, who made the documentary for Channel 4 was living 
in Leeds at that time and had been informed by the director of 
BarnardoÕs the Streets and Lanes project, which they had been 
running in Bradford since 1995.44 The full documentary about 

43The documentary has gone down in history as having Òbeen bannedÓ, and just after 
it was withdrawn from the schedule, even Muslim barristers were heard in interviews 
talking about it having Òbeen bannedÓ. 
44See: Anna Hall ÒHunt For BritainÕs Sex Gangs, C4Ó Broadcast 2 
May 2013, http://www:broadcastnow:co:uk/in-depth/hunt-for-britains-sex-gangs-c4/ 
5054504:article. 


In October 1996... I met Sara Swann, who ran BradfordÕs BarnardoÕs 
Streets and Lanes project. BarnardoÕs was interested in making a film 
to warn teenagers and educate parents about a pattern of child sexual 
exploitation that Sara had been following for a year... men were targeting
 girls aged 11 and up, giving them phones, taking them out and 
showering them with attention and affection. After they had sex, the 
men would introduce their friends to the girls, who would be asked to 
sleep with the new group of men. 

Police seemed powerless to stop it because the girls thought these men 
were their boyfriends. However controlled and degraded they felt, they 
were also very frightened. The explosive thing: the girls were white 
and living in multi-cultural Bradford and the perpetrators were Asian... 

I tried to get a film off the ground at Channel 4, but other commitments 
left it on the back burner... What was unbelievable was that men were 
gang-raping young girls and everybody wanted to pretend it wasnÕt 
happening. All anyone seemed concerned about was the risk of a race 
riot if we mentioned it. 

After nearly two years, I made a 90-minute doc, Edge Of The City. 
We dared to describe the Bradford perpetrators as Òoverwhelmingly 

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Bradford social services focused on a range of work done by the 
Council, and just a quarter of the documentary was about the 
grooming gangs. However, before the documentary could be 
shown in May 2004, Channel 
4 
conceded to censorship at the 
instigation of Colin Cramphorn, the Chief Constable of West 
Yorkshire Police: according to Anna Hall Òit was three weeks 
before local elections and he feared riots.Ó45 It was only 3 weeks to 
elections for local councillors and it was only 3 years since Muslims 
had rioted in Òrace riotsÓ in Bradford and Oldham, so the threat of 
them rioting again was very potent: ÒThe fires that burned across 
Lancashire and Yorkshire through the summer of 2001 signalled the 
rage of young Pakistanis and Bangladeshis of the second and third 
generation...Ó46 If ever there was an issue that cried out for local 
parliamentarians47 to address, and to use their powers to hold the 
police and child-care services to account, it is surely over the issue of 
the rape and prostitution of schoolgirls, who were targeted between 
leaving the care of the school and reaching the care of their parents. 

Asian.Ó The film was scheduled to go out in May 2004, three weeks 
before the local elections in Bradford, where 10 BNP candidates were 
standing three years after Asian ÔyouthsÕ were indicted in a Ôrace riotÕ. 

After the council viewed it, West YorkshireÕs chief constable asked for 
the film to be postponed amid fears of more riots. All hell broke loose. 
The BNP got hold of the story and used the film as propaganda. Police 
and social services said nothing. Several small voices in the Asian 
press said that if the story were true, it shouldnÕt be swept under the 
carpet.... 

For information about this BarnardoÕs project, see section 4.8 2003 Bradford/
Keighley. 
45Maggie Brown ÒThe Woman on a Mission to Expose Sexual AbuseÓ, The 
Guardian, 21 May 2013, http://www:theguardian:com/lifeandstyle/2013/may/21/wo 
man-expose-sexual-abuse-telford. 
46Arun Kundnani, ÒFrom Oldham to Bradford: the Violence of the ViolatedÓ, 1 
Oct 2001, http://www:irr:org:uk/news/from-oldham-to-bradford-the-violence-of-the 
-violated/. 
47At this point, as far as most of the people of Britain were concerned, this problem 
was entirely local to Bradford. 

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Instead of allowing for the democratic process to hold people to 
account, a national broadcaster crumpled to pressure from 
someone who should himself have been facing investigation for 
the failure of his underlings. The threat of massive violence by 
members of the Muslim community led a national TV company to 
withdraw the programme. 

Leading up to eventual broadcast of Edge of the City once the 
elections were over, pressure groups again attempted to get the 
documentary permanently banned, with a letter-writing campaign to 
the Labour government ministers.48 Three months after it was 
originally scheduled to be broadcast, the Edge of the City 
documentary was finally shown, albeit in an abnormally late night slot 
for such a documentary. Even so, it was watched by almost 2 million 
people. But as the director of the documentary recently noted, it 
brought about no change.49 It is possible that if Channel 4 had aired 
the programme in May 2004, then candidates may have been elected 
to the local council who would have campaigned on this issue and if 
elected, those representatives would then have had a democratic 
mandate to bring about change, and to stop this abuse. It seems clear 
that, as a matter of law as well as common sense, the possibility of a 
violent reaction to a lawful inquiry into so serious a matter should not 
have been considered a good reason to withdraw or postpone the 
documentary, 

Around the time of the broadcast in August 2004, West Yorkshire 
Police and Bradford Council said they: 

had spent the past two years investigating the 

allegations, but found Òno evidence of systematic 

exploitationÓ...it is important to note that some of this 

48ÒCampaign to Stop Race DocumentaryÓ, BBC News, 17 Aug 2004, http://news:b 
bc:co:uk/1/hi/entertainment/3572776:stm. 
49Maggie Brown ÒThe Woman on a Mission to Expose Sexual AbuseÓ, The 
Guardian, 21 May 2013, http://www:theguardian:com/lifeandstyle/2013/may/21/wo 
man-expose-sexual-abuse-telford. 

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programme was filmed nearly two years ago and 
things have moved on since.50 (emphasis added) 

These easy denials in 2004 have been reversed. In Bradford, in the 
first 6 months of 2013 alone, Òthe tally of suspected predators now 
stood at 90 arrests in the last six months.Ó51 

4.10 2005 Radio 5 programme 
On 18 December 2005, BBC Radio 5 Live also broadcast a 
programme about the grooming gangs. The programme apparently 
covered material that was consistent with the Channel 4 documentary. 
When the left-wing Asian activist Sunny Hundal commented on this 
Radio 5 programme, he said that this programme did not simply 
repeat some of the claims from the Edge of the City documentary. 

The report looked at the way in which Òthese children are 
ÔgroomedÕ into believing that these ÔpimpsÕ are in fact 
their boyfriends.Ó It also asks why Òso many of the men 
implicated in these crimes are British PakistanisÓ...It 
covered the same area (and slightly more) as the C4 
doc [sic].52(emphasis added) 

But Hundal pointed out that by 2005 West Yorkshire Police had, 
Òwithout explanationÓ, now shut down the special unit they had 
set up to investigate these type of crimes.53 

50ÒCampaign to Stop Race DocumentaryÓ, BBC News website, 17 Aug 2004, http: 
//news:bbc:co:uk/1/hi/entertainment/3572776:stm 

51ÒÔWeÕll tackle the sexual predatorsÕÓ, Telegraph & Argus, 11 May 
2013, http://www:thetelegraphandargus:co:uk/news/10413534:___We___ll_tackle_t 
he_sexual_predators___/. 
52ÒThe Case of Pakistani Men ÔGroomingÕ Young White Girls -Part 2Ó, Asians 
In Media, 19 Sep 2005, http://www:Asiansinmedia:org/news/article:php/radio/1109. 
53ÒThe Case of Pakistani Men ÔGroomingÕ Young White Girls -Part 2Ó, Asians 
In Media, 19 Sep 2005, http://www:Asiansinmedia:org/news/article:php/radio/1109. 

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We can clearly see the detrimental effect of the campaign by the 
racism groups and the Left to stop the Muslim grooming gangs 
becoming an electoral issue in Bradford in 2004. Once the Channel 4 
documentary was withdrawn and marginalised as ÒracistÓ, the local 
council and the police force jointly denied there was a problem. They 
claimed that the information in that documentary was two years old, 
suggesting that the problem had been resolved, when there is every 
reason to believe it was getting worse.54 Then, when the hue and cry 
had died down, the police quietly closed the unit which was 
investigating these crimes! This provides a very good explanation as 
to why, despite the controversy in 2003 and 2004, there were no 
convictions in Bradford between 2005 and 2013. If the police had not 
closed down this special unit, who knows how many perpetrators they 
would have found in the subsequent years, who knows how many 
hundreds of schoolgirls could have been saved from a life of sex 
slavery. 

Hundal described the situation as Òpolitical correctness gone 
mad.Ó Hundal went on to point out that even the ÒuselessÓ local 
community leaders say the police are Òtoo politically correct and 
unwilling to disturb racial and religious sensibilities.Ó55 

What it [the Radio 5 programme] should have said was 


ÒA year after C4 uncovered abuse by Pakistani men of 

young white girls, nothing seems to have changed. The 

abuse is carrying on, the police is [sic] powerless and has 

done little, and neither have the so-called community 

leaders.Ó That would brought [sic] focus to why the 

police is [sic] failing the local community in tackling 

54In the middle of 2013, 45 men in West Yorkshire were arrested, with all the indications
 being that many of these men are ÒAsian.Ó Suzannah Hills, ÒUKÕs biggest child 
sex gang uncovered as 45 men are arrested over abuse of girls as young as 13Ó, 
Daily Mail, 18 Aug 2013, http://www:dailymail:co:uk/news/article-2396486/UKs-b 
iggest-child-sex-gang-uncovered-45-men-arrested-abuse-girls-young-13:html. 
55ÒThe Case of Pakistani Men ÔGroomingÕ Young White Girls -Part 2Ó, Asians 
In Media, 19 Sep 2005, http://www:Asiansinmedia:org/news/article:php/radio/1109. 

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these youths. 56 

It might appear to the reader that the socialist Sunny Hundal was an 
exception, someone with the clarity and courage to point out that 
there should be some sociological or ideological investigation as to 
why so many of the men who were involved in grooming these 
schoolgirls were Muslims. Au contraire: Sunny Hundal insists in this 
piece that it is irrelevant that the grooming gangs were almost entirely 
Muslims. He inveighs against political correctness gone mad, yet will 
not consider that there might be some connection between Muslim 
culture and this unusual form of criminality: ÒI was frequently asked 
if this was a widespread problem, implying whether Muslim (or 
Asian) men picked on young white girls for cultural reasons. That is 
of course rubbish, and these are simply criminals...Ó57 

4.11 2005 Luton and ÒReal CaliphateÓ 
Whilst journalists and commentators refused to talk about the religion 
of the grooming gangs, in 2005 Clive Gresswell wrote an article in a 
Luton newspaper, apparently quoting from a letter which it was 
alleged a devout Islamic organisation was distributing to Muslim men, 
encouraging them to seduce non-Muslim women, using alcoholic 
intoxication as part of the process.58 After the controversy in 
Bradford in 2003 and 2004, this story should have resonated loudly 
across the country. But it was never picked up by the national media. 
This is notable, considering that in 1988 Sikhs had been involved in 
gang violence with Muslim grooming gangs in Wolverhampton, and 
ten years later when the Muslim gangs were still preying on Sikh girls 

56ÒThe Case of Pakistani Men ÔGroomingÕ Young White Girls -Part 2Ó, Asians 
In Media, 19 Sep 2005, http://www:Asiansinmedia:org/news/article:php/radio/1109. 
57ÒThe Case of Pakistani Men ÔGroomingÕ Young White Girls -Part 2Ó, Asians 
In Media, 19 Sep 2005, http://www:Asiansinmedia:org/news/article:php/radio/1109. 
58See section 16. Appendix 6: Real Khilafah -Letter to Moslem Youth for a facsimile 
copy of the letter from ÒReal KhilafahÓ, and section 17. Appendix 7: Luton Article 
on Real Khilafah for a facsimile copy of the article by Clive Gresswell. 

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with no attempt by the agencies of the state to stop them, Sikhs set up 
the Sikh Awareness Society in 1998. And as we have seen above, 
Sikhs were again embroiled in violence in Derby in 2001, following 
claims that Real Khilafah, had been instructing Muslims to groom 
non-Muslim girls.59 In the light of these many incidents where Sikhs 
were warning about the grooming gangs, it is astonishing that in 2005 
the national media should ignore claims that Islamic organisations in 
England were allegedly running campaigns to encourage such 
grooming activities. In addition to these many incidents between 1988 
and 2001 where Sikhs had been agitating and campaigning against 
Muslim grooming gangs, this story in Luton broke just one year after 
the national controversy over the Edge of the City documentary. 

Over a period of 17 years, there was evidence of these Muslim 
grooming gangs operating in the Midlands, Yorkshire, and now in 
Luton, just outside of London. It defies belief that the national media 
and Òanti-racistÓ activists could ignore these events in Luton, when 
just one year earlier they denounced the ÒracismÓ of those who 
pointed out that it was ÒAsiansÓ grooming white schoolgirls in 
Bradford and Keighley. Here were reports indicating as clearly as 
possible that race was not the issue: Muslims were being given 
religious-ideological justification for sexually seducing non-Muslim 
girls, as part of a supremacist Islamic project. But from 2004 onwards, 
the vast majority of journalists, child-care professionals and political 
activists seem to have adopted a policy of Òsee no evil, hear no evilÓ, 
where Muslim grooming activities were concerned. The pressure 
groups had succeeded in their attempt to ensure that no-one would 
dare speak out about these gangs prostituting vulnerable schoolgirls. 

By this time, more Sikh organisations were also making the 
incredible claim, that as far back as the early 1990s, other 
fundamentalist Islamic groups were advocating that Muslim men in 
Britain should deceive non-Muslims girls and seduce them into 

59We have found no evidence to suggest the organisation reported in this 2005 incident 
in Luton is a different organisation to that mentioned in the incidents in Derby in 2001. 

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Islam.60 The Sikh websites claimed that these devout Islamic 
organisations were telling Muslim men to target vulnerable girls 
(plain or ugly girls, who would be unaccustomed to attention), 
deceiving them into thinking that the Muslim man was genuinely 
interested in a relationship and possibly even marriage. The claim 
was that devout Muslims were instructed to Òbe ambiguous about 
their own backgrounds by for example only describing themselves 
as Asian,Ó in order to have greater success with this deception.61 

Perhaps when Sikhs drew the attention of multiculturalists, feminists, 
or left-wing activists to this in 2004, these activists could dismiss the 
claims as being beyond belief: certainly such mendacity and cunning 
does not accord with what those brought up as Christians would 
expect from religious people. Nevertheless, by this point there had 
been multiple reports that fundamentalist Islamic organisations were 
encouraging behaviour similar to that of the grooming gangs. It 
would be dogmatic of anyone with this information to dismiss the 
idea that the activities of the grooming gangs were entirely 
compatible with Islamic doctrine. 

4.12 2007 Julie Bindel: a lone voice 
In 2007 Julie Bindel was a voice in the wilderness.62 Bindel drew 
attention to the fact that the police were doing nothing about the 
grooming gangs in Yorkshire and Lancashire. Bindel focussed on 
how the mothers of the victims had taken it upon themselves to 
gather names and addresses, car registration details, and even 
photographs of the perpetrators. She quotes one of the mothers 
saying the police had told her they would not arrest Pakistani 

60http://www:whyichoseSikhism:com/?p=know&s=10secrets. 
61This ambiguity -blurring the distinction between ÒMuslimsÓ and ÒAsiansÓ -has 
been continued by the police, media and social services themselves, right up until 
2013. 
62Julie Bindel, ÒMothers of PreventionÓ, The Sunday Times, 2007 http://www:thesu 
ndaytimes:co:uk/sto/news/uk_news/article72310:ece 

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men for sexual offences, because it would start Òa race riotÓ (i.e. 
the Pakistanis would riot).63 Once again, the law enforcement 
agencies were apparently refusing to apply the law to Muslims, for 
fear that they would riot. 

What steps did the police take to stop this lucrative business, a 
business based on providing schoolgirls to be raped? They sent letters 
to 70 men who were Òspending an unusual amount of time with young 
girlsÓ, requiring them to sign the letter to indicate that the men knew 
the girls were beneath the age of consent.64 Bindel points out that the 
parents were so angry with the pathetic response by the police, that 
they were instructing lawyers to seek redress. ÒThis could result in the 
biggest civil action ever brought against police for failing to protect 
children from sexual predators,Ó wrote Bindel.65 We can find no 
further record that such legal action took place. We do not know if the 
case was simply dropped, or if the police settled out of court (in 
which case a confidentiality clause would likely have been 
incorporated into the settlement agreement). 

BindelÕs investigation showed that the police were deliberately 
ignoring evidence gathered for them by desperate family members. 
We see from the excuses of the police, that the riots by Muslims in 
Oldham and Bradford in 2001 have paid dividends many times over. 
Channel 4 crumpled and withdrew the Edge of the City documentary 
under the threat of riots in Bradford, thus stopping the grooming 
activities from becoming an electoral issue. And years later, the 
(supposed) fear of Muslims rioting was used as an excuse not to arrest 
and prosecute the actual gangs who were raping schoolgirls. Since 
police were so brazenly refusing to enforce the (possibly inadequate) 
laws to protect these schoolgirls, what other avenues were open to 

63Julie Bindel, ÒMothers of PreventionÓ, The Sunday Times, 30 Sep 2007, http://ww 
w:thesundaytimes:co:uk/sto/news/uk_news/article72310:ece. 
64Julie Bindel, ÒMothers of PreventionÓ, The Sunday Times, 30 Sep 2007, http://ww 
w:thesundaytimes:co:uk/sto/news/uk_news/article72310:ece. 
65Julie Bindel, ÒMothers of PreventionÓ, The Sunday Times, 30 Sep 2007, http://ww 
w:thesundaytimes:co:uk/sto/news/uk_news/article72310:ece 

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concerned organisations to stop the grooming activities? We have 
seen from the events in Bradford in 2003 and 2004, that the Muslim 
community would not do anything to stop the gangs. Thus, at this 
stage, the only option left would have been to educate the schoolgirls 
about how the grooming gangs work, so that the schoolgirls could 
possibly protect themselves from being victimised, when everyone 
else had failed them. It is no surprise that, over the many years that 
these grooming gangs were operating, Sikhs had often resorted to 
violence to stop the grooming gangs. 

4.13 2008 My Dangerous Loverboy 
In September 2010, the Serious Organised Crime Agency announced 
the launch of: 

a film designed to protect children and young people who 
might be vulnerable to sexual exploitation is launched 
today. ÒMy Dangerous LoverboyÓ tells the story of a 
young girl who is groomed and sexually exploited by an 
older man before being trafficked around the UK between 
groups of men. The film is aimed at professionals including
 front line police officers, child support 
workers, and teachers -who are in a position to spot 
warning signs and to help prevent this kind of 
exploitation taking place.66 (emphasis added) 

This announcement by SOCA is not the success it appears. By any 
measure, this project has been a failure.67 The film was first mooted 

66ÒÔMy Dangerous LoverboyÕ film launched to combat child sexual exploitationÓ, 
21 Sep 2010, http://www:soca:gov:uk/news/276-my-dangerous-loverboy-film-launc 
hed-to-combat-child-sexual-exploitation. 
67The website associated with My Dangerous Loverboy appears to have come into 
existence on 24 Jan 2011 (that is the earliest copy of the site to be found in the Internet
 Archive http://web:archive:org/web/20110124230909/http://www:mydangerouslo 
verboy:com/.) Moreover, it appears that this website and the availability of this ver


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in 2008, and was to be shown to the schoolgirls themselves. But by 
2010, we see that SOCA is talking about the film being targeted at 
teachers, police officers, and social workers. After decades which 
showed that the police would not protect the victims, the schoolgirls 
were not even to be provided with the educational materials once 
these materials had been produced. To this day, there is no evidence 
that the film has ever been shown to schoolgirls by the schools or 
anyone else.68 

The first version of the film was ready by July 2008, but a scene 
showing drug-taking was removed. The final version was handed over 
to the UK Human Trafficking Centre (UKHTC) in February 2009. At 
this point, the film was shown to selected schoolgirls, but was never 
subsequently shown to the potential victims. 

Trial screenings took place in a number of Sheffield 
secondary schools to widespread praise, but viewings 
have subsequently been restricted to professionals 
working in the field of child sexual exploitation. It is 
understood that the centre, part of the Serious Organised 
Crime Agency, now hopes to have the film ready to be 

sion of the film is a cut-down version of the original film. See ÒShock at Teesside 
child trafficking discoveryÓ, Gazette Live, 12 Feb 2011, http://www:gazettelive:co:u 
k/news/local-news/shock-teesside-child-trafficking-discovery-3682920. One of the 
producers, David Grant, 

now believes more needs to be done to get the film into schools and 
youth centres. He added: ÒPart of the problem is that in many cases 
the victims have no idea they have been exploited. We need to educate,
 and use education, to make young people aware that this is a very 
real threat.Ó [...] Now, the team behind the project are using social 
networking and the internet to increase awareness of the issue. Grant 
added: ÒA shorter, pop-video-type version of the film is available on 
our website and we want it to be promoted on twitter and facebook as 
much as possible.Ó 

68Andrew Norfolk, ÒAnger as educational film on grooming withheldÓ, The Times, 
21 Jan 2011, http://www:thetimes:co:uk/tto/news/uk/article2883087:ece. 

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shown in schools next year.69 

What is clear from the synopsis of the film, is that by 2008 
UKHTC and SOCA were aware of the nature of the grooming 
gang phenomenon: ÒThe 20-minute drama... examines the 
relationship between a young white girl and an Asian man who 
initially poses as her boyfriend before luring her into a world of 
parties, alcohol and drugs, then sells her to be used for sex by 
several older men.Ó70 The title of the film was taken from the name 
the euphemistic concept the Dutch use to describe their countryÕs 
problem with Muslim grooming gangs.71 There are 3 significant 
facets to this: 

1. Schools in the Netherlands do at least provide some training to 
schoolgirls so they can learn how to identify the grooming gangsÕ 
activities, and thus they can perhaps protect themselves from being 
entrapped by the gangs: 
Anita visits schools to warn girls exactly what a lover boy 
looks like, and makes no bones of the fact that most of 
the gangs are operated by Dutch-born Moroccan and 
Turkish men. ÒI am not politically correct. I am not 
afraid of being called a racist, which would be untrue. I 
tell the girls that lover boys are young, dark-skinned and 
very good looking. They will have lots of money and 
bling as well as a big car. They will give out cigarettes 

69Andrew Norfolk, ÒAnger as educational film on grooming withheldÓ, The Times, 
21 Jan 2011, http://www:thetimes:co:uk/tto/news/uk/article2883087:ece. 
70Andrew Norfolk, ÒAnger as educational film on grooming withheldÓ, The Times, 
21 Jan 2011, http://www:thetimes:co:uk/tto/news/uk/article2883087:ece. We can infer
 from this that before 2008 UKHTC were aware of the specific characteristics of 
the Muslim grooming gangs. The Sikh Awareness Society have posted My Dangerous
 Loverboy on YouTube. They have added captions to strengthen the message, as 
the video is far too subtle and ambiguous considering the seriousness of the problem. 
http://www:youtube:com/watch?v=Kjwvo8HlqyM. 
71See section 2.5 International Dimensions for an overview of the Dutch problem 
with grooming gangs. 


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and vodka.Ó72 

The situation in the Netherlands is clearly less toxic than in Britain, 
since the schoolgirls are given some warning and instructions 
(however euphemistic the concept of ÒloverboyÓ might be). It would 
be better still if parents and society as a whole were given this 
information, so that others could keep a watchful eye out for signs 
that a schoolgirl is being groomed for prostitution. 

2. The fact that the British institutions are using the same 
euphemistic concept employed by the Dutch proves the child-care 
professionals and national agencies in Britain know that the 
problem is not unique to Britain, and these organisations know 
that in the Netherlands the perpetrators are not Pakistani 
Muslims but mainly Moroccan and Turkish Muslims. This shows 
the lie to all the reporting that this is ÒAsian gangsÓ and that the 
cause of it is ÒAsian culture.Ó 
3. Since the Serious Organised Crime Agency (the agency in 
control of UKHTC) were cognisant of the similarity of the religious 
characteristics and the modus operendi of the gangs in Britain and 
Holland, we must ask: why is this not considered to be Òserious 
organised crimeÓ?73 Organised criminal behaviour, replicated in a 
country neighbouring Britain, surely falls within the remit of SOCA: 
many of the reports on the grooming gangs in Britain point out that 
the gangs are not only involved in grooming, rape and pimping, but 
they are also connected with drug-dealing. One is left wondering, just 
what constitutes Òserious crimeÓ for SOCA? These gangs could be 
making millions of pounds every year, and there is no indication that 
any police force is trying to break them up by tracking their finances. 
72Sue Reid ÒA Feminist Revolution that Cruelly BackfiredÓ, The Daily Mail, 23 
Nov 2012, http://www:dailymail:co:uk/news/article-2237170/Why-Amsterdams-leg 
al-brothels-lesson-Britain-telling-truth-sex-gangs-race:html 

73We will argue later that the pimping activities and other criminal activities of these 
gangs appear to generate huge amounts of money for the gangs. 

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The creation of this educational film and the failure to ensure it 
was delivered to its intended audience, shows very significant failures 
on the part of SOCA, CEOP, and UKHTC. That the same ÒloverboyÓ 
concept was used, shows that the official national police agencies 
were aware of the similarities between what is going on in Britain and 
what is going on in the Netherlands. 

4.14 2008 BBC Panorama: Teenage Sex For Sale 
On 27 March 2008, Panorama produced a documentary for BBC TV, 
which dealt with the Muslim grooming gangs. All the features that 
were to be recognised by Parliament in 2013, are to be found in this 
documentary. However, we can see from the way in which the 
documentary was summarised and reviewed at the time (and indeed, 
from the way the documentary was edited), that every effort was 
being made to ignore the elephant in the room: the gangs in the 
documentary were Muslim men, and the victims were white girls. For 
instance, the BBCÕs own review of the programme does not once 
mention that the gangs are ÒAsianÓ or ÒMuslimÓ, nor does it mention 
that the schoolgirls being targeted are overwhelmingly Caucasian.74 
Nevertheless, this documentary was a significant milestone: unlike the 
Edge of the City documentary, it was not forced into being withdrawn. 
And unlike the Edge of the City documentary, where the grooming 
gangs were only part of a bigger story, Panorama devoted an entire 
programme to the subject. It thus appears that Panorama were able to 
circumvent the pressure heaped on Channel 4 by making sure that 
only the most tangential reference was made to ÒAsiansÓ in the 

74See PanoramaÕs own summaries of the programme here http://news:bbc:co:u 
k/1/hi/programmes/panorama/7302713:stm and here http://news:bbc:co:uk/1/hi/pro 
grammes/panorama/7314696:stm. Interestingly, one story used the concept of 
the children being Òsex slavesÓ Kathryn Knight, ÒIs political correctness stopping
 police ending the misery of the teenage sex slaves?Ó, Daily Mail, 27 
Mar 2008, http://www:dailymail:co:uk/femail/article-546809/Is-political-correctness 
-stopping-police-ending-misery-teenage-sex-slaves:html. 

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context of this documentary. 

The documentary follows a small, dedicated Lancashire Police 
unit round Burnley. Significantly, almost no mention is made of the 
contrast between the ethnicity of the perpetrators and the victims, and 
where there is the opportunity to draw attention to this, 
circumlocution is instead used within the narrative.75 It is not until 
one-third of the way through the documentary, that a throwaway 
remark from a police officer indicates that there is any significance to 
the ethnicity of the perpetrators and the victims: ÒWithin a minute 
sheÕs changed her story, from waiting for her Dad to waiting for her 
boyfriend, in an Asian area [...] Police are suspicious -they have 
intelligence of an Asian man using this name, has been grooming 
girls.Ó76 It is only then, in retrospect, that one remembers that the men 
shown earlier, convicted for having sex with teenage girls over a 
prolonged period, were both Asian, and that this might be the theme 
of this documentary.77 Thus both the documentary (and the material 
discussing the documentary) have gone out of their way not to address 
this contrast in ethnicity. 

Mohammed Shafiq is interviewed in this documentary, and in the 
following years he was to be almost the only Muslim spokesman in 
Britain to speak out about the gangs. Whilst the programme again 
avoids the issue that the gangs are composed almost entirely of 
ÒAsianÓ (i.e. Muslim) men, that they are interviewing a Muslim about 
this, and he is pointing out that it is white girls who the gangs are 
after, suggests that this is indeed the same phenomenon which CEOP 

75ÒAuthorities are already alert to the danger posed by individual paedophiles. But 
now they are concerned that evidence from some local communities points to an 
even more sinister threat: organised sexual exploitation of children by ruthless criminal
 gangs.Ó http://www:youtube:com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=zpDfoD 
sZU_M&t=324. It seems clear that Òlocal communitiesÓ is some kind of code. 
76 http://www:youtube:com/watch?v=zpDfoDsZU_M&t=206. 
77At the point where the photographs of the convicted criminals was shown, no mention
 is made of them being Asian or Muslim, and no mention is made of the ethnicity 
of the victims. http://www:youtube:com/watch?v=4m55ZCSWQ2M&t=351. 

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claim to have first ÒuncoveredÓ in 2011, and which they named 
Òlocalised grooming.Ó Later on in the documentary, Mohammed 
Shafiq states that the police are being too cautious in pursuing these 
criminals because they fear being accused of racism,78 showing once 
again how political correctness hinders the police and facilitates the 
grooming gangs. 

The implicit subject of the documentary is that gangs of Muslim 
men are systematically grooming and pimping young white girls. The 
money being made from these activities seems considerable. 
Mohammed Shafiq says that having seen a drop in their income from 
drug-related crime, the gangs are supplementing their income by 
prostituting young white girls, where £200 to £300 is charged for the 
girl.79 Prof. Barrett, from Bedfordshire University is interviewed,80 
and says he has no doubt that the grooming of the schoolgirls is 
orchestrated, and that the younger Òthe womanÓ the higher the price. 
He says that he thinks the gangs are earning Òsignificantly moreÓ than 
Òtens of thousands of poundsÓ per schoolgirl each year. The girls 
describe how they were prostituted on an industrial scale, comparing 
what happened to them as being made to have sex with a new 
customer as soon as the previous one had left, being on a metaphorical 
Òconveyor belt.Ó81 When asked if she was paid for any of this, the girl 
replied that she wasnÕt. She also made it clear that if she hadnÕt done 
what was required, she would have been imprisoned until she 
complied. These two factors indicate that this is far more like sex 
slavery than it is like prostitution. Once again, there were implications 
here which the documentary could have taken up, but does not. 

The Panorama programme states that, at a national level police 

78http://www:youtube:com/watch?v=RFIfcTqBsZc&t=1634 . 
79 http://www:youtube:com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=zpDfoDsZU_M 
&t=345. 
80 http://www:youtube:com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=zpDfoDsZU_M 
&t=432. 
81 http://www:youtube:com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=zpDfoDsZU_M 
&t=377. 

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have concentrated on prosecuting those who traffic young women into 
the UK for sex, and on internet grooming and pornography; but that 
the police agencies have ignored British girls being trafficked 
internally, and ignored the real-world grooming in preference for 
concentrating on online grooming.82 A representative from CROP is 
interviewed in the Panorama documentary, and she makes it clear that 
whenever the problem arises in an area it is treated as a short-term and 
purely local problem. And once an individual, local case appears to 
have been resolved83, resources are taken away and the problem is 
then ignored.84 Detective Whelan states in the Panorama 
documentary, that information is the vital resource needed by the 
police in order to bring prosecutions.85 

After the Panorama documentary was broadcast, questions were 
asked in the House of Lords. Talking about the levels of violence used 
by the gangs, Lord McColl of Dulwich reiterated: ÒChildren are much 
more frightened of the pimps than they are of the law, and the 
violence that they suffer is terrible. One girl had boiling water held 
above her throat; another had her tongue nailed to a table.Ó86 Sadly, 

82http://www:youtube:com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=zpDfoDsZU_M 
&t=510. 
83By ÒresolvedÓ this almost certainly does not mean the gang have been convicted, 
since at this time (2008), there had been no more than 14 convictions in 11 years. In 
the Bradford scandal of 2003, it was reported that 30 white girls had been groomed 
and raped, over an 18 month period, in that one town. See section 4.8 2003 Bradford/
Keighley. 
84ÒThis problem is seemingly not taken seriously and not understood, because if it 
was understood people in authority would realise... it needs long-term investment... 
these men are in it for the long-run.Ó Sarah Lloyd, CROP, ÒPanorama: Teenage Sex 
for SaleÓ, BBC, http://www:youtube:com/watch?v=_VdoT12Fwgw&t=77. This was 
also observed by Sunny Hundal, in connection with the controversy in Bradford in 
2004, see section 4.10 2005 Radio 5 programme. 
85http://www:youtube:com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=RFIfcTqBsZc&t= 
1543. It should be obvious that such information needs to be collated and disseminated
 by a national police agency for the benefit of other forces and agencies, which 
once again highlights the failings of SOCA and CEOP. 
86http://www:publications:parliament:uk/pa/ld200708/ldhansrd/text/80403-0006:h 

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this was in the context of a debate about HIV, rather than a full debate 
on the grooming gangs; but what this indicates, is that politicians 
were aware of the contents of this documentary, but still the scandal 
of the grooming gangs could be ignored by Parliament for another 5 
years. The BBC reported that Òthe government has said it will 
produce a warning video for use in all schools.Ó 87 We assume that 
this refers to the video we discussed in section 4.13 2008 My 
Dangerous Loverboy: a video which has never been shown to its 
intended audience. 

At one point in the documentary, the police speak to some of the 
men in cars hanging around the teenage girls: the men make it clear 
they blame the parents for allowing these girls out, and that they 
definitely do not attribute any blame to the adult men having sex with 
the under-age girls. Whilst the ethnicity of the men remains 
concealed, we can infer from their stated attitudes that they are almost 
certainly Asian, and very probably Muslim Asians. ÒI blame the 
parents.... they should keep them [the girls] locked up at home... if my 
sister went out like that IÕd kick the fuck out of her and send her back 
home... ThatÕs the proper way, thatÕs how we should be.Ó88 This 
manÕs cultural values are those of a society where the women are 
constrained in the home, and where any woman or girl who is outside 
the home is available for sex. And the way in which the women and 
girls are to be constrained within the home is by extreme violence 
should they disobey (so-called Òhonour violenceÓ). The interviewee 
sees these as the ÒproperÓ cultural and moral values.89 What we are 

tm. 
87ÒTeenage Sex For Sale: PanoramaÓ, BBC website, http://news:bbc:co:uk/1/hi/p 
rogrammes/panorama/7302713:stm 
88http://www:youtube:com/watch?v=RFIfcTqBsZc&t=1518. 
89Of course, our society does not (yet) have the other values that go with such cultural 
norms: blood feuds, communal violence and vendettas. Interestingly enough, when 
Muslims were grooming Sikh schoolgirls in 1988, 2001 and 2013, the Sikhs did initiate
 Òcommunal violenceÓ, speaking to Muslim grooming gangs in what they would 
understand as Òthe proper way.Ó 

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witnessing is the inevitable failure of the cowardly policy of 
ÒmulticulturalismÓ: these Asian men are simply applying the 
traditional values of their culture, in a society which permits them to 
get away with abusing its tolerance, freedom and openness. If these 
men found that their daughters and sisters had been groomed and 
raped, they make it clear they would employ violence, rather than 
seek a civilised solution. As we will see later, when one examines 
Islamic morality and the history of Muslim culture, there is a deep 
tradition within Muslim culture for sex-slavery. Just as the men in the 
documentary see violence and the oppression of females as acceptable 
modern values, why should we be surprised if Muslims in Britain also 
perpetuate Islamic attitudes to sex-slavery? Multiculturalism tells 
such people: thereÕs nothing wrong with your values. 

In connection with the Panorama documentary, the BBC 
publicised a list of signs that indicate a child is being groomed:90 
Òchange in performance at school in a short timeÓ or Òusing street 
languageÓ or having Òa street nameÓ are given as indicators. Once 
again, an opportunity is missed: parents and schoolgirls could be 
informed about indicators that a girl is being entrapped. However, 
what should perhaps be the most obvious signal -a young white girl 
having adult ÒAsianÓ male friends -is not listed as a warning sign. 
Perhaps thousands of girls became victims of these gangs, because 
such opportunities were not taken, because the professionals involved 
feared the false accusation of ÒracismÓ. 

At this time, the BBC also distributed a document by Prof. Barrett 
called Abused Girls: What Do We Know?91 In this document he 
points out: 

1. That in 1885 W.T.Stead of the Pall Mall Gazette exposed how 
13 year old girls could be bought and put into a life of 
prostitution. Even though Stead did this to prove a point and for 
90 http://news:bbc:co:uk/1/hi/programmes/panorama/7314444:stm. 
91http://news:bbc:co:uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/27_03_08_whatweknow:pdf. 

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the sake of the girls, he was imprisoned for this in the 19th 

century. 

2. The ChildrenÕs Act (1989) enshrined the principle that in a 
court the welfare of a child must come before those of an adult 
but that this Òappears to give way to operational caveats such as 
wider issues of culture, politics and geography.Ó 
The implication is clear: the political expedient of pretending that 
there is Òcommunity cohesionÓ and ÒmulticulturalismÓ overrides the 
aims of the 1989 ChildrenÕs Act. The well-being, and even the actual 
lives, of children are being sacrificed on the altar of multiculturalism. 
If W.T.Stead was to see the cowardice of 21st century journalists, he 
would weep. Would any contemporary journalist risk prison to 
demonstrate the existence of this modern sex-slavery? 

4.15 2009 Rise of English Defence League 
In March 2009, a local group formed calling itself ÒThe United 
People of LutonÓ, began to protest against Muslims who had gathered 
to abuse and spit at soldiers at a homecoming parade in Luton earlier 
that year. A few months later this group went national, and the United 
People of Luton became ÒThe English Defence LeagueÓ (EDL).92 
Whilst the EDLÕs original focus had been Muslim extremists who 
showed loyalty to Muslims globally rather than to the country of 
which they were citizens, it was not long before the EDL were also 
campaigning against the Muslim grooming gangs, and the failure of 
the police and child-care professionals to do anything to stop the 
gangs. These demonstrations focussed on Blackpool, after the 2009 
Independent Police Complaints Commission ruling, that the trial 
against two Muslim men for the murder of schoolgirl Charlene 
Downes collapsed when Òthe investigating team were guilty of a 

92Dominic Casciani, ÒWho are the English Defence League?Ó, BBC News, 11 Sep 
2009, http://news:bbc:co:uk/1/hi/magazine/8250017:stm. 

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strategic and tactical failure in the management of the audio and video 
material they obtained...Ó93 

None of the official accounts of how the nation woke up to the 
grooming gang phenomenon mention the effect of the EDL, but it is 
clear that the EDL were protesting about this issue throughout 2010. 
On 3 August 2010, the local Blackpool newspaper reported that 
Òmore than 150 members of the English Defence League (EDL), 
which exists to shun Islam, protested on St ChadÕs Headland, in South 
Shore Ð claiming to be demonstrating for justice for missing 
schoolgirl Charlene Downes.Ó94 By May 2011, the EDL had held 
three demonstrations in Blackpool, focussing on the case of Charlene 
Downes in particular, but also with reference to the wider problem 
concerning Muslim grooming gangs.95 The third EDL demonstration 
in Blackpool had over 2000 EDL protesters present.96 

Between the EDLÕs first demonstration about Muslim 
grooming gangs in Blackpool in 2010 and their third 
demonstration in 2011 Andrew Norfolk began to report on the 
grooming gangs (after a long period where we can find very little 
from him on this issue). It is hard to establish whether the EDL were 
the cause of this turnaround, but certainly they were campaigning very 

93Graham Smith, ÒPolice rapped for blunders in murder case of girl Ôturned into 
kebab meatÕÓ, The Daily Mail, 16 Oct 2009, http://www:dailymail:co:uk/news/artic 
le-1220815/Police-disciplined-blunders-murder-case-girl-turned-kebabs:html. 
94ÒFar right protest in BlackpoolÓ, Blackpool Gazette, 3 Aug 2010, http://www:bla 
ckpoolgazette:co:uk/news/local/far-right-protest-in-blackpool-1-1567006. 
95ÒOn Saturday 26 March [2011] the EDL will hold a third demo in Blackpool to 
demand justice for Charlene Downes.Ó Musings of a Durotrigan, ÒBlackpool EDL 
Demo: Justice for Charlene DownesÓ, 14 Mar 2011, http://durotrigan:blogspot:c 
o:uk/2011/03/blackpool-edl-demo-justice-for-charlene:html. In an ideal world, we 
would cite references to pages on the EDLÕs website, but since 2010 their website 
has been taken down many times by Islamic cyber-terrorists, thus we must turn to 
secondary websites for information concerning the EDLÕs activities in these years. 
96Ò2,000 EDL protesters gather on Blackpool PromenadeÓ, Blackpool Gazette, 28 
May 2011, http://www:blackpoolgazette:co:uk/news/local/2_000_edl_protesters_gat 
her_on_blackpool_promenade_1_3428595. 

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visibly on this issue in the months before Norfolk wrote an article The 
Times attributed with transforming the attitude of politicians and 
child-care professionals. We are gratified to see that the case on the 
disappearance of Charlene Downes is now being re-opened.97 

4.16 2011 Andrew NorfolkÕs pivotal article 
In January 2011, Andrew Norfolk wrote an article for The 
Times 
newspaper which is claimed to have formed a watershed.98 He 
went back through all the court cases for convictions of groups of 
men who groomed schoolgirls for sex. Between 1997 and 2010, he 
found 56 men who fit this criterion. Only 5 out of the 56 men 
convicted were not Muslims. Muslims are less than 5% of the 
population, but in NorfolkÕs retrospective survey, they were 91% 
of those convicted. An extraordinary statistical inversion such as this 
demands further investigation.99 On the basis of this and related 
articles, Norfolk received two coveted prizes from his peers for 
investigative journalism.100 

It is the evidence from this article by Norfolk which is credited 
with prompting the government to have a Select Committee 
investigate the grooming gangs. 

97Andrew Norfolk, ÒNew inquiry ten years after sex crime victim Charlene 
Downes vanishedÓ, The Times, 1 Nov 2013, http://www:thetimes:co:uk/tto/news/u 
k/crime/article3909960:ece. 
98Andrew Norfolk, ÒRevealed: conspiracy of silence on UK sex gangsÓ, The Times, 
5 Jan 2011 http://www:thetimes:co:uk/tto/news/uk/crime/article2863058:ece 
99The prosecutions Norfolk used to perform his analysis are almost certainly the tip of 
the iceberg. As we have noted, the charity CROP estimates there are 10,000 victims in 
the UK. Paul Vallely, ÒChild Sex Grooming: the Asian QuestionÓ, The Independent, 
10 May 2012 http://www:independent:co:uk/news/uk/crime/child-sex-grooming-the 
-Asian-question-7729068:html. 
100http://theorwellprize:co:uk/shortlists/andrew-norfolk/. In 2012 Norfolk also received
 the Paul Foot Award for his journalism on the grooming gangs. http://en:w 
ikipedia:org/wiki/Paul_Foot_Award. 

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There was little media coverage of the issue in the 
intervening years but in [November] 2010 there were two 
trials which again saw groups of Asian men convicted for 
sexual offences against white British girls...The first of 
the series of Andrew NorfolkÕs Times articles on the 
subject was published several days before the ringleaders 
in the Derby case were sentenced and listed 17 trials that 
had been identified as prosecutions related to localised 
grooming. In all but one of the trials, the offenders were 
identified as being Asian, mostly British Pakistani, and 
the victims were predominantly white.101 

Between 2004 and 2010, we can find no trace of Andrew Norfolk 
reporting on these grooming gangs, although Norfolk was certainly 
aware of the issue, as he reported on the controversy over Channel 4Õs 
Edge of the City. 102 After reporting on that controversy, it wasnÕt until 
November 2010 that Norfolk again reported on the grooming gangs. 
Perhaps significantly, a few months before breaking this silence, 
Norfolk reported on the EDL demonstration in Bradford in August 
2010.103 Was it his experience of the EDL demonstration which led 

101Home Affairs Select Committee report ÒChild Sexual Exploitation and the Response
 to Localised GroomingÓ, 10 Jun 2013, http://www:publications:parliament:u 
k/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmhaff/68/68i:pdf p.53 
102Adam Sherwin and Andrew Norfolk ÒPolice get ÔraceÕ film postponedÓ, The 
Times, 21 May 2004 http://www:thetimes:co:uk/tto/news/uk/article1923155:ece. In 
an interview with the Sikh Awareness Society in 2012, Norfolk states that he moved 
back to Leeds around the time of the Channel 4 controversies over grooming gangs 
in Bradford. He says that, after reporting on that controversy in 2004, in subsequent
 years heÕd been aware of cases of Muslim grooming gangs across the country,
 but had not reported on them for fear of Ògiving the far-right their dream story.Ó 
Andrew Norfolk, ÒReality of Sexual Grooming Gangs in the UK -interview of 
Andrew Norfolk and Sikh 
Awareness 
SocietyÓ, http://www:youtube:com/watch?v= 
WbUIfvYbjRc&feature=player_detailpage&t=301. Thus, we see Norfolk concede 
that it was the fear of aiding the BNP, an abuse of the narrative of racism by pressure
 groups which doomed vulnerable schoolgirls to a further decade of violence and 
forced prostitution. 
103Andrew Norfolk ÒMissiles thrown as far-right rally turns violent in BradfordÓ, 

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Norfolk to investigate whether or not it could be established 
objectively that Muslim men were hugely over-represented among 
those convicted in grooming gang trials? 

Whilst it is to Andrew NorfolkÕs credit that he conceived of this 
pivotal analysis in 2011, more recognition should be accorded to Julie 
Bindel, for continuing to write about this subject in 2007 and 2010, 
when every other journalist in Britain was avoiding it. As the 
references throughout our analysis show, since 2011 there have been 
hundreds of reports on the grooming gangs. But between 2004 and 
NorfolkÕs pivotal article in 2011, the reports on this subject could be 
counted on the fingers of one hand. 

The Times, 28 Aug 2010, http://www:thetimes:co:uk/tto/news/uk/article2706209:ece. 

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5. Systemic Institutional Failure 
ThereÕs a culture here of denial and cover-up and a 
refusal to accept the reality that we have men ... who 
treat young girls as objects for their sexual pleasure. 
ItÕs time to tell the truth. We must root out this evil. 

Ð Denis MacShane MP, The 
Times, 2012 
The parliamentary report published in 2013 acknowledges that 
there had been a decade of silence and inaction concerning the 
Muslim grooming gangs. 

Ann Cryer was right. Since that time [2003], many more 
children have been abused because of the failures of the 
agencies and of the communities to address what was 
happening.1 

We disagree with this simplistic analysis. Ann Cryer was not entirely 
right: she blamed ÒAsian cultureÓ, instead of Islam. Yet wherever a 
non-Muslim Asian has been convicted for grooming gang activities, 
such ethnicity has proven to be the exception not the norm. And 
furthermore, non-Muslim Asians have counted far more significantly 
among the victims of the grooming gangs than among the 
perpetrators.2 There is not one case where it was non-Muslim men 
grooming Muslim girls, and that despite the fact that 95% of the men 

1Home Affairs Select Committee report ÒChild Sexual Exploitation and the Response 
to Localised GroomingÓ, 10 Jun 2013, http://www:publications:parliament:u 
k/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmhaff/68/68i:pdf p.52. 
2ÒThough most of the girls targeted have been white, among the victims of a Pakistani 
gang in one city were several Bangladeshi Muslim girls.Ó Andrew Norfolk, 
ÒRevealed: conspiracy of silence on UK sex gangsÓ, The Times, 5 Jan 2011, 
http://www:thetimes:co:uk/tto/news/uk/crime/article2863058:ece. 


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in Britain are not Muslims. Recently the Muslim WomenÕs Network 
produced a report on the Asian children who were victims, and they 
had to admit that ÒAsian/Muslim female victims are most vulnerable 
to offenders from their own communities as the overwhelming 
majority of the offenders were from the same background as the 
victims.Ó3 There is no evidence at all that non-Muslim men are 
grooming Muslim children, but ample evidence that Muslim men are 
directing their grooming at non-Muslim schoolgirls. 

The first time we can find Ann Cryer making any public statement 
about the Muslim grooming gangs was in August 2003, once Channel 
4 began to mention this problem in their news report. It appears that 
there was already an officially recognised problem with the grooming 
gangs in West Yorkshire in 1995,4 but we can find no evidence that 
Ann Cryer discussed this problem publicly until Channel 4 broke the 
story in 2003. As we have shown, by 2003 the problem with Muslim 
grooming gangs was known not only in West Yorkshire, but also in 
Derbyshire (see section 4.7 2001 Derby and ÒReal CaliphateÓ), and 
the Midlands (see section 4.1 1988 Sikh/Muslim violence), and in 
those reports it was not white schoolgirls who were being groomed, 
but Sikh girls. Did the professionals working at the Streets and Lanes 
project know about these reports? Did they know about the existence 
of the Sikh Awareness Society, established in 1998? If experts had 
publicly discussed that evidence relating to Sikh victims, then it 
would have been impossible to use the accusation of racism to silence 
the few white people who were trying to draw attention to the 
grooming gangs: it would have been clear to everyone that the issue 
was not Asian men grooming white schoolgirls, but Muslim men 
grooming non-Muslim schoolgirls. 

In their 2013 report, the Home Affairs Select Committee claims 

3Shaista Gohir MBE, ÒUnheard Voices: The Sexual Exploitation of Asian Girls 
and Young WomenÓ, September 2013, http://www:mwnuk:co:uk//go_files/resourc 
es/UnheardVoices:pdf, p.23. 
4See section 4.4 1995 Bradford: Streets and Lanes. 


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that ÒcommunitiesÓ failed to deal with it. This cannot be interpreted 
as anything other than code for the phrase Òthe Muslim community 
failed to deal with it.Ó5 As we have seen, in 1988 Sikhs risked prison 
sentences to deal with it when the police failed to constrain the 
Muslim grooming gangs. In 1998, Sikhs created the Sikh Awareness 
Society in another attempt to stop their girls from falling prey to these 
gangs. Moreover, it is not beyond the realms of possibility, that the 
Òrace riotsÓ which occurred in Bradford and Oldham in 2001 were 
initially caused by the indigenous working-class British communities 
trying to protest about these grooming gangs and the total failure of 
the state to stop these things.6 Thus, the only community who failed 
are the Muslim community. How could the community from which 
the victims came be accused of failure? No-one was prepared to warn 
parents that their 11 to 14 year old daughters would be targeted. Were 
parents to ferry their daughters to and from school every day, and 
ensure they were in the company of a trustworthy adult at all times? 
And if they were to impose these restrictions on their daughters, 
didnÕt they have a right to be told why these restrictions were 
necessary? Those white people who tried to speak about the scandal 
were accused of ÒracismÓ. 

We will now turn to examine the various local and national 

5In 2013, Parliament concluded that the perception that it was ÒAsianÓ (i.e. Muslims) 
who were principally responsible for these crimes was not inaccurate. Shortly after 
this, the Muslim community were applauded in the national media for having Òa sermonÓ
 against grooming gangs. However, the vast majority of the mosques in Britain 
did not take part in reading this sermon. There are 1500 to 2000 mosques in Britain, 
and only 500 read the sermon. http://news:bbc:co:uk/1/hi/magazine/7118503:stm. 
Other mosques ÒshunnedÓ the sermon: Ben Wilkinson, ÒNational sermon on child 
grooming shunned as a stunt by many Muslims in OxfordÓ, Oxford Mail, 29 Jun 
2013, http://www:oxfordmail:co:uk/news/10516465:National_sermon_on_child_gro 
oming_shunned_as_a_stunt_by_many_Muslims_in_Oxford/. 
6Given the lack of objective historical research on this subject, there is no indication 
that we will ever know the truth about those Òrace riots.Ó But one thing is clear: by 
the time of the 2001 Òrace riotsÓ, Muslim grooming gangs had been operating with 
impunity in Bradford for 10 years. 

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agencies and what role they appear to have played in ensuring that the 
grooming gangs were able to go about their business for 10 to 25 
years. Even when the state started to take the problem seriously from 
2011 onwards, both the CEOP report and The ChildrenÕs 
Commissioner report emphasized that many local authorities and 
other agencies involved in child protection did not respond to requests 
for data.7 This suggests that the campaign of fear orchestrated by the 
Left and racism groups still holds sway over many of those 
professionals whose principal concern should be the children for 
whom they are legally obligated to care. 

5.1 Schools 
The 2013 the parliamentary report noted (in bold text): 

Teachers are more likely to see victims on a regular basis 
than almost any other professional. They will notice 
recurrent or prolonged absences and significant changes 
in behaviour. They are therefore key in identifying 
children at risk at an early stage and, by raising concerns 
at an early stage, being able to potentially stop the 
grooming process before the sexual exploitation has 
begun.8 

As the reproductions in section 14. Appendix 4: Leeds School 
Warning and section 15. Appendix 5: Sheffield School Warning 
show, even in 2013 schools are still noticing Muslim grooming gangs 
hanging around school gates, with the implied fear that these ÒAsian 
menÓ are waiting to prey on schoolgirls during the transition between 

7Home Affairs Select Committee report ÒChild Sexual Exploitation and the Response
 to Localised GroomingÓ, 10 Jun 2013, http://www:publications:parliament:u 
k/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmhaff/68/68i:pdf p.10 
8Home Affairs Select Committee report ÒChild Sexual Exploitation and the Response
 to Localised GroomingÓ, 10 Jun 2013, http://www:publications:parliament:u 
k/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmhaff/68/68i:pdf p.48. 

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the safety of school and the safety of home. Muslim gangs hanging 
around in cars outside of schools is an identifiable pattern that goes as 
far back as 19889 in Wolverhampton; yet we can think of no national 
campaign by teachersÕ unions to publicise such risks. As the 
parliamentary report said: ÒThe anecdotal evidence provided to the 
Committee indicates that teachers are often aware of child sexual 
exploitation and yet they do not seem to be raising concerns either 
with social services or the police.Ó10 Serious questions need to be 
asked over the failure of schools and teachersÕ unions and 
organisations in this regard.11 

The accounts of the Sikh vigilante groups in the 1980s report that 
Muslim grooming gangs would wait in flashy cars outside schools. 
The report in The Telegraph of the incidents in Derby also claim that 
Muslims were being encouraged to mount a systematic campaign of 
seduction aimed at non-Muslim schoolgirls, where schools were to be 
considered an Òideal placeÓ for Muslim men to meet, deceive and 
seduce non-Muslim girls.12 Many other reports relate how the gangs 
use the period when schoolgirls travel from school to home, seeing 
this as a time of vulnerability where they can get access to the girls. 
Yet we are unable to find any evidence of schools mounting 
campaigns to stop this from happening.13 We can find no evidence 

9See section 4.1 1988 Sikh/Muslim violence 
10Home Affairs Select Committee report ÒChild Sexual Exploitation and the Response
 to Localised GroomingÓ, 10 Jun 2013, http://www:publications:parliament:u 
k/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmhaff/68/68i:pdf p.48. Emphasis added. 
11A quick glance at the website of the National Union of Teachers shows they are 
involved in campaigns for children and schools from Greece, to Columbia and Burma: 
http://www:teachers:org:uk/international/campaigns. There is every reason to have 
expected them to have initiated campaigns to protect schoolgirls in Britain from being 
groomed, raped, tortured and prostituted. A search of the NUT website for the term 
ÒgroomingÓ only returned pages referring to children being groomed as consumers by 
advertisers. In an attempt to find any document by the NUT referring to the grooming 
gangs, searching their website for the term Òsexual exploitationÓ was equally futile. 
12See section 16. Appendix 6: Real Khilafah -Letter to Moslem Youth. 
13 Andrew Norfolk cites a single instance from around 2001, when 

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FAILURE 
that educational organisations or teaching unions have ever done 
anything to stop the grooming gangs or to draw public or state 
attention to them. 

There is also evidence that even when it was impossible for 
teachers to fail to notice that groomed schoolgirls had had prolonged 
absence or were dishevelled in the classroom, teachers apparently did 
not act on the evidence in front of their eyes. Before the parliamentary 
committee, the Deputy Children Commissioner cited 

a case of a victim who was being regularly abducted who 
was held for several days at a time and sometimes more 
than a week, without access to food, water or washing 
facilities. As a result, when released she would be dirty, 
covered in sores and ill, but on her return to school, 
nobody would question her about her physical state.14 

School teachers have a legal duty to act in loco parentis. If this had 
been the story about a child whose parents ignored her absence for a 
week, and ignored her physical state on return, we would say they 
were unfit parents. If we view the teachers by this same standard, we 
must conclude that many of them are unfit to be in loco parentis. 

In 2008, a government agency tasked with preventing human 
trafficking, commissioned the film My 
Dangerous 
Loverboy 
(about 
an ÒAsianÓ man who grooms a schoolgirl), with the intention that 

the headmaster of a Rotherham secondary school sent a letter to parents
 warning that some of his pupils were being used by adults for 
sex. ÒShocking facts are beginning to emerge regarding the systematic 
sexual exploitation of 13 to 16-year-old girls in our care,Ó he wrote. 

http://www:thetimes:co:uk/tto/news/uk/crime/article3547661:ece 

However, whilst we should be thankful that this headmaster was at least doing this, we 
can find no evidence of any campaign by any school about what was going on outside 
their school-gates in the last 25 years. 
14Home Affairs Select Committee report ÒChild Sexual Exploitation and the Response
 to Localised GroomingÓ 10 Jun 2013 http://www:publications:parliament:u 
k/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmhaff/68/68i:pdf p.48 

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this film be shown to 13 to 14 year old schoolgirls.15 This film was 
never shown in schools. It is not clear to us if this is because of 
ideological objections by teachers and/or teachersÕ unions, but 
that seems a possible explanation. We do not believe that 
non-Muslim Asians found it objectionable, since the Sikh 
Awareness 
Society 
not only distribute the film, but have gone to 
the trouble of adding sub-titles to make the message more 
emphatic. Some of the biggest teachers unions in Britain, such as the 
NUT (National Union of Teachers) and the NASUWT (National 
Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers) are major 
sponsors of Unite Against Fascism. 16 Since teachersÕ unions are so 
heavily involved with this pressure group, it seems not implausible 
that the policies espoused by Unite Against Fascism strongly correlate 
with views of these teaching unions. When it came to stopping the 
documentary which first clearly addressed the problem of the 
grooming gangs, it is reported that ÒColin Cramphorn, the then Chief 
Constable of West Yorkshire, joined groups such as Unite against 
Fascism in calling for the [2004] documentary to be withdrawn. 
Channel 4 complied...Ó17 

15See section 4.13 2008 My Dangerous Loverboy. 
16A list of those supporting unions, representing the professionals in the media
 and teaching, can be found on the UAFÕs website. http://uaf:org:uk/about/ 
our-supporting-organisations/. To see that this support is more than just financial,
 you can see evidence of the active involvement of the NUT in the work of 
the "anti-fascist" Unite Against Fascism across Britain: in London http://uaf:org:u 
k/2012/04/nut-leader-Christine-blower-joins-election-campaign-against-fascists/, in 
Ipswich http://www:ipswichnut:org/2013/06/unite-against-fascism-public-meeting:h 
tml, in Derby http://cityofderbynut:blogspot:co:uk/2013/08/derby-uaf-relaunch-mee 
ting-scheduled:html and in Bolton http://justice4bolton:org/2010/08/nut-complain-t 
o-police-and-uaf-demand-disclosure-from-police-authority/. The General Secretary 
of the NASUWT speaks at UAF conferences http://uaf:org:uk/2013/02/speakers-ann 
ounced-for-conference/, and national officers of both NUT and NASUWT are among 
the 13 officers of the UAF http://uaf:org:uk/about/our-officers/. The NUJ (National 
Union of Journalists) are also listed as major sponsors of Unite Against Fascism. 
17Julie Bindel, ÒGangs, Girls and Grooming: The TruthÓ, Dec 2010, Standpoint, 
http://www:standpointmag:co:uk/node/3576/full. See also http://www:telegraph:co:u 

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What part was played, if any, by teachersÕ unions or the UAF or 
individual teachers in preventing the distribution/viewing of My 
Dangerous Loverboy? The national police agencies responsible for 
child protection rightly made an attempt to stop the supply of victims 
to the grooming gangs. We must demand explanations why this 
educational film from 2009 was never seen in schools. Who knows 
how many thousands of schoolgirl victims could have been saved 
from rape and prostitution if the film had been widely seen by the 
intended audience? In this whole scandal, the failure to educate 
schoolgirls about the techniques of the gangs, something that the 
Netherlands has been doing for years, must rank as the single worst 
failure by child-care professionals. To the extent that the pool of 
victims have had any idea about the techniques of the gangs, and how 
to avoid entrapment, this knowledge would have been acquired in a 
haphazard way from those parents lucky enough to have an idea about 
the gangsÕ techniques. CEOP reports that it trains thousands of 
child-care professionals every year, but no training was ever passed on 
to the supply of victims, even though this was mooted over and over 
as a solution to the problem. 

5.2 Local Councils 
When the parliamentary committee reported on localised grooming, 
they singled out two local councils in particular for criticism: 
Rotherham and Rochdale. 

Both Rochdale and Rotherham councils were inexcusably 

slow to realise that the widespread, organised sexual 

abuse of children, many of them in the care of the local 

authority, was taking place on their doorstep... That it 

took so long for anybody, at any level from the Chief 

Executive downward, to look at reports of young girls 

with multiple, middle-aged ÒboyfriendsÓ, hanging around 

k/news/uknews/1462413/Race-fears-halt-film-on-Asian-sex-grooming:html. 

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takeaways, drinking and taking drugs, and to think that it 

might be worth investigating further, is shocking.18 

In our opinion, this smacks of damage limitation at best, and 
government cover-up at worst. There are far more councils who 
are blameworthy, not just Rotherham and Rochdale. Furthermore, 
we maintain there is every reason to believe that local agencies 
needed the assistance of national agencies and pressure groups, not 
only to provide them with intelligence and guidance, but also to 
enable them to withstand the political pressure they would face at a 
local and national level, should the local agencies attempt to clamp 
down on the grooming gangs. Government departments and national 
agencies clearly knew what was going on with the grooming gangs as 
early as 1995 (with the funding of BarnardoÕs Streets and Lanes 
project), and as late as 2008 (with the funding of the educational film 
ÒMy Dangerous LoverboyÓ). Having failed to execute any national 
policy over the past 15 years, it looks like the government is 
attempting a damage-limitation exercise, holding out that the problem 
is under control everywhere except Rotherham and Rochdale. The 
evidence which has emerged about the failings at Rotherham and 
Rochdale councils will no doubt be found elsewhere if other councils 
are subjected to scrutiny. It was not just the Chief Executives of these 
two councils who claimed ignorance of the grooming gangs or 
showed no interest in responding to them. Let us look at some of the 
criticisms around Rochdale council. 

The Parliamentary inquiry reported that: 

Roger Ellis, who was Chief Executive of the Council [in 

Rochdale] for 12 years, told us that the first he had heard 

of the issues around child sexual exploitation in Rochdale 

was in 2010 following arrests which had been made in 

18Home Affairs Select Committee report ÒChild Sexual Exploitation and the Response
 to Localised GroomingÓ, 10 Jun 2013, http://www:publications:parliament:u 
k/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmhaff/68/68i:pdf p.27. 

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INSTITUTIONAL 
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December as part of Operation Span.19 

And the Assistant Director for ChildrenÕs Social Care said he was 
unaware of the scale of the grooming problem until arrests in 2010; 
yet he had worked for Rochdale Social Services for 11 years.20 A 
group was set up in 2007 to analyse information about the scale of 
localised grooming in the borough, and led to the prosecution of three 
men. Following this investigation, in 2008 it was recommended that 
Òa multi-agency teamÓ be set up Òas a matter of urgency.Ó This team 
did not become operational until 2010, allegedly because of Òfunding 
and staffingÓ issues.21 Yet there were staff who gave evidence to the 
parliamentary inquiry who said that social services in Rochdale knew 
about the problem as far back as 2004, and nothing was done. 

In 2012, the mother of one of the victims testified at the trial of 
Rochdale men accused of grooming offences, and she said that the 
council social services team knew of the problems as far back as 
2002.22 She went on to say: 

I wanted the three of them [my daughters] to be put into 
child protection but they wouldnÕt do it. I must have 
called in to social services eight or nine times and phoned 
them lots of times. 

19Home Affairs Select Committee report ÒChild Sexual Exploitation and the Response
 to Localised GroomingÓ, 10 Jun 2013, http://www:publications:parliament:u 
k/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmhaff/68/68i:pdf p.22 
20Home Affairs Select Committee report ÒChild Sexual Exploitation and the Response
 to Localised GroomingÓ, 10 Jun 2013, http://www:publications:parliament:u 
k/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmhaff/68/68i:pdf p.23. 
21Home Affairs Select Committee report ÒChild Sexual Exploitation and the Response
 to Localised GroomingÓ, 10 Jun 2013, http://www:publications:parliament:u 
k/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmhaff/68/68i:pdf p.21 
22Nigel Bunyan, ÒRochdale Grooming Trial: Police Knew about 
Sex Abuse in 2002 but Failed to ActÓ, The Telegraph, 9 May 2012, 

http://www:telegraph:co:uk/news/uknews/crime/9254982/Rochdale-grooming-tri 
al-police-knew-about-sex-abuse-in-2002-but-failed-to-act:html. 

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FAILURE 
As we saw with the Channel 
4 
controversy about Bradford in 
2003, and with Julie BindelÕs report about Blackburn, Leeds and 
Sheffield in 2007, the case in Oxford case in May 2013, parents 
across the country were trying in vain to get the councils and the 
police to take action. Thus, inaction and denial by staff at Rochdale 
were by no means unique to that area. 

In a local inquiry into what had gone wrong in Rochdale, they 
found that the council did not seriously discuss the issue of grooming 
until 2010, and then only once 4 arrests had been made: 

Social workers werenÕt sure how to tackle the problem. 

ÒStaff advised they did not know what to do about CSE 

and how to deal with itÓ.23 

The report goes on to say that one of the police inspectors involved in 
Rochdale Òconcluded the abuse could have been stopped if only the 
authorities had stepped in sooner.Ó Once again, we see the pernicious 
effect of the abuse of the racism narrative. For 6 years after the 
councilÕs child-care professionals were first informed about the 
Muslim grooming gangs, they and the police did not act. And having 
been scared into inaction, councils then tried to conceal the fact that 
they had failed in their duty of child protection. Both Ofsted and the 
Home Affairs Select Committee found that some of the councils 
who have come under scrutiny have deliberately tried to conceal 
information in order to defend themselves and their staff from 
criticism over their failure to protect the children in their care.24 

The failings by those councils and police forces are just part of a 
much bigger problem. Before 2011, where was the national debate 

23Chris Jones, ÒRochdale grooming scandal: ÔLack of care that shames our 
townÕÓ, Manchester Evening News, 24 May 2013, http://www:manchestereveni 
ngnews:co:uk/news/greater-manchester-news/rochdale-grooming-scandal-lack-car 
e-4011687. 
24Home Affairs Select Committee report ÒChild Sexual Exploitation and the Response
 to Localised GroomingÓ, 10 Jun 2013, http://www:publications:parliament:u 
k/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmhaff/68/68i:pdf pp.18-19. 

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FAILURE 
about this problem? Where was the analysis and guidance from 
national agencies? With no fear of exposure, no fear of censure, 
councils and police forces could just ignore what was going on. 

Let us now consider some of the events around Rotherham 
council. Following the murder of Laura Wilson in 2010 by the 
Muslim man who made her pregnant, Rotherham CouncilÕs 
ÒSafeguarding Children BoardÓ produced a report into the murder.25 
In Rotherham, council staff were adhering to the politically-correct 
line, which had been used to rule out a priori any consideration that 
cultural/ethnic values could play any part in this new phenomenon. 
Andrew Norfolk got access to an unpublished 2010 report into Òfour 
victims, aged from 13 to 16, [who] suffered relentless sexual abuse 
over months and even years before a criminal investigation was 
launched.Ó But once again, political correctness blinkered the staff, 
who concluded in the report that: 

although the alleged perpetrators are of Asian origin and 

the victims are white, this is the factuality of these cases 

alone; nothing more can be drawn from that. It is 

imperative that suggestions/allusions of a wider 

cultural phenomenon are avoided. These assertions 

are without foundation.26 (emphasis added) 

Thus, facts on disparities in ethnicity were admitted, but it is 
commanded that these facts about disparities must be shorn of all 
significance. Imagine a criminal investigation, or a medical procedure, 
where facts are observed and admitted, but it is commanded that they 
must not be allowed to have any meaning or any implications. There 

25Daniel Miller, ÒSocial workers hid fact they knew teenage mother was at risk 
from sex grooming gangs SIX YEARS before she was brutally murderedÓ, The 
Daily Mail, 7 Jun 2012 http://www:dailymail:co:uk/news/article-2155823/Social-w 
orkers-hid-fact-knew-teenage-mother-risk-sex-grooming-gangs-SIX-YEARS-bruta 
lly-murdered:html. 
26Andrew Norfolk, ÒPolice Files Reveal Vast Child Protection ScandalÓ, The 
Times, 24 Sep 2012, http://www:thetimes:co:uk/tto/news/uk/crime/article3547661:e 
ce. 

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INSTITUTIONAL 
FAILURE 
was a conscious refusal to follow where the facts might lead.27 

In another instance, Rotherham Council went so far to cover their 
tracks, they initiated legal action to prevent a leaked copy of a relevant 
report from being used by The Times. The uncensored copy of the 
report showed that the council had known that from the age of 11, 
Laura Wilson was at risk of being groomed by Pakistani men. They 
failed to act on information they had which could have protected her 
from grooming. Then they actively attempted to stop anyone making 
any connection between grooming gangs and Muslim men. They 
concealed this information, and even initiated legal action to 
maintain the concealment when it looked like it was to become 
public knowledge.28 

But it wasnÕt just Rotherham Council where political correctness 
served to blinker the staff. A report at the end of 2013 into the failings 
of child-care professionals at Rochdale council stated that the staff 
were obsessed with the politically-correct notion that race could not 
be considered as a factor: 

What is absent is any evidence that practitioners 

attempted to understand why the fact that the men were 

ÒAsianÓ might in fact have been relevant and legitimate 

for consideration. There is little evidence that 

practitioners asked questions as to why quite well 

27We are confident that this behaviour can be found throughout the agencies responsible
 for the impunity with which the grooming gangs operated. When the facts could 
not be ignored, they would be deemed to have no significance. There may not be a paper
 trail proving this throughout all the agencies, but nothing short of wilful blindness 
can explain the decades of inactivity. 
28ÒThe council went to court in an attempt to tried to suppress the hidden information
 after a uncensored copy of the report was leaked to the Times newspaper 
but they have now abandoned legal action.Ó Daniel Miller, ÒSocial workers hid 
fact they knew teenage mother was at risk from sex grooming gangs SIX 
YEARS before she was brutally murderedÓ, The Daily Mail, 7 Jun 2012, 

http://www:dailymail:co:uk/news/article-2155823/Social-workers-hid-fact-knew-t 
eenage-mother-risk-sex-grooming-gangs-SIX-YEARS-brutally-murdered:html. 

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established social and racial boundaries were being 

crossed so frequently. Questions could have been 

legitimately asked as to whether ÒfriendshipsÓ between 

middle aged ÒAsianÓ men and predominantly socially 

disadvantaged and ÒchallengingÓ white teenagers 

required further examination.29 

Moreover, grooming gang cases have gone to trial as far afield as 
Oxford, Bristol, Newcastle, and Ipswich. And in some of these cases, 
the victims and their families have claimed that they notified the 
child-care services in their area, but nothing was done. There are very 
strong reasons to believe that the behaviour of child-care 
professionals in Rochdale and Rotherham was replicated across the 
country for years. CROP estimated that there were 10,000 victims of 
child sexual exploitation. Yet, over a 25 year period, only around 100 
men have been convicted in grooming gang cases. If CROPÕs 
estimates are accurate, then it seems likely that at most councils 
political correctness led to staff not seeing, not speaking, not acting. 

What could possibly motivate child-care professionals to allow 
schoolgirls to suffer this abuse for so many years, and then be so 
deeply in denial that these professionals would demand that no-one 
even discuss the ethnicity of the gang members? Did the pressure 
brought to bear on Channel 4 over the documentary Edge of the City 
scare child-care professionals into compromising their integrity? 
Were the officials of public-service trade unions, supporters of UAF, 
putting pressure on council workers to turn a blind eye? Did the 
theoretical framework taught in social work degrees/in-service 
training encourage these child-care professionals to view the 
schoolgirls as willing sexual agents and to view the Muslim grooming 
activity as part of the rich diversity of multicultural Britain? Was it 

29John Bingham, ÒÔColour blindÕ social workers couldnÕt see glaring
 racial clues to Rochdale sex abuseÓ, The Telegraph, 20 Dec 2013, 

http://www:telegraph:co:uk/news/uknews/crime/10529794/Colour-blind-socia 
l-workers-couldnt-see-glaring-racial-clues-to-Rochdale-sex-abuse:html. 

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INSTITUTIONAL 
FAILURE 
that Muslim and/or other councillors encouraged the child-care 
departments to implement a policy of Òsee no evilÓ where the Muslim 
grooming gangs were concerned? These are not rhetorical questions. 
Across Britain, thousands of government and local government 
services ask people racial profiling questions every single day, but 
when it comes to understanding a new and very serious form of 
organised crime, it was not an option for child-care professionals to 
even observe a glaring dichotomy between the ethnicity of the 
perpetrators and the victims. As the local MP for Rotherham said: 
ÒThere is a culture here of denial and cover-up.Ó30 A thorough 
investigation is needed into what forces were responsible for 
child-care professionals abandoning schoolgirls to be systematically 
groomed and raped by Muslim gangs across Britain. 

For more than a decade, this kind of refusal to acknowledge 
specifics was to be found not just in council staff, but also across 
police forces, national agencies, childrenÕs charities, and the 
media. When the BBC reported on the banning of Edge of the City 
they reported it as a Òrace documentaryÓ, thus aligning themselves 
and most of the national debate with the ideology that only a racist 
would observe that the victims were overwhelmingly white, and the 
perpetrators overwhelmingly Muslim. The first prosecution in the 
Bradford area did not occur until 2005, fourteen years after Andrew 
Norfolk says that the child-care professionals there knew that ÒBritish 
Pakistani menÓ were collecting girls from a childrenÕs home, and 
prostituting them.31 It is a staggering catalogue of failure, and 
sometimes even deception, across many councils in Britain. 

30Andrew Norfolk, ÒPolice Files Reveal Vast Child Protection ScandalÓ, The 
Times, 24 Sep 2012, http://www:thetimes:co:uk/tto/news/uk/crime/article3547661:e 
ce. 
31ÒReality of Sexual Grooming Gangs in the UK -interview of Andrew Norfolk
 and Sikh 
Awareness 
SocietyÓ http://www:youtube:com/watch?v=WbUIfvYbjR 
c&feature=player_detailpage&t=1323. Rotherham council staff first knew about this 
phenomenon in 1996. 

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The claims made by Channel 4 in 2003 about what was going on 
in Bradford, should have meant that Bradford council too became the 
subject of inquiry. The situation in Bradford from 1991 to 2013 has 
not come in for any of the scrutiny to which Rochdale and Rotherham 
were subjected. Yet given the claims of Bradford Council and West 
Yorkshire Police in 2004 that Òthere was no evidenceÓ to support the 
claim that there were Muslim grooming gangs in operation, it is clear 
that they too were probably involved in denial just as much as 
agencies in Rotherham and Rochdale. Once the controversy over the 
Channel 4 documentary died down, West Yorkshire Police closed 
down the special investigative unit. And just after the Home Affairs 
Select Committee wound down its investigations (March 2013), we 
saw a major grooming gang from Oxford convicted (May 2013). The 
evidence that came out in that case showed that the local council had 
been passive for years when it came to the Muslim grooming gangs.32 
And the behaviour of that grooming gang set a new standard in the 
public recognition of how horrific the treatment of the girls had been. 
Yet the councils and chief executives of Bradford and Oxford have not 
been pilloried. Moreover, in 2013 Muslim women in the West 
Midlands claimed there was extensive grooming going on in that area, 
yet the Midlands has come in for no criticism, even though that is 
where the Sikh Awareness Society started in the 1990s in order to stop 
the grooming gangs, and it was the Midlands where the first news 
reports of grooming were to occur in the 1980s. 

So, we do not believe that what was happening in Rochdale and 
Rotherham was very different from the rest of the country. The Daily 
Mirror investigation in 2013 regarding which police forces currently 
have active investigations into grooming gangs, showed that Thames 
Valley police had 14 current investigations. We believe that the 

32 Harriet Arkell, ÒÔMy mother begged Oxford social services to rescue 
me from sex abuse NINE YEARS AGOÕÓ, Daily Mail, 15 May 2013, 

http://www:dailymail:co:uk/news/article-2324790/My-mother-begged-Oxford-s 
ocial-services-rescue-sex-abuse-NINE-YEARS-AGO-Victim-known-Girl-C-13-s 
ays-claims-dismissed-inappropriate:html. 

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FAILURE 
records of child protection services in Bradford, Derby, 
Wolverhampton and Oxford should be subjected to scrutiny for 
evidence of indifference, denial, or concealment. From 1988 to 2008 
there were scarcely any prosecutions, and those who spoke about the 
grooming gangs were either ignored or were accused of being racists. 
In this toxic atmosphere is it any wonder that council staff would 
decide to turn a blind eye to schoolgirls and parents begging for help, 
or that council staff would rationalise to themselves why they should 
ignore the glaring difference between the ethnicity of the perpetrators 
and the victims? If the CPS would not prosecute, and the council staff 
would be subject to allegations of ÒracismÓ or even disciplinary 
action, are we surprised that they chose to conceal this problem? 

We cannot find evidence of any council or police force which, 
under the scrutiny of a Public Inquiry, could be singled out as having 
had an appropriate, adequate response to the problem during these 
years. The greater the size of the local Muslim population, the greater 
likelihood not only that grooming gangs were in operation, but also 
that there would be Muslim councillors and Òcommunity leadersÓ 
who would denounce anyone who spoke about these gangs. And the 
more left-wing councillors or MPs an area had, with their 
commitment to political correctness and multiculturalism, the more 
likely it would be that they too would join in with such a witch-hunt. 
At the conclusion of one of the biggest grooming gang trials, Ann 
Cryer explained that inactivity by police and social services was 
because they Òwere petrified of being called racist and so reverted to 
the default of political correctness.Ó33 We shouldnÕt be surprised by 
this, as the furore over Edge of the City showed in 2004, even the 
BBC were ready to imply that racism was involved in any allegations 

33Nigel Bunyan, ÒRochdale grooming trial: Police accused of failing to investigate
 paedophile gang for fear of appearing racistÓ, The Telegraph, 8 May 2012, 

http://www:telegraph:co:uk/news/uknews/crime/9253250/Rochdale-grooming-trial 
-Police-accused-of-failing-to-investigate-paedophile-gang-for-fear-of-appearing-r 
acist:html. 

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FAILURE 
that Muslim grooming gangs were seducing and raping schoolgirls.34 

The parliamentary investigation seems determined to single out a 
handful of senior staff in just two councils for responsibility. 

It is no excuse for Rochdale and Rotherham managers to 
say they had no knowledge of what was taking place, as 
they are ultimately responsible and must be held 
accountable for the appalling consequences of their lack 
of curiosity. Early retirement or resignation for other 
reasons should not allow them to evade responsibility and 
they must be held to account. In particular, we are deeply 
shocked by Roger EllisÕ receiving £76,798.20 in 
redundancy payout. He should be required to repay it.35 

By all means, hold up the staff of these two councils as examples of 
the failure. But it should be recognised that all indicators point to this 
being a failure across the board, a systemic failure. Singling out 
individual Chief Executives is looking for scape-goats. We have 
national organisations who should have been paying attention when 
these claims were made between 1988 and 2003.36 In fact, there is 
evidence to suggest that at a national level around 2007 there was a 
very good understanding of how these gangs were operating.37 

34The BBC News website reported that the documentary Òalleged the girls are showered
 with gifts then given heroin or crack cocaine and some allegedly subjected to 
rapeÓ, but then described this in the headline as a Òrace documentary.Ó ÒCampaign to 
Stop Race DocumentaryÓ, BBC News website, 17 Aug 2004, http://news:bbc:co:uk/ 
1/hi/entertainment/3572776:stm. 
35Home Affairs Select Committee report ÒChild Sexual Exploitation and the Response
 to Localised GroomingÓ, 10 Jun 2013, http://www:publications:parliament:u 
k/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmhaff/68/68i:pdf pp.28 
36In 2004, Anna Hall who made the Channel 4 documentary, was commenting that 
the grooming gangs were nationwide. See ÒChild victims who believe itÕs about 
loveÓ, Telegraph & Argus, 25 Aug 2004, http://www:thetelegraphandargus:co:uk/ar 
chive/2004/08/25/7999581:Child_victims_who_believe_it_s_about_love/. 
37As we discussed earlier, in 2008 the UK Human Trafficking Centre began the production
 of a cautionary video (ÒMy Dangerous LoverboyÓ), to be shown to schoolgirls 
to warn them of the ways in which grooming gangs work. 

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INSTITUTIONAL 
FAILURE 
Individual local councils and council staff are being blamed when 
there was clearly a lack of determination, a lack of direction, and 
a lack of support at a national level. Council staff and managers 
were able to assuage their guilt by telling themselves Òthe 
problem in our area is no worse than in other areas.Ó38 They have 
been telling themselves that for a decade or more. And it might well 
be true. What the councils needed was direction and support at a 
national level. 

When councils have admitted any fault, it was to argue that any 
negligence had only occurred in the last few years, rather than 
admitting that they had failed to respond for probably a decade or 
more. 

Cheryl Eastwood, the [Rochdale] authorityÕs executive 
director for Children, Schools and Families, said: ÒWe, 
along with other agencies working with the young 
women involved in the recent court case are now aware, 
with the benefit of hindsight, recent local learning and 
national safeguarding initiatives, that we missed some 
opportunities to offer more support and assistance to 
them in 2008 and 2009.Ó39 

We think that, should these cases come to civil or criminal litigation, 
it would be difficult for institutions to claim that they did not know 
about the underlying realities. This would apply most particularly to 
councils in the areas of Lancashire and West Yorkshire, and the West 

38ÒChild sexual exploitation Ôno worse than other town and citiesÕÓ, 
Asian Image, 21 Nov 2012, http://www:Asianimage:co:uk/news/10061493:print 
/. Cf. 2004 statement by BradfordÕs Director of Social services in ÒÔThis 
sexual abuse is not unique to BradfordÕÓ, Telegraph & Argus, 26 Aug 
2004, http://www:thetelegraphandargus:co:uk/archive/2004/08/26/7999558:_This_s 
exual_abuse_is_not_unique_to_Bradford_/. 
39Nigel Bunyan, ÒRochdale Grooming Trial: Police Knew about 
Sex Abuse in 2002 but Failed to ActÓ, The Telegraph, 9 May 2012 

http://www:telegraph:co:uk/news/uknews/crime/9254982/Rochdale-grooming-tri 
al-police-knew-about-sex-abuse-in-2002-but-failed-to-act:html. 

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FAILURE 
Midlands, where evidence of the grooming gangs dates back not just 
to 2008, but as far as 1998 and even 1988. It appears that such legal 
action is now beginning, with between four and fifteen girls and 
women from Rotherham instructing solicitors over the failure of the 
council to protect them as children, failures dating back to the 
1990s.40 The deputy leader of Rotherham council, Jahngier Akhtar, 
has stood down, Òover claims he knew about a relationship between a 
girl in care and a suspected child abuser.Ó Mr. Akhtar was also Vice 
Chair of the Police and Crime Panel. 

5.3 Police 
We have seen how the parliamentary investigation singled out a few 
senior individuals of a couple of councils for blame. Almost no other 
blame is apportioned in the parliamentary report. Neither racism 
groups, nor police forces, nor national agencies/charities receive any 
blame. Some blame is apportioned to South Yorkshire Police (in 
whose patch is the town of Rotherham).41 However, there is good 
reason to believe that South Yorkshire Police are not alone in failing 
to investigate the grooming gangs. As Julie Bindel pointed out in 
2007 Òorganisations such as Crop continue battling with the police to 
act on the intelligence they [CROP] have built up.Ó42 CROP 
(Campaign for the Removal of Pimping) was based around Leeds, and 

40Caroline Davies, ÒRotherham council faces legal action from alleged abuse 
victimsÓ, The Guardian, 23 Aug 2013, http://www:theguardian:com/uk-news/2013/ 
aug/23/rotherham-council-legal-action-alleged-abuse. By January 2014 there were 
reports that another 11 victims were taking legal action against Rotherham council.
 ÒRotherham Council to be sued over child sexual exploitationÓ, The Star, 
1 Jan 2014, http://www:thestar:co:uk/news/crime/rotherham-council-to-be-sued-ove 
r-child-sexual-exploitation-1-6345919. 
41Home Affairs Select Committee report ÒChild Sexual Exploitation and the Response
 to Localised GroomingÓ, 10 Jun 2013, http://www:publications:parliament:u 
k/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmhaff/68/68i:pdf p.34, p.36 
42Julie Bindel, ÒMothers of PreventionÓ, The Sunday Times, 30 Sep 2007, http://ww 
w:thesundaytimes:co:uk/sto/news/uk_news/article72310:ece 

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INSTITUTIONAL 
FAILURE 
as we saw with Channel 4Õs ÒEdge of the CityÓ, the Chief Constable 
of West Yorkshire Police played a major role in getting the 
documentary withdrawn, joining with Bradford Council to deny that 
there was any evidence at all for the existence of grooming gangs: 
ÒWest Yorkshire Police and Bradford Council said that they had spent 
the past two years investigating the allegations, but found Ôno 
evidence of systematic exploitationÕ.Ó43 They could get away with 
this claim, because most people in Britain had no idea that by 2004 
BarnardoÕs had spent almost a decade working with the victims of the 
grooming gangs in Bradford.44 If the media had shown courage at this 
time, they would have brought up the extensive evidence for the 
existence of this systematic exploitation and challenged these 
statements. But the majority of journalists were only too happy to 
bury any discussion of this grooming phenomenon. 

In 2011 Detective Chief Inspector Alan Edwardes of West 
Mercia Police stated that Òto stop this type of crime you need to 
start everyone talking about it but everyoneÕs been too scared to 
address the ethnicity factorÓ and that this was a Òdamaging 
taboo.Ó45 Telford falls within the area of West Mercia Police, and it 
was not until 2012 that a grooming gang from Telford was 
successfully prosecuted. The newspaper report in which Alan 
Edwardes was quoted also contained this observation: ÒCharities and 
agencies working in conjunction with the police to help victims of 
sexual abuse in such cases have publicly denied there is a link between 
ethnicity and the on-street grooming of young girls by gangs and 

43ÒCampaign to Stop Race DocumentaryÓ, BBC News website, 17 Aug 2004, http: 
//news:bbc:co:uk/1/hi/entertainment/3572776:stm. 
44A project which was started with almost £700,000 of money from statutory agencies. 
See section 4.4 1995 Bradford: Streets and Lanes. 
45Chris Brooke, ÒTop detective blasts Ôculture of silenceÕ that allows
 Asian sex gangs to groom white girls... because police and social
 services fear being branded racistÓ, The Daily Mail, 5 Jan 2011 


http://www:dailymail:co:uk/news/article-1344218/Asian-sex-gangs-Culture-sil 
ence-allows-grooming-white-girls-fear-racist:html. 


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INSTITUTIONAL 
FAILURE 
pimps.Ó We can thus see that even in 2011, the professional child-care 
experts were in a state of denial about the Muslim grooming gangs.46 
The actions of these charities also requires investigation. 

The 2013 parliamentary report stated that Lancashire Police were 
among the most accomplished in the country at dealing with child 
sexual exploitation.47 However Mick Gradwell, a retired senior 
officer from that police force, stated that even when he joined that 
police force in 1979 Òone of the issues was Asian men cruising 
around in BMWs and Mercs trying to pick up young drunken girlsÓ 
outside nightclubs.48 He is reported to have said Òthe targeting of 
under-age and vulnerable girls had been going on for decades.Ó 
Gradwell went on to say that senior officers would not comment 
on it, for fear of being accused of racism, and went on to ask: 
ÒHow many young girls have been abused and raped because of 
the reluctance of the authorities to say exactly what is 
happening?Ó The mother of one of the victims in the 2012 
Rochdale case stated that Òover the years both police and social 
services turned a blind eye to the abuse.Ó49 

Numerous examples have come to light illustrating incredible 
behaviour by police forces. One story that came before the Home 
Affairs Select Committee went like this: at 5am a mother found her 
13 year old daughter in their home with a 32 year old man. 

46See section 5.9 BarnardoÕs. 
47Home Affairs Select Committee report ÒChild Sexual Exploitation and the Response
 to Localised GroomingÓ, 10 Jun 2013, http://www:publications:parliament:u 
k/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmhaff/68/68i:pdf p.32. 
48Jaya Narain ÒPolice chief: ÔWe couldnÕt speak out on Asian sex gangs 
for fear of appearing institutionally racistÕÓ, The Daily Mail, 12 Jan 
2011 http://www:dailymail:co:uk/news/article-1346291/Police-chief-We-speak-Asi 
an-sex-gangs-appearing-racist:html. 
49Nigel Bunyan, ÒRochdale Grooming Trial: Police Knew about 
Sex Abuse in 2002 but Failed to ActÓ, The Telegraph, 9 May 2012, 

http://www:telegraph:co:uk/news/uknews/crime/9254982/Rochdale-grooming-tri 
al-police-knew-about-sex-abuse-in-2002-but-failed-to-act:html. 

123 



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INSTITUTIONAL 
FAILURE 
Her mother phoned the police, reporting that Child S had 
been burnt by the man. Upon arrival, the police were told 
by Child S that she had burnt herself and so the police 
took no further action and failed to inform social services 
of the event. This was despite the fact that she had been 
considered to be at risk of child sexual exploitation since 
she was ten.50 

In his analysis of hundreds of unpublished reports from police and 
social services on grooming gangs, Andrew Norfolk relates some 
more incredible stories: 

Two girls aged 14 and 15 were allegedly being sold for 
sex by a man known to police for criminal activities 
including pimping. He charged £10 a time to Asian men 
who collected the girls in cars and taxis, returning them to 
their home neighbourhood after each sexual encounter.51 

A girlÕs mother copied the names, numbers and text 
messages of 177 Asian men, including a police officer, 
from her daughterÕs mobile phone after the 13-year-old 
went missing for five days. Police said that using the 
information would infringe the girlÕs and the menÕs 
human rights.52 

Two terrified girls, who were dragged into a car and 
driven to Bristol to be used for sex as part of a drugs deal, 
phoned support workers to seek help. Officers from Avon 

50Home Affairs Select Committee report ÒChild Sexual Exploitation and the Response
 to Localised GroomingÓ, 10 Jun 2013, http://www:publications:parliament:u 
k/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmhaff/68/68i:pdf p.34. 
51Andrew Norfolk, ÒPolice Files Reveal Vast Child Protection ScandalÓ, The 
Times, 24 Sep 2012, http://www:thetimes:co:uk/tto/news/uk/crime/article3547661:e 
ce 

52Andrew Norfolk, ÒPolice Files Reveal Vast Child Protection ScandalÓ, The 
Times, 24 Sep 2012, http://www:thetimes:co:uk/tto/news/uk/crime/article3547661:e 
ce 

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5. 
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INSTITUTIONAL 
FAILURE 
and Somerset Constabulary rescued them and returned 

them to Sheffield on a train. South Yorkshire Police did 

not question them about the incident.53 

If Lancashire Police are considered among the best in the country 
at tackling child sexual exploitation, yet a former senior officer 
from that force says they had turned a blind eye to the grooming 
for decades, that force might only be considered Òthe bestÓ 
because the standard has been set so low. One man claims he has 
been trying to extract information from various police forces 
concerning their behaviour in relationship to the grooming gangs, and 
the police have even refused to honour Freedom of Information 
requests.54 At the end of a major grooming gang prosecution in 
Lancashire, Assistant Chief Constable Steve Heywood denied 
sweeping the issue of Asian sex gangs under the carpet.55 Yet as we 
have shown from the statements of retired police officers, police in 
Lancashire have known about grooming gangs since the 1970s and 
that the senior officers would refuse to discuss the problem. At a 
national level, the Serious Organised Crime Agency knew enough 
about the grooming gangs to commission ÒMy Dangerous LoverboyÓ 
in 2008. If South Yorkshire Police are to come in for severe 
criticism, then so should the police forces of Lancashire, 
Manchester, West Yorkshire, West Midlands, East Midlands, 
Thames Valley and probably many other areas. The failure of 
police to investigate and prosecute Muslim grooming gangs resulted 
in vigilante violence in Wolverhampton in 1988, and in Leicester in 

53Andrew Norfolk, ÒPolice Files Reveal Vast Child Protection ScandalÓ, The 
Times, 24 Sep 2012, http://www:thetimes:co:uk/tto/news/uk/crime/article3547661:e 
ce 

54Tony Shell, ÒThe Culpability of the State in the Gang-Related Sexual Exploitation,
 Abuse, and Murder of Young English FemalesÓ, 2013, http://www:darklake-s 
ynectics:co:uk/ithilien-web/docs/special_projects_19:pdf, p.10 
55ÒRochdale Grooming Trial: Police Knew about Sex Abuse in 2002 but Failed 
to ActÓ, The Telegraph, 9 May 2012, http://www:telegraph:co:uk/news/uknews/crim 
e/9254982/Rochdale-grooming-trial-police-knew-about-sex-abuse-in-2002-but-fai 
led-to-act:html. 

125 



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FAILURE 
2013. It may well be that the oft-reported cause of the Muslim riots 
which occurred in Oldham and Bradford in 2001, were only 
proximally ÒcausedÓ by a demonstration by Ònationalists.Ó We are 
never told what those ÒnationalistsÓ were demonstrating about: it is 
just possible that the protests were brought about by the failure of the 
police to prosecute Muslim grooming gangs.56 

In effectively exonerating police forces around the country, the 
parliamentary report stated that victims would often reveal 
information to Òyouth workersÓ but would then refuse to make those 
statements to the police, and that success often comes from building a 
case that does not rely on the schoolgirlÕs testimony, but which 
instead builds a case based on objective evidence, such as evidence 
from CCTV.57 Yet in 2007, Julie Bindel reported how mothers 
were gathering evidence that the police would then dismiss: it 
wasnÕt the case that the police used that evidence to subsequently 
set up surveillance operations. They simply dismissed the mothers 
and their concerns. 

We are always being told that Òlessons have been learnedÓ but 
it seems quite clear that this is meant to placate the public and is a 

56It is interesting to note, that the nationalist demonstration was banned, yet still Muslims
 rioted. http://en:wikipedia:org/wiki/2001_Bradford_riots. The report does not 
state why the ÒnationalistsÓ wished to hold a demonstration in Bradford, a city where 
BarnardoÕs had been running a project to help the victims of grooming gangs for the 
preceding five years. Two months before Muslims rioted in Bradford, they rioted in 
Oldham. Once again, the causes of these riots are vague, but one of the causes cited 
was the disproportionate amount of racist violence towards white people: ÒIn the year 
leading up to the riots, there were 572 reported ethnicity related crimes in the Oldham
 area, and in 62% of these, white persons were recorded as being the victim.Ó 
http://en:wikipedia:org/wiki/2001_Oldham_riots. In Oldham in 2001, white British 
were 71% of the population, 27% were Asian. http://en:wikipedia:org/wiki/Oldham. 
In the case of Oldham, it seems that the ÒnationalistsÓ were demonstrating about the 
racist violence towards white people. However, this may not be the full story with 
these riots in Oldham and Bradford. 
57Home Affairs Select Committee report ÒChild Sexual Exploitation and the Response
 to Localised GroomingÓ, 10 Jun 2013, http://www:publications:parliament:u 
k/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmhaff/68/68i:pdf p.31 

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INSTITUTIONAL 
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deceit. In the heart-breaking story from 2007, of mothers having to 
do the detective work the police would not do, Julie Bindel points out 
that: 

Recommendations following the Soham murders clearly 

state that police should arrest in cases where older males 

have sex with a child under the age of 16. However, 

police rarely take action unless the victim complains, 

thereby allowing the pimps and their customers to act 

with impunity.58 

Over and over again, it is manifest that police forces from South 
Yorkshire, to Lancashire, West Mercia, West Yorkshire have not 
followed these recommendations. The blame for this crisis escalating 
over the last 25 years does not just lie with one or two councils or 
police forces, it seems clear that there has been a pattern of neglect 
across the board, on both a local and a national level. 

5.4 Criminal Justice System 
One of the reasons why council staff and police officers have turned a 
blind eye to the Muslim grooming gangs, was that they feared being 
accused of racism. However, if the criminal justice system had been 
sufficiently attuned to this new form of criminal behaviour, it may 
have been easier for police forces to secure convictions, thus 
providing a positive feedback mechanism for police officers and 
council staff to continue to pursue the exploitative gangs. It must 
make it easier to deal with the false accusations of racism, when the 
details come out in open court, and a jury decides to convict the child 
rapists. However, as if the victims have not suffered enough, it has 
been observed that Òsome victims... found the court process worse 

58Julie Bindel, ÒMothers of PreventionÓ, The Sunday Times, 30 Sep 2007 http://ww 
w:thesundaytimes:co:uk/sto/news/uk_news/article72310:ece. 

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INSTITUTIONAL 
FAILURE 
than the actual exploitation.Ó59 After one day of giving evidence in a 
recent trial, one of the victimÕs who was testifying attempted 
suicide.60 Whilst it might be hard to compile a case across agency and 
regional boundaries, and whilst it might be hard to get the schoolgirls 
to realise that they were victims from the time when the grooming 
was initiated, surely facilitating the trial process is something that is 
within the power of national agencies? If the trial procedure is even 
worse than being tortured and sexually abused, there is 
something very wrong with the criminal justice system. 

ItÕs not just the trial procedure which is at fault. The Crown 
Prosecution Service (CPS) seems to have been reluctant to prosecute, 
and at times has been downright obstructive. In 2009, Police in 
Rochdale carried out a four month investigation into grooming and 
sexual exploitation in that area. Greater Manchester Police arrested 
six ÒAsianÓ men, and sent the details of the investigation to the CPS. 
The CPS refused to take any further action, saying that the victim 
lacked credibility as a witness: 

it took them [Greater Manchester Police] 11 months to 
send a file on the case to the Crown Prosecution Service, 
which decided in July 2009 that Girl A would not be a 
credible witness in court and did not, therefore, go ahead 
with a prosecution. The police decided not to contest the 
decision even though Ahmed had no explanation for how 
his DNA had been found on Girl AÕs underwear. 61 

59Home Affairs Select Committee report ÒChild Sexual Exploitation and the Response
 to Localised GroomingÓ, 10 Jun 2013, http://www:publications:parliament:u 
k/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmhaff/68/68i:pdf p.41 
60Hayley Dixon, ÒTeenager giving evidence against sex gang accused attempted 
suicideÓ, The Telegraph, 6 Aug 2013, http://www:telegraph:co:uk/news/uknews/crim 
e/10224527/Teenager-giving-evidence-against-sex-gang-accused-attempted-suicide :html. 
61Nigel Bunyan, ÒRochdale grooming trial: how the case unfoldedÓ, The Telegraph,
 21 Jun 2012, http://www:telegraph:co:uk/news/uknews/crime/9347305/Roch 
dale-grooming-trial-how-the-case-unfolded:html. 

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FAILURE 
After complaints to the Home Office in 2011, this decision by the 
CPS was overturned and led to the conviction in 2012 of nine Muslim 
men from Rochdale for a variety of crimes relation to grooming and 
sexual abuse.62 As the Home Affairs Select Committee noted in 2013, 
the CPS Òhas readily admitted that victims had been let down by them 
and have attempted... to discover the cause of this systematic 
failure.Ó63 The parliamentary investigation offers no indication as 
to what could be the cause of the CPS Òsystematic failureÓ with 
regard to these cases. When this case in Rochdale went to trial, it 
turned out to be far more shocking than any of the grooming trials 
which had preceded it in the previous 15 years: in fact, it was 
probably the single most significant grooming trial in those 15 years, 
not just because of the number of men convicted, but also for the 
number of schoolgirls they had groomed. And yet this key trial almost 
fell by the wayside, as the CPS refused to proceed with it. Without 
complaints to the Home Office about the failure of the CPS, this 
significant gang (who had been abusing 50 girls for many years), 
would have continued unhindered. Yet Parliament did not think that 
the CPS merited any particular censure for their role in the failures to 
stop the grooming gangs. 

A brief examination of the case of 12 year old Samantha shows 
how the criminal justice system treats these kinds of cases, even when 
the CPS has actually decided to proceed with a prosecution. On 
October 27th 2006, Samantha: 

was abducted by two Asian men who drove her around 

Oldham for hours and then raped her. They then threw 

her our of a moving car in the Chadderton area of 

Oldham. She ran away and asked another man for 

62Tony Shell, ÒThe Culpability of the State in the Gang-Related Sexual Exploitation,
 Abuse, and Murder of Young English FemalesÓ, 2013, http://www:darklake-s 
ynectics:co:uk/ithilien-web/docs/special_projects_19:pdf, p.6 
63Home Affairs Select Committee report ÒChild Sexual Exploitation and the Response
 to Localised GroomingÓ, 10 Jun 2013, http://www:publications:parliament:u 
k/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmhaff/68/68i:pdf p.33 

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help. He invited Samantha inside and then dragged her 
upstairs and sexually assaulted her. She ran away whilst 
he was calling his friends to come and join him. At that 
point a taxi driver and his passenger pulled up beside 
her to ask her if she was okay, they said she looked very 
upset and like sheÕd been through hell, and so offered to 
take her to the police station and then home... They 
then took Samantha to a house on Attock Close, took her 
inside and then locked her in a room where 5 Asian men 
went on to rape her over and over for nearly 24 hours. 
The ringleader, was Shakil Choudhury, and he received a 
three year sentence for leading this extraordinary 
attack.64 (emphasis added) 

Whilst this case is not included in our list of grooming gang 
convictions, it has all the hallmarks: multiple ÒAsianÓ men abducting 
and raping a non-Muslim schoolgirl. In fact, she seems to have been 
abducted and raped by three separate Muslim gangs on the same day. 
We have not included this case in our list of grooming convictions, as 
there is no indication that a ÒgroomingÓ process was involved. 
Nevertheless, it gives us some idea of just how common it is for 
disparate groups of men in some Muslim communities in Britain 
to consider abducting, raping and sharing a non-Muslim 
schoolgirl amongst their friends and relatives. They clearly have 
little fear of being caught and convicted of any crime, and seeing a 
schoolgirl in a vulnerable situation clearly sets off ideas in their 
minds which most of the population of Britain would never 
contemplate. 

And what happened when this case entered the criminal justice 

64http://www:youhavenotdefeatedme:co:uk/Featured/what-happened-to-sammi:h 
tml. Shakil Choudhury actually received a sentence of six years, but was released 
after three years. The website dedicated to this case is apparently conflating this 
distinction. Nevertheless the end result is shocking: a man responsible for multiple 
rapes of a 12 year old schoolgirl only spends three years in prison for his crimes. 

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system simply reinforces their belief that they can behave like this 
without any significant punishment. Just one of all those men 
involved in the abduction and sexual abuse of this 12 year old girl was 
prosecuted. Shakil Choudury only served 3 years (of a 6 year 
sentence) for these crimes, despite sentencing guidelines that should 
have ensured he got a custodial sentence of between 11 and 17 
years.65 Appeal judges refused to extend the sentence (apparently 
because violence was not used, and the girl had consumed alcohol.) 
Even though he refused to name his accomplices, Choudury was 
released after 3 years.66 Thus, even if the CPS decided to proceed 
with a prosecution, trial and appeal judges give derisory 
sentences. It appears as though the blindness of political correctness 
extends as far as the judiciary, who think that a (possibly) wayward 12 
year old girl is somehow asking to be abducted, raped and abused. 
One has to wonder: would the perpetrators have escaped so lightly if 
they had been non-Muslims? Could it really be that the judiciary have 
been systematically lenient to Muslim men? Could Òthe racism of low 
expectationsÓ67 be so pervasive, that the judiciary are unaware of 
what they are doing? 

One of the most incredible parts of the 2013 parliamentary 
report, is that the MPs involved felt it necessary 
to 
spell 
out 
that 


65Tony Shell, ÒThe Culpability of the State in the Gang-Related Sexual Exploitation,
 Abuse, and Murder of Young English FemalesÓ, 2013, http://www:darklake-s 
ynectics:co:uk/ithilien-web/docs/special_projects_19:pdf. See p.5 and note 23. 
66ÒSix years for paedophile Ôis long enoughÕÓ, Manchester Evening News, 28 
Dec 2007 http://www:manchestereveningnews:co:uk/news/local-news/six-years-for 
-paedophile-is-long-1015378. 
67The Òracism of low expectationsÓ is when people expect lower moral or intellectual 
standards from people from ethnic minority backgrounds; the assumption being that 
people from those ethnic minorities are actually incapable of attaining the same moral 
or intellectual heights as white people. Those who suffer from this form of racism 
are often even unaware that they are lowering the bar for ethnic minorities, resulting 
in them implicitly having the same view of the relationship between white people 
and ethnic minorities as explicitly avowed by racial supremacists. See Sunny Hundal, 
ÒThe soft racism of low expectationsÓ, The Guardian, 30 Jun 2006, http://www:the 
guardian:com/commentisfree/2006/jun/30/panderingtocrackpots. 

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these 
under-age 
girls 
cannot 
legally 
consent 
to 
sex. That the sex 
takes place at all is a criminal offence, especially if the men involved 
know that the girl is under 16 (or under 18 in the case of someone 
paying for sex). 

It is widely acknowledged that the criminal justice 
system has failed to adequately protect and support 
victims of localised grooming and child sexual 
exploitation... The confusion about whether or not these 
children were ÒconsentingÓ to sexual activity (though the 
law clearly says that they cannot) was also a factor which 
influenced police decisions.68 

Considering the amount of training undergone by police officers, 
social workers, teachers and state prosecutors it is truly staggering that 
any of them should have attempted to defend their inaction by saying 
they thought the schoolgirls had consented. These schoolgirls could 
not consent to sex with these men any more than they could consent to 
buy a house or take out a bank loan. That Parliament felt this needed 
to be explicitly spelt out is a strong indication of how much courts, 
police and child-care professionals have abandoned recommendations 
laid down for child protection. With that in mind, we must wonder at 
the decisions of the judges involved in the Shakil Choudary case, who 
thought that the rape victim not attempting to escape was an 
indication that she was consenting69 -something that parliament has 

68Home Affairs Select Committee report ÒChild Sexual Exploitation and the Response
 to Localised GroomingÓ, 10 Jun 2013, http://www:publications:parliament:u 
k/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmhaff/68/68i:pdf p.34. 
69ÒSix years for paedophile Ôis long enoughÕÓ, Manchester Evening News, 28 
Dec 2007, http://www:manchestereveningnews:co:uk/news/local-news/six-years-for 
-paedophile-is-long-1015378. 

...despite the ÒdisgustingÓ nature of his crime, there was no evidence 
that force was used to make her comply, the judge noted. Despite the 
lengthy sex sessions with the four men lasting all through the night, 
the [12 year old] girl had not objected... 

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FAILURE 
now spelt out was impossible, even if she had been propositioned and 
agreed to sex, never mind being abducted and raped. 

Another betrayal of the victims occurs when a schoolgirl goes to 
the police to make an allegation: if she is not prepared to support an 
immediate prosecution the case is dropped. Parliament stated that Òit 
may take many years for victims to disclose the full extent of their 
abuse and for them to trust the criminal justice system to treat them 
with the sensitivity they require and deserve.Ó70 In such 
circumstances, the allegations should be recorded and kept on file. 
Whilst the Home Affairs Select Committee did not spell it out, it is 
clear that given the complexity of these cases, the police should start 
to investigate the accused and start to put him under surveillance, as 
other objective evidence could be discovered, implicating him in 
something far larger than the abuse of one girl. 

It is quite often the case that the sexual exploitation of the 
schoolgirl takes place years before a prosecution, and maybe even 
some years after the young woman has escaped the clutches of the 
gang. In such circumstances the victim receives no special protective 
measures during the trial process (such as having the help of an 
intermediary in the court).71 Parliament also noted that even when a 
victim was eligible for special protective measures in court, these 
often failed or were missing Òleading to the victim either feeling 
unable to give evidence or being so shaken that their evidence presents 
as being unreliable.Ó72 It does not serve justice if parliament mandates 
that special measures be offered to young people in a trial, but the trial 

70Home Affairs Select Committee report ÒChild Sexual Exploitation and the Response
 to Localised GroomingÓ, 10 Jun 2013, http://www:publications:parliament:u 
k/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmhaff/68/68i:pdf p.29 
71Home Affairs Select Committee report ÒChild Sexual Exploitation and the Response
 to Localised GroomingÓ, 10 Jun 2013, http://www:publications:parliament:u 
k/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmhaff/68/68i:pdf p.42 
72Home Affairs Select Committee report ÒChild Sexual Exploitation and the Response
 to Localised GroomingÓ, 10 Jun 2013, http://www:publications:parliament:u 
k/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmhaff/68/68i:pdf p.41 

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FAILURE 
then continues when these measures have failed to be put in place. 

In the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act (1999) it was 
agreed that video recording of cross-examination/re-examination 
should be available to young and vulnerable witnesses. Yet in 2013, 
Parliament stated Òwe are at a loss to understand why the Ministry of 
Justice, fourteen years after the Act was passed, has still failed to 
implement this measure.Ó73 If this advance had been implemented 
in the early years of the 21st century (along with the other 
provisions intended to help young witnesses), more prosecutions 
of grooming gangs could have succeeded, because the witnesses 
would have been less intimidated by the proceedings. And if more 
convictions had succeeded, then parents, schools, social services 
and police forces would not have felt powerless, and would have 
been more likely to take action when presented with evidence of 
grooming gang activities. Furthermore, successful prosecutions, 
and the details which came out during the trial process, would 
have made it impossible for allegations of ÒracismÓ to stop this 
phenomenon from becoming public knowledge, and a wide-scale 
public debate would have taken place years ago. The public 
outcry over the activities of the grooming gangs across the 
country would have meant that the years of inactivity by the 
national crime organisations could not have gone unchallenged. 

As the Home Affairs Select Committee said in 2013: Òthe balance 
is skewed too strongly in favour of protecting the defendantÕs rights as 
opposed to the very vulnerable witnesses in cases of child sexual 
exploitation.Ó74 It is a bitter irony that it should have taken these 
eminent politicians, with their expert witnesses, and the ruined lives 
of 10,000 vulnerable schoolgirls to grasp what the mothers were 

73Home Affairs Select Committee report ÒChild Sexual Exploitation and the Response
 to Localised GroomingÓ, 10 Jun 2013, http://www:publications:parliament:u 
k/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmhaff/68/68i:pdf p.40. 
74Home Affairs Select Committee report ÒChild Sexual Exploitation and the Response
 to Localised GroomingÓ, 10 Jun 2013, http://www:publications:parliament:u 
k/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmhaff/68/68i:pdf pp.44-45 

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FAILURE 
saying a decade earlier. 

The mothers say the fact the men are Asian isnÕt an issue 
for them --they say they just want this abuse stopped. 
They met David Blunkett in person to argue that if 
criminal proceedings canÕt be brought because their 
daughters wonÕt make complaints to the police then the 
law needs changing.75 

Moreover, if the politicians were not prepared to listen to the mothers, 
then one might have hoped they would have listened to Prof. Barrett, 
who in 2008, pointed out that intent of The ChildrenÕs Act (1989) was 
being ignored.76 

The narrative of racism has been horribly abused, to prevent 
justice being done. The case of Samantha shows that the decades in 
which these gangs have been able to get away with their child abuse 
has made them very sure that the odds are stacked in their favour. The 
mothersÕ intuition is probably correct: new laws will be required in 
order to undo the damage of the last 25 years. Localised grooming 

75Channel4 ÒAsian Rape AllegationsÓ, Channel 4 News, 27 Aug 2003, (from 
archive.org) http://web:archive:org/web/20100620042427/http://www:channel4:com 
/news/articles/society/law_order/Asian+rape+allegations/256893. 
76 ÒAbused Girls: What Do We Know?Ó, http://news:bbc:co:uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pd 
fs/27_03_08_whatweknow:pdf. 

The 1989 Act received all-party support in its drafting stages and enshrines
 Òthe welfare of the child shall be the courtÕs paramount 
considerationÓ; this implies it takes precedence over that of adults. 

The current Òchildren versus adultsÓ battles, regarding various forms of 
abuse cases, which are regularly played out in the legal system, have 
become a power see-saw which undermines this bedrock principle of 
the 1989 Act. Moreover, it also appears to give way to operational 
caveats such as wider issues of culture, politics and geography, because
 we continue to see regional variations in the application of 
the child protection laws despite ample safeguarding guidance to 
the contrary, which requires consistency and transparency. (emphasis 
added) 

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INSTITUTIONAL 
FAILURE 
will need to be identified as a specific crime, with a very heavy 
penalty. The judiciary will need to be instructed to put the childÕs 
interests first. And the CPS needs to be investigated to see why it was 
so reluctant to proceed with major prosecutions, such as that from 
Rochdale in 2012. 

5.5 Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre 
The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) has 
existed since 2006, and is a cross-agency department of the Serious 
and Organised Crime Agency. 

The centre is split into three faculties; Intelligence, Harm 
Reduction and Operations. Each faculty is supported by 
teams covering governance, communications, 
partnerships and corporate services. The intelligence 
faculty receive intelligence of online and offline 
offenders; all reports made through the centreÕs website, 
[sic] and ThinkUKnow are dealt with at any time of day 
so that law enforcement action can be taken. The Harm 
Reduction faculty manage Public Awareness campaigns 
and educational programmes, including the ThinkUKnow 
education programme, which is currently being used in 
UK schools.77 

Considering that CEOP is principally about the gathering and 
dissemination of information about offenders, and about discerning 
international patterns of grooming, it is reasonable to have expected 
them to have been intervening with the grooming gang problem. At 
the very least, we could have expected them to be assembling 
intelligence from local services, and using this to build up an idea of 
what was going on nationally (or within regions). From this 

77http://en:wikipedia:org/wiki/Child_Exploitation_and_Online_Protection_Centre#F 
aculties 

136 



5. 
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INSTITUTIONAL 
FAILURE 
intelligence, they could then have devised training programmes for 
professionals in the field, and provided advisory services to 
government and other national agencies (e.g. the CPS, the Ministry of 
Justice), concerning the scale of the problem and the complexity 
involved in curtailing the gangs. But until 2011, there appeared to be 
no intelligence analysis nor Òharm reductionÓ strategy from CEOP in 
this regard. 

In June 2011 the Child Exploitation and Online Protection 
Centre (CEOP) released a report on the spate of gangs being 
convicted for grooming schoolgirls.78 In this report, CEOP 
invents the term Òlocalised grooming.Ó This term cannot be found 
on their website before 2011. 

CEOP has carried out a rapid assessment of Òlocalised 
groomingÓ in the UK. This is a form of sexual 
exploitation, previously referred to as Òon street 
groomingÓ in the media, where children have been 
groomed and sexually exploited by an offender, having 
initially met in a location outside their home, usually in a 
public place (such as a park, cinema, on the street or at a 
friendÕs house). Offenders often act in concert, 
establishing a relationship with a child or children before 
sexually exploiting them. Some victims of Òstreet 
groomingÓ may believe that the offender is in fact an 
older ÒboyfriendÓ, introducing peers to the offender 
group who may also be sexually exploited. Abuse may 
occur at a number of locations within a local area and on 
several occasions. ÒLocalised groomingÓ has been 
subject to considerable media attention following a 
number of prosecutions of adult males for the grooming 
and sexually exploitation of children and young people in 
various towns and cities in the UK. Several NGOs have 

78CEOP, Out 
of 
Mind, 
Out 
of 
Sight 
-Breaking 
Down 
the 
Barriers 
to 
Understanding 
Child 
Sexual 
Exploitation, Jun 2011, http://ceop:police:uk/Publications/ 

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5. 
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FAILURE 
reported that large numbers of victims of this type of 

child sexual exploitation have accessed their services 

across the UK. However, there have been 

comparatively few prosecutions, and there is a general 

lack of knowledge of grooming and sexual 

exploitation in the UK and the threats posed to 

children and young people.79 (emphasis added) 

Significantly, CEOP qualify ÒgroomingÓ to be Òlocalised groomingÓ, 
betraying that their interest is with internet-related grooming and 
child pornography on the internet, and on cross-border trafficking. In 
the CEOP definition of Òlocalised groomingÓ they excluded 
Òpeer-on-peer exploitation, online grooming, familial child sexual 
abuse, stranger abduction and the trafficking of non UK nationals for 
sexual exploitation.Ó80 Yet if they had been focussing on real-world 
grooming of schoolgirls, then it would have been the Òonline 
groomingÓ which became a qualified term. In setting up CEOP it was 
not called ÒThe Online Child Exploitation Protection CentreÓ, yet 
apparently, when it came to British children, they were only interested 
in Òonline protectionÓ: the child exploitation component of CEOPÕs 
remit covered the trafficking of foreign children into the UK, but not 
the exploitation of British children within Britain. Could it be that 
when CEOP was set up, they were explicitly told that their concern 
was only to focus on internet-related issues and international issues? 
Was it made clear when CEOP was established, that it was to ignore 
the Muslim grooming gangs? Or were the staff at CEOP also victims 
of political correctness, who dared not study or report on the Muslim 
grooming gangs? Questions need to be asked of what went wrong at 
CEOP. 

79CEOP, Out 
of 
Mind, 
Out 
of 
Sight 
-Breaking 
Down 
the 
Barriers 
to 
Understanding 
Child 
Sexual 
Exploitation, Jun 2011, http://ceop:police:uk/Publications/, p.5. 
80CEOP, Out 
of 
Mind, 
Out 
of 
Sight 
-Breaking 
Down 
the 
Barriers 
to 
Understanding 
Child 
Sexual 
Exploitation, Jun 2011, http://ceop:police:uk/Publications/, p.10 

138 



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INSTITUTIONAL 
FAILURE 
That CEOP had to carry out a Òrapid assessmentÓ of a 
problem that was known by the general public to exist since the 
first few years of the 21st century, a problem that was known by 
organisations like BarnardoÕs 
since before 1995, shows that CEOP 
had ignored this aspect of Òchild exploitationÓ. No doubt the 
grooming gang phenomenon was known to journalists, social workers 
and police officers long before 2003; SAS was founded in 1998, to 
deal with the grooming of Sikh girls. Thus CEOP seems to have been 
set up principally to protect children who have computers in their own 
bedrooms from being groomed by online paedophiles. It appears 
CEOP had scant regard for children who are drugged, raped and 
pimped out in the real world. If CEOP had been actively gathering 
information, they would have known there was a very real problem. 
Yet it is 5 years after the creation of CEOP before they issue a report 
which even touches on the grooming gangs. Why would Parliament 
ask CEOP to produce a report if it was not part of their remit? 
And if it was part of their remit, why were they doing a Òrapid 
assessmentÓ and who are they to bemoan the lack of data? If it 
was part of their remit, then they should have had this 
information-gathering in hand years earlier. In 2008 UKHTC, 
which like CEOP was part of SOCA, was already commissioning 
an educational video to warn schoolgirls about the gangs, yet it 
was another 3 years before CEOP considered what their 
responsibilities were in this area. 

CEOPÕs 2008 self-congratulatory Annual Report says: 

The coordination of online police resources is delivering 

not only an economy of scale but a more effective assault 

on predators. Six major paedophile rings have been 

dismantled in the last twelve months and our tracker 

teams have traced more missing sex offenders than ever 

before. With a large and varied number of investigations 

now underway, the child abuser is facing an increasingly 

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INSTITUTIONAL 
FAILURE 
hostile environment both on and offline.81 

So CEOP saw it as their business to destroy organised groups who 
were sexually exploiting children. Yet they gave a wide birth to the 
grooming gangs in Britain. There seems to be no justification 
whatsoever for CEOPÕs investigative and analytical and training 
failures. They were proudly breaking up paedophile rings, but not 
when those paedophile rings consisted of Muslim men? 

CEOP was not only concerned with gathering of intelligence in 
order to gain criminal convictions. The CEOP 2008 report goes on 
to say that in the previous year Ò2,600 law enforcement and child 
protection professionals have attended specialist CEOP training 
courses.Ó82 This was a year in which a mere six Òlocalised 
groomersÓ were caught. ItÕs not even as though 2009 fared much 
better with these 2,600 newly-trained child-care professionals: again, 
only six Òlocalised groomersÓ were convicted.83 Where are the 
economies of scale in this? It is great that six paedophile groups were 
broken up, but there could be hundreds of Muslim grooming gangs in 
operation (since then, police forces in England admitted that they had 
active investigations into 54 gangs in early 2013). 

In 2007 Julie Bindel had reported in The Times on how the 
mothers of the victims of grooming gangs had been amassing 
chronological and photographic evidence by themselves, only to have 
the police then refuse to look at the evidence. The 2008 CEOP report 
goes on to say how important it is to listen to children, and to explain 
the role CEOP played in creating an International Youth Advisory 
Congress. Yet thousands of schoolgirls might have been saved from 
the exploitation of the grooming gangs, if CEOP had spent time 
training social workers and police officers about the specific 

81ÒCEOP Annual ReviewÓ, 2008, http://ceop:police:uk/Documents/ceopannualrevi 
ew2008:pdf p.7. 
82ÒCEOP Annual ReviewÓ, 2008, http://ceop:police:uk/Documents/ceopannualrevi 
ew2008:pdf p.9. 
83See section 11. Appendix 1: Grooming Gang Convictions. 


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INSTITUTIONAL 
FAILURE 
characteristics of the grooming gangs, and the signals that a child was 
in their clutches, or that children in an area were being targeted 
outside schools or takeaways, in shopping malls and shopping 
centres. CEOP could have been measuring the progress of different 
police forces, and pointing out those whose prosecution rate lagged 
behind the intelligence reports indicating grooming gang activity. 

Based on other documents produced by CEOP, the organisationÕs 
principle concerns in 2009 were internet technology and digital 
imagery, criminal finances from child pornography, and the 
international travel of sex offenders. In 2009 there is no mention 
whatsoever of Òlocalised groomingÓ within their list of Òkey 
intelligence requirementsÓ84 When they break down their 
investigations into offender behaviour, fully 48% of it is dedicated 
to grooming, but once again, apparently it is only in the sense of 
Òonline groomingÓ with which CEOP is concerned. There seems 
to have been an astonishing blind-spot when it comes to the Muslim 
grooming gangs. Let us remember, CROP estimates that there have 
been 10,000 victims; it seems not unlikely that there are 1000 victims 
a year. And in a five-year period, CEOP do not seem to have done any 
work at all in this area. 

Having ignored the issue of real-world grooming and sexual 
exploitation happening within Britain, when CEOP came to write its 
Òrapid assessmentÓ of the situation, it was clear that they were going 
to be writing a report that would at most provide a rough idea of what 
was going on. The report Òaimed to determine the known extent of 
child sexual exploitation.Ó85 The CEOP report says: 

Given the pace with which relevant data was collated, 

agencies had a limited timeframe to interrogate their data 

storage systems, extract relevant information and 

84See p.10 ÒCEOP Strategic OverviewÓ, 2008-2009, http://ceop:police:uk/Docume 
nts/strategic_overview_2008-09:pdf. 
85CEOP, Out 
of 
Mind, 
Out 
of 
Sight 
-Breaking 
Down 
the 
Barriers 
to 
Understanding 
Child 
Sexual 
Exploitation, Jun 2011, http://ceop:police:uk/Publications/, p.6 

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FAILURE 
configure data into a format suitable for submission to 

CEOP. Agencies from each sector faced particular 

difficulties in submitting a comprehensive response. 

What was the rush? Why would the national crime agency tasked 
with providing this report not have the data? The problem of the 
grooming gangs got national publicity almost a decade before this 
report was produced. Why suddenly now? Because suddenly in 2011, 
people within Britain were asking questions, and MPs must have 
found that they did not have the answers. However, the key question 
is: why would a dedicated cross-agency child sexual exploitation 
group have not been collating this information about this major form 
of child sexual exploitation over the previous five years? And having 
rushed to get this inadequate report out, why have two years elapsed 
without CEOP returning to this and doing a professional and thorough 
analysis? At what point will CEOP have adequate data? 

The sample data in this 2011 report has perpetrators and 
victims classified on racial rather than religious grounds. That is 
probably all the data they had, since police forces are not compelled 
to record the religious beliefs/background of perpetrator and victim. 
But it means that the question and the answer are going to be 
off-kilter. If CEOP had been attending properly to this problem, 
they would have known that almost identical problems with gangs 
of Muslims grooming young non-Muslim girls for sexual 
exploitation was occurring in Holland too. Indeed, since UKHTC, 
the sister organisation of CEOP, commissioned a documentary 
based on what was going on in Holland, it is literally unbelievable 
that CEOP could not have known that the issue has far more to 
do with religion than with race. With that knowledge, from 2005 
when CEOP was created, they could have been training and advising 
police forces about the nature of this crime and about the kind of data 
which needed to be recorded to establish the patterns. Religion is far 
more relevant than race when it comes to this kind of child sexual 
exploitation. And some national agency needed to make this explicit 

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INSTITUTIONAL 
FAILURE 
so that local agencies could gather this kind of information. Perhaps it 
would have required legislation to mandate that police forces and 
social services record if the perpetrator was Muslim or not. This is the 
kind of thing which CEOP should have been investigating from its 
inception. 

In reading this report, you can sense their embarrassment: an 
organisation that was set up to provide intelligence and training on 
child sex exploitation cannot provide any kind of useful information 
about a massive problem going on under their nose. 

CEOP begin the report by highlighting the limitations: 

(i) Child sexual exploitation is often hidden from view. 
The thematic assessment sought to determine and assess 
the known scale of Òlocalised groomingÓ based on 
information held by relevant agencies. (ii) All agencies 
faced particular difficulties in responding to the 
information request. As a result, information submitted 
to CEOP during the rapid assessment is incomplete, and 
does not represent the totality of information relating to 
child sexual exploitation or Òlocalised groomingÓ held by 
relevant agencies. (iii) Of those agencies which were able 
to respond, many were unable to provide information 
relating to the complete study period, from 1 January 
2008 to 1 March 2011. Instead, agencies submitted a 
snapshot of relevant data.86 
But this begs the question: if the police forces listened to the 
children (as CEOP claims is so important), then the crime would 
not 
have been ÒhiddenÓ -victims and their parents were trying to 
draw the attention of social workers and the police to what was 
going on (as were a couple of brave journalists), but the majority 
of the professionals were neither listening nor seeing. As one of the 

86CEOP, Out 
of 
Mind, 
Out 
of 
Sight 
-Breaking 
Down 
the 
Barriers 
to 
Understanding 
Child 
Sexual 
Exploitation, Jun 2011, http://ceop:police:uk/Publications/ p.9 

143 



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INSTITUTIONAL 
FAILURE 
mothers of the victims stated in 2007: ÒWe parents are doing more to 
investigate these criminals than the police...Ó87 If the various agencies 
involved had received guidance by CEOP from 2006 onwards, then 
the agencies would have known to listen to the victims and their 
parents. CEOP was supposed to pull all these agencies together and to 
guide them; yet here we have CEOP trying to blame the local agencies 
for not having the information that CEOP has been tasked with 
collating, when there is no sign that between 2006 and 2011 CEOP 
made any attempt to train police forces and child-care professionals in 
the methods of these criminals or the extent of their criminal 
networks. If the data is unavailable surely only CEOP are to blame for 
this? How could police forces or other agencies know to collect this 
specific data if they have never been instructed to do so?The bottom 
line about this 2011 CEOP report is: garbage in, garbage out. In most 
of the apparently relevant crime data, not only was the religion of the 
perpetrator and victim not recorded, but mostly the Òracial categoryÓ 
of the perpetrator and victim is absent. CEOP recommended that this 
Òrapid assessmentÓ be repeated in 2013 or 2014, on the assumption 
that agencies will have accumulated more appropriate data by then.88 
CEOP thinks that relevant data could be gathered in a two year period, 
yet before being prompted by Parliament, they had not bothered to 
ask for this data in the previous five years. 

By any interpretation of the statutory definition of child sexual 
exploitation, what CEOP calls Òlocalised groomingÓ falls under that 
definition: 

Sexual exploitation of children and young people under 

18 involves exploitative situations, contexts and 

relationships where young people... receive ÒsomethingÓ 

(e.g. food, accommodation, drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, 
87Julie Bindel, ÒMothers of PreventionÓ, The Sunday Times, 30 Sep 2007, http://ww 
w:thesundaytimes:co:uk/sto/news/uk_news/article72310:ece. 
88CEOP, Out 
of 
Mind, 
Out 
of 
Sight 
-Breaking 
Down 
the 
Barriers 
to 
Understanding 
Child 
Sexual 
Exploitation, Jun 2011, http://ceop:police:uk/Publications/, p.96 

144 



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FAILURE 
affection, gifts, money) as a result of them performing, 
and/or another or others performing on them, sexual 
activities... those exploiting the child/young person have 
power over them by virtue of their age, gender, intellect, 
physical strength and/or economic or other resources. 
Violence, coercion and intimidation are common, 
involvement in exploitative relationships being 
characterised in the main by the child or young personÕs 
limited availability of choice resulting from their 
social/economic and/or emotional vulnerability... a child 
is defined as under 18...89 

From this definition, it is obvious that this Òlocalised groomingÓ 
should have been at least on a par with Òonline groomingÓ and 
with Òchild traffickingÓ, the two major focuses of CEOP since its 
inception. That Òlocalised groomingÓ also seems to have been 
organised and involved immense financial gain, should have meant it 
fell within the purview of the Serious and Organised Crime Agency. 

CEOP go on to qualify Òlocalised groomingÓ further, pointing out 
that it has a distinctive M.O. (modus operendi).90 However, they then 
go on to state Òit is not possible to distinguish a specific and distinct 
subset of risk factors associated with Ôlocalised groomingÕ.Ó91 
Considering that they had shirked their role in intelligence-gathering 
and the training of public-facing staff, if it was impossible to 
distinguish these risk factors, then CEOP must be held responsible for 
that lack of information. The most obvious risk behaviours are 
vulnerable young non-Muslim schoolgirls, being pursued by gangs of 
Muslim men, in situations where the girls were not under adult 

89CEOP, Out 
of 
Mind, 
Out 
of 
Sight 
-Breaking 
Down 
the 
Barriers 
to 
Understanding 
Child 
Sexual 
Exploitation, Jun 2011, http://ceop:police:uk/Publications/ p.13 
90CEOP, Out 
of 
Mind, 
Out 
of 
Sight 
-Breaking 
Down 
the 
Barriers 
to 
Understanding 
Child 
Sexual 
Exploitation, Jun 2011, http://ceop:police:uk/Publications/, p.14 
91CEOP, Out 
of 
Mind, 
Out 
of 
Sight 
-Breaking 
Down 
the 
Barriers 
to 
Understanding 
Child 
Sexual 
Exploitation, Jun 2011, http://ceop:police:uk/Publications/, p.17. 

145 



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SYSTEMIC 
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FAILURE 
supervision.92 

Citing the work of the Coalition for the Removal of Pimping 
(CROP), the CEOP report states that: 

it cannot be assumed that child sexual exploitation 
exclusively affects chaotic or dysfunctional families. 
Indeed, offenders who groom children for sexual 
exploitation exacerbate pre-existing vulnerabilities, 
leading children to go missing for periods of time and 
engage in substance misuse, causing dysfunction in 
previously stable families.93 

That CEOP should cite the work of CROP shows that CEOP should 
have been partnering intensively with CROP from the outset. We 
must conclude that the professionals at CEOP found the whole idea of 
Muslim grooming gangs so controversial, that they chose to entirely 
ignore this form of serious child abuse. One can only construe from 
this, that they must have expected the hold of political correctness to 
have ensured that this subject could never again become a focal point 
in the national consciousness. 

The major recommendations of the CEOP report are: 

a) 
experience of past victims should be used to 
design prevention messages and to design 
early intervention 

b) local agencies (child services, police, etc.) 
must meet their responsibilities under existing 
(2009) statutory guidance 

c) local agencies must ensure that children who 

92Not all cases involve Muslim men, but they are so heavily over-represented in these 
cases that the sight of an Asian man with a white schoolgirl should have sent alarm 
bells ringing for any police officer, teacher or social worker. 
93CEOP, Out 
of 
Mind, 
Out 
of 
Sight 
-Breaking 
Down 
the 
Barriers 
to 
Understanding 
Child 
Sexual 
Exploitation, Jun 2011, http://ceop:police:uk/Publications/ pp.16-17 

146 



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FAILURE 
are at risk are identified early on.94 

This emphasizes once more the failures of CEOP. In 2011 their 
principal recommendation is that education based on the experiences 
of victims should be used for early intervention. CEOP was stating 
this 3 years after their sister organisation had already commissioned 
an educational video designed to do this, an educational video that 
still has not been seen by prospective victims. From 2009, had any of 
those thousands of child-care professionals trained by CEOP even 
seen My Dangerous Loverboy? This would have enabled those 
professionals to fulfil the other two recommendations made by CEOP. 

CEOP is basically trying to pass the blame onto the local 
agencies (childrenÕs services and police), rather than accepting 
that they had a guiding role, and they failed in this role. The gangs 
were operating across regions, and multiple local agencies were 
failing to deal with them. There is even an international dimension.95 
It is clear that local agencies were mostly paralysed when it came to 
dealing with this kind of criminality. CEOP could not have been 
unaware that even at a national level, the media were too scared to 
discuss the subject of grooming gangs, because they would be 
accused of ÒracismÓ by the Left and racism groups. National 
leadership was required, but it was not forthcoming. Moreover, if 
local agencies were failing to adhere to statutory guidelines (in the 
Panorama documentary of 2008, Prof. Barrett pointed out this was 
also the case with courts failing to enforce recommendations 
protecting the interests of children), didnÕt CEOP or SOCA have a 
role in identifying this earlier, reporting these failures to the Home 
Office or Ministry of Justice? Is it acceptable for CEOP to have been 
silent whilst child exploitation occurred because local agencies or 
courts were failing to follow statutory guidelines? 

94CEOP, Out 
of 
Mind, 
Out 
of 
Sight 
-Breaking 
Down 
the 
Barriers 
to 
Understanding 
Child 
Sexual 
Exploitation, Jun 2011, http://ceop:police:uk/Publications/, p.95. 
95See section 2.5 International Dimensions. 

147 



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FAILURE 
Whilst refusing to ever recognise that being Muslim and male is 
the single most common factor among the perpetrators, CEOP goes 
on to conclude: 

The offenders within our dataset are younger with almost 

half of them being under 25, where age is known. There 

is a noticeable level of networking and particular 

behavioural characteristics among many offenders in that 

they appear to derive satisfaction from the status and 

power of exerting control over victims, not only to 

commit sexual offences, but also as an end in itself.96 

In refusing to acknowledge the most glaring objective characteristics 
of the perpetrators, CEOP concentrates on mind-reading the emotions 
of these men during their criminal activities (satisfaction), and 
asserting that this emotion came not from sex, or from money, or from 
religious belief, but from the pure exercise of power as its own 
reward. In what way do these characteristics help the victims, parents 
or child-care professionals to identify that grooming may be going 
on? Describing the physical or cultural characteristics of the 
perpetrators is far more important than speculating about their 
emotions. And whilst the will to power might sound like a grand 
notion, no attempt is made to consider whether or not Islamic doctrine 
might be a more concrete form of motivation. 

Far more significant characteristics can be found from our dataset 
(see section 11. Appendix 1: Grooming Gang Convictions). In our 
dataset, 90% of the men were Muslims. Almost 20% of them had the 
same first name (Mohammed). It appears that about 20% of the men 
are blood relatives, many being brothers (even those with different 
surnames may actually be related, so this characteristic could be 
stronger). The Òlocalised groomingÓ did not just happen anywhere: it 
did not feature school teachers exploiting their students, it did not 

96CEOP, Out 
of 
Mind, 
Out 
of 
Sight 
-Breaking 
Down 
the 
Barriers 
to 
Understanding 
Child 
Sexual 
Exploitation, Jun 2011, http://ceop:police:uk/Publications/, p.93. 

148 



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INSTITUTIONAL 
FAILURE 
feature parents exploiting their role as voluntary workers. It featured 
gangs of Muslim men, exploiting social environments where girls 
would be vulnerable, where the schoolgirls would be out of view of 
those adults who would have responsibility for them. And the gangs 
were protected by a wall of silence from within their communities, 
and protected by the fact that people outside their communities were 
too scared to identify them more precisely, for fear of accusations of 
Òracism.Ó These are more significant characteristics than those 
identified by CEOP. 

The ÒprofilingÓ data provided to CEOP was extremely inadequate. 
However, as that is the only data that is offered in this report, we 
should look at the data.97 

Ethnicity of Perpetrators 

Unknown White Asian Black Chinese 
38% 30% 28% 3% 0.16% 

What is immediately obvious from the above data, is that since white 
people are around 90% of the population, they are very significantly 
under-represented in this data. Asians are very significantly 
over-represented. As the list of convictions shows, the ÒAsiansÓ 
involved in these crimes are almost entirely Muslim by religion.98 
Moreover, it is also significant that the single biggest ethnic category 

97CEOP, Out 
of 
Mind, 
Out 
of 
Sight 
-Breaking 
Down 
the 
Barriers 
to 
Understanding 
Child 
Sexual 
Exploitation, Jun 2011, http://ceop:police:uk/Publications/ p.87 
98The CEOP data produces some significant anomalies compared with the data we 
find from actual convictions, where the names betray that 90% of those convicted 
for these types of crimes have Muslim names. Whilst CEOP claim that their data 
shows that around half of the perpetrators of grooming are white men, that does not 
tally with the data from convictions (see section 11. Appendix 1: Grooming Gang 
Convictions. Either the police and CPS are refusing to prosecute white non-Muslim 
men for these crimes (a very unlikely scenario), or the "data" connecting white men 
with these crimes is of such low quality that it would have no chance of standing up 
in court. As time goes on, if this anomaly between data from convictions and data 
from organisations like CEOP continues, then the data from organisations like CEOP 
is going to look increasingly unreliable. 

149 



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FAILURE 
in the CEOP data for perpetrators is ÒUnknownÓ. That such 
information is missing, highlights the fundamental failings of a 
national agency for exploitation, created in the wake of the 
controversy over the ÒracismÓ of Edge of the City. 

However, when we come to look at the ethnicity of the victims, 
the relationship between Asian people and white people is reversed: 

Ethnicity of Victims 

Unknown White Asian Black Chinese 
33% 61% 3% 1% 

This data on victims is consistent with the reports that the majority of 
the victims are white or Sikhs. However, even when there are victims 
who are Sikh or Muslim Asian schoolgirls, the perpetrators have 
never been shown to be white non-Muslims. 

The CEOP slogan is Òmaking every child matter... 
everywhere.Ó Yet clearly they were more focussed on the abuse of 
Vietnamese children being trafficked into Britain than they were 
with the non-Muslim girls within Britain being exploited and 
trafficked around the country. If any single child protection agency 
should be considered central in the failure of agencies to fulfil their 
duty, CEOP is that agency. They had the responsibility to guide the 
other regional policing agencies, yet it was only in 2011 (two years 
after the English Defence League started conducting high profile 
demonstrations) that CEOP performed their Òrapid assessmentÓ of the 
problem of Òlocalised grooming.Ó This was more than a decade after 
BarnardoÕs had started their Streets and Lanes project in Bradford, 7 
years after the furore over Channel 4Õs Edge of the City documentary, 
and 2 years after the production of an educational film to warn 
schoolgirls of the ways in which the grooming gangs work, a film in 
which the main villain is Òan AsianÓ. Along with their parent 
organisation, the Serious Organised Crime Agency, CEOP had the 
remit and the resources of no other national agency. But instead of 

150 



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FAILURE 
leading the other agencies on this issue the Child Exploitation and 
Online Protection Centre seemed to only take notice of this crisis 
following umpteen demonstrations by the English Defence League. 

5.6 Serious Organised Crime Agency 
CEOP is a subsidiary agency of the Serious Organised Crime Agency 
(SOCA). Another of the governmental organisations we have come 
across, the UK Human Trafficking Centre (UKHTC), is also a 
subsidiary agency of SOCA. Since we began writing this report, 
SOCA has been wound up. This means that documents to which we 
refer on the SOCA and CEOP websites are likely to disappear. SOCA 
has been replaced by the National Crime Agency. We do not know if 
the closure of SOCA is an intentional cover-up. SOCA came into 
existence on 1 April 2006 and was closed on 7 October 2013. SOCA 
was an amalgamation of various policing agencies, including the 
National Criminal Intelligence Service. At first glance it might seem 
strange that SOCA should oversee CEOP and UKHTC. However, 
these agencies are concerned with stopping organised crimes of 
sexual exploitation/slavery, crimes of great seriousness, and these 
criminal activities generate large amounts of money for the criminals, 
who operate on a national (and possibly even international) level. 
That SOCA should control CEOP and UKHTC, means that SOCA 
too must be considered at fault. 

Mohammed Shafiq, one of the few Muslims to speak out against 
the grooming gangs, commented: Òsome of these men were making 
between £600 -£1000 a day.Ó99 This accords with what Julie Bindel 
pointed out in 2007: 

Pimping is lucrative. According to the Metropolitan 

Police Vice Squad, a pimp can make £300,000 to 

99http://www:mohammedshafiq:net/grooming---the-men:php. 

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FAILURE 
£400,000 a year selling a 16-year-old girl.100 

Some of the girls would be pimped out for 15 years, into their mid to 
late twenties.101 To the average person, we would never conceive of 
the kinds of money that might be involved. When we consider that 
each year the pimp could be making well in excess of £100,000 for 
each girl, and he might control a girl for 5 to 10 years, we can see 
that vast amounts of money could be made from this crime. 
Which makes it clear why SOCA should have been very heavily 
involved in monitoring these crimes. Furthermore, the international 
dimension should also be the concern of a major national crime 
agency: the similarities between the Muslim grooming gangs in 
Britain and the gangs in Holland, are obvious, and lead us to ponder 
whether or not the gangs are actually conferring. Yet all the indicators 
are that SOCA has done almost nothing to investigate and stop these 
crimes. The most that SOCA appears to have done, is to have 
commissioned (through UKHTC) the film My 
Dangerous 
Loverboy. 

This film has never been shown to its intended audience. UKHTC 
claim that Òracial sensitivitiesÓ have nothing to do with this failure.102 
We are now in the fifth year since this film was commissioned Ð the 
only national educational project to warn and educate girls about the 
gangsÕ grooming techniques Ð and yet it has not been shown to its 
intended audience. In 2011, David Dillnutt, head of UKHTC was 
quoted as saying UKHTC was working closely with CEOP, to get the 
film shown in schools.103 Several years later, and there is still no sign 

100Julie Bindel, ÒMothers of PreventionÓ, The Sunday Times, 20 Sep 2007 http: 
//www:thesundaytimes:co:uk/sto/news/uk_news/article72310:ece 
101ÒGrooming: a Life SentenceÓ, File on Four (BBC Radio 4), 11 Jun 2013, http: 
//news:bbc:co:uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/11_06_13_fo4_grooming:pdf p.17. 
102ÒFilm on dangers of Asian sex gangs commissioned by Government
 agency... then withheld for three yearsÓ, Daily Mail, 22 Jan 2011, 


http://www:dailymail:co:uk/news/article-1349354/Film-dangers-Asian-sex-gangs-c 
ommissioned-Government-agency--withheld-years:html. 
103Andrew Norfolk, ÒAnger as educational film on grooming withheldÓ, The Times, 


152 



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FAILURE 
of this happening. 

The film was launched at the end of 2010 as a DVD (which could 
be obtained directly from SOCA or UKHTC): 

for use by people who have regular contact with children 
and are in a position to notice any changes in behaviour 
and physical signs which may indicate sexual 
exploitation. This includes front line professionals such 
as police officers, social workers, teachers, doctors, 
school nurses, sexual health practitioners and youth 
workers, in addition to parents and carers. The UKHTC 
is working with CEOP to develop a schools package for 
the film so it can be used in secondary schools.104 

There is no later announcement from SOCA to say that any version of 
the film is being shown routinely to schoolgirls. It seems that the only 
schoolgirls who are going to be given advice warning them about 
Muslim grooming gangs, are the girls who have already been lured 
into the gangs, and who are displaying signs that they are already 
being raped, signs obvious enough for a teacher or police officer or 
doctor to notice. It is obvious to any sane person, that this is far too 
late to try and warn such children. The horribly euphemistic 
ÒLoverboyÓ concept comes from the Netherlands, but at least there 
they have a programme where schools warn children and educate 
them about the tactics of these ÒLoverboys.Ó The SOCA web page 
where one can ask for a copy of My Dangerous Loverboy says ÒTo 
obtain copies of My Dangerous Loverboy, please send an e-mail to 
UKHTC@soca.x.gsi.gov.uk Your details will be added to a waiting 
list and copies will be issued when they become available.Ó It has said 
this from 4 Jul 2011 until 4 Sep 2013.105 There is no evidence that 
any school has been using this DVD. 

21 Jan 2011, http://www:thetimes:co:uk/tto/news/uk/article2883087:ece. 
104http://www:soca:gov:uk/about-soca/about-the-ukhtc/prevention/my-dangerous-l 
overboy. 
105 http://www:soca:gov:uk/about-soca/about-the-ukhtc/contact-ukhtc. 


153 



5. 
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INSTITUTIONAL 
FAILURE 
At the end of 2013, CEOP Ð now under the aegis of the National 
Crime Agency, which replaced SOCA Ð released a new film about 
Òsexual exploitation.Ó106 This "educational video" shows the principal 
victim as black, and the perpetrators as white, and it shows the sexual 
exploitation happening between school children of the same age. If it 
was supposed to inform schoolgirls about the risks from Muslim 
grooming gangs, it must be judged completely inadequate: itÕs as if 
CEOP is in denial concerning all the information that has come out 
about the peculiarities of this crime spree. This latest "educational" 
film 

. 
doesnÕt show the victims as barely pubescent 11 year olds,107 
rather than the 16 year old in the video 
. 
doesnÕt show that 90% of those convicted for these crimes are 
Muslims108 
. 
doesnÕt show that the average age of those convicted is 29 years 
old,109 rather than the 18 year old shown in the video 
. 
doesnÕt show gangs of men hanging around schools and 
shopping malls and preying on schoolgirls110 
106http://www:ceop:police:uk/Media-Centre/Press-releases/2013/School-best-place 
-to-learn-about-sexual-exploitation/. Again, it seems as though there is no attempt 
to draw any connection between sexual exploitation and Muslim grooming gangs, 
even as the conviction of Muslim men for these crimes are at an all-time high. 
The film is available on YouTube http://www:youtube:com/watch?v=qORv-TgI4JI. 
Bizarrely, CEOP has adverts prefacing the video. It seems extraordinary that a 
national police agency would seek to supplement their income by taking a slice of 
GoogleÕs advertising revenue. 
107Sandra Laville and Alexandra Topping, ÒOxford child sex abuse ring: social 
services failed me, says victimÓ, 15 May 2013, The Guardian, http://www:theguardi 
an:com/society/2013/may/14/oxford-abuse-ring-social-services. 
10811. Appendix 1: Grooming Gang Convictions 
10911. Appendix 1: Grooming Gang Convictions To a 17 year old, someone around 
30 seems very old. 
110 ÒChild grooming still a problem in Derby, say policeÓ, 12 Dec 2011, http: 
//www:bbc:co:uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-16137593. 


154 



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FAILURE 
. 
doesnÕt show the girls being intentionally addicted to alcohol 
and drugs by the gangs111 
. 
doesnÕt show the victim as white, when even CEOPÕs own data 
shows that most of the grooming gang victims are white112 
. 
doesnÕt show the gangs using accusations of racism against the 
girlsÕ parents to drive a wedge between the child and those who 
want to protect her113 
. 
doesnÕt show schoolgirls having their tongues nailed to the 
table when they want to escape from the gangs114 
. 
doesnÕt show the death threats being made by the grooming 
gangs against the victimÕs siblings and parents115 
The video bears less relationship to the techniques and threat of the 
grooming gangs than does the 2009 film, My Dangerous Loverboy. 
The young men in the new CEOP film do not even look Asian, and 
the principle schoolgirl victim is black, when all the statistics show 
that it is principally white girls who are at risk, and it is Asian (more 

111Sandra Laville and Alexandra Topping, ÒThe nasty truth about rape: To those of 
you who think a 12-year-old girl from Rochdale in a short skirt canÕt be raped youÕre
 very wrongÓ, 11 May 2012, The Mirror, http://www:mirror:co:uk/news/uk-n 
ews/rochdale-grooming-gang-to-those-of-you-828599. 
112See the analysis of the CEOP data above. If the 33% of victims whose ethnicity 
is "unknown" are discounted from the CEOP data, then there are 60 white victims 
for every black victim. There is evidence that grooming gangs are at least partially 
motivated by racism against white girls -see 6.4 Racist Aspects of Grooming below. 
113Julie Bindel, ÒMothers of PreventionÓ, The Sunday Times, 30 Sep 2007, http: 
//www:thesundaytimes:co:uk/sto/news/uk_news/article72310:ece. 
114Kathryn Knight, ÒIs political correctness stopping police ending 
the misery of the teenage sex slaves?Ó, Daily Mail, 27 Mar 2008, 

http://www:dailymail:co:uk/femail/article-546809/Is-political-correctness-stopp 
ing-police-ending-misery-teenage-sex-slaves:html. 
115Arthur Martin, ÒFaces of True Evil: Judge Jails Depraved Sex Gang for 95 
Years After they Committed Grotesque Abuse on Girls as Young as 11Ó, The 
Daily Mail, 27 Jun 2013 http://www:dailymail:co:uk/news/article-2349784/Sadistic 
-paedophile-sex-gang-brothers-given-lengthy-prison-sentences-exploiting-underag 
e-girls:html. 

155 



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FAILURE 
specifically, Muslim) men who are the principal perpetrators. CEOP 
seem to have ignored their own data, and the 20 or so major criminal 
cases from 6 years preceding this video. It seems like CEOP and 
SOCA/NCA have learned nothing. Only extended political pressure 
will make these agencies face up to their responsibilities.116 

In 2007 UKHTC conceded that the schoolgirls are being 
trafficked117 within Britain by these gangs, but the response of this 
national police child-protection agency is to make an anodyne and 
uninformative video. The inaction is not just confined to local police 
forces, but appears to grip national agencies such as SOCA (NCA), 
and its subsidiaries, CEOP and UKHTC. Surely such organisations 
with such grand names have the gumption and wherewithal to deploy 
surveillance equipment in cases of human trafficking? Failing that, we 
must surely expect them to be investigating gangs who could be 
making millions of pounds each year from drug-dealing and 
prostituting schoolgirls. They should be leading a national effort to 
coordinate intelligence and disseminate it, and the thousands of 
child-care professionals and officers they train through CEOP should 
be learning not only what makes these grooming gangs different but 
how to work together to stop them. Moreover, the SOCA 

116When SOCA was transformed into the National Crime Agency, the head of CEOP 
resigned, saying that submerging CEOP within NCA would be bad for children. If 
the inactivity of CEOP and SOCA with regard to the grooming gangs had led to these 
agencies being censured by the media, child-care professionals and politicians, one 
could see why a new agency might be created, and why CEOP might be controlled by 
that new agency. Instead, with no criticism of either CEOP or SOCA, a new agency 
was created, even when the head of CEOP resigning over Ògovernment plans to merge 
CEOP into a National Crime Agency. [saying] ÔI have resigned because I think it is 
not best for childrenÕ.Ó, ÒCEOP chief: National Crime Agency would be bad for 
childrenÓ, 12 Oct 2010, Channel 4 News, http://www:channel4:com/news/ceop-chi 
ef-national-crime-agency-would-be-bad-for-children. This video looks like he was 
right: despite CEOPÕs own data showing major disparities in ethnicity with Òlocalised 
groomingÓ, their new educational video does nothing to inform schoolgirls of the true 
nature of the risks they face. 
117Julie Bindel, ÒMothers of PreventionÓ, The Sunday Times, 2007, http://www:the 
sundaytimes:co:uk/sto/news/uk_news/article72310:ece 

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INSTITUTIONAL 
FAILURE 
organisations could have led the way in a national educational 
campaign to combat the false accusations of racism against those who 
were trying to help the schoolgirls. But 5 years after producing its 
educational DVD, SOCA has not been able to get it seen by the 
intended audience. We have to wonder if this organisation and its 
subsidiary organisations (however they are re-branded) are fit for 
purpose. 

It is remarkable that the Home Affairs Select Committee did 
not have anything to say about this astonishing failure at the 
heard of national policing. They offered no criticism of national 
agencies like CEOP, UKHTC nor SOCA. If the number of victims 
quoted by are even remotely accurate, and the amount the gangs 
earned from prostituting/trafficking one girl are close to accurate,118 
then our country is looking at criminal activity with a possible value 
of maybe £300 million per year. That is for the pimping activities 
alone. If all the other related criminality of these gangs was tallied, 
their gains could be far greater. 

How has SOCA (and its various subsidiary organisations) evaded 
censure? What other crime agency should have been pursuing these 
criminal gangs and their highly lucrative criminal activities? 

5.7 ChildrenÕs Commissioner 
One year after the CEOP Òrapid assessmentÓ, where CEOP bemoaned 
the lack of data with which to provide a proper analysis of Òlocalised 
groomingÓ, The ChildrenÕs Commissioner for England, wrote a report 

118It is often quoted that the gangs charged around £600 to those who wished to rape 
these under-age victims. Sandra Laville and Alexandra Topping, ÒOxford gang skilfully
 groomed young victims then sold them for £600 a timeÓ, 14 May 2013, The 
Guardian, http://www:theguardian:com/uk/2013/may/14/oxford-gang-groomed-victi 
ms-hell. 

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following a year-long investigation.119 This report from The 
ChildrenÕs Commissioner also complained about a lack of data. And 
given their complaints about a lack of data, we cannot see that this 
report from The ChildrenÕs Commissioner added anything of 
significant value to the CEOP report. It merely confirmed that the data 
had considerable gaps when it came to the recording of race (never 
mind the lack of data on ethnicity/religion). 

The purpose of this second report seemed to be intended to 
ameliorate the findings of CEOP: where CEOP had data, it confirmed 
that ÒAsiansÓ were massively over-represented amongst the 
perpetrators involved in grooming. The report from The ChildrenÕs 
Commissioner was used by people to deny the relevance of ethnicity 
to the grooming phenomenon,120 as if the report somehow refuted the 

119 The report was called ÒÔI thought I was the only one. The only one in the 
worldÕ: The Office of The ChildrenÕs CommissionerÕs Inquiry into Child Sexual 
Exploitation In Gangs and GroupsÓ, Nov 2012, http://www:childrenscommissioner :gov:uk/info/csegg1. The vast majority of victims in the data contained in this report 
are the victims of what CEOP called Òlocalised grooming.Ó Since the schoolgirls who 
were being groomed by Muslim gangs were often used to lure other schoolgirls into 
the gangÕs control, we have to assume that the title of The ChildrenÕs CommissionerÕs 
report is Òpoetic.Ó The report even contradicts its own title by page 6: 

The abuse takes place in private houses, warehouses, transportation 
vehicles, public spaces, parks, schools, hotels and hostels. [...] Victims 
are linked to each other through schools, the internet, mobile phones, 
social gatherings, childrenÕs homes, neighbourhoods and public spaces 
such as shopping centres, funfairs, take away shops and coffee shops. 

A thorough inquiry into the ways the grooming gangs operate might well show that it 
was totally inaccurate and misleading for The ChildrenÕs Commissioner to choose this 
title, which stresses victim isolation as the fundamental feature of the exploitation: it is 
very likely that those victims who thought they were Òthe only oneÓ were the exception 
rather than the rule. No doubt it suits child-care professionals to make the public think 
that no-one could have known what was going on with these schoolgirl victims, and it 
is harder to sell that myth when the grooming was often going on in public, in broad 
daylight. 
120Steve Doughty ÒSex gangs report Ôwill play down threat of Pakistani
 men targeting white girlsÕÓ, The Daily Mail, 16 Nov 2012 

http://www:dailymail:co:uk/news/article-2234004/Sex-gangs-report-play-threa 

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claims of organisations like CROP:121 namely, that the vast majority 
of the perpetrators in the grooming gangs were Muslim men.122 As 
the Sikh Awareness Society said there was ÒAnger as sex abuse report 
Ôturns blind eye to Asian Pakistani gangsÕ.Ó123 We will proceed to 
show that the report from The ChildrenÕs Commissioner does nothing 
to diminish the claims of the victims, their families, nor CROP: most 
of the perpetrators were ÒAsiansÓ (and the conviction data shows they 
were almost entirely Muslims). 

Whilst most people will be able to understand what a national 
agency like SOCA or CEOP is, who or what is The ChildrenÕs 
Commissioner? 

The ChildrenÕs Commissioner for England... her team 
make sure adults who work with children think about the 
needs of children and young people and listen to their 
views to make their lives better. They speak up for all 
children and young people, especially those who are 
not often asked for their views or who might be 
vulnerable. For example, children who miss out on 
education, disabled children, those who have just arrived 
in this country, young people with emotional difficulties 
and those who get in trouble with the law. The 
CommissionerÕs job was created in 2004 by the 
Children Act. The Children Act is a law created by 

t-Pakistani-men-targeting-white-girls:html; see also ÒChildrenÕs commissioner 
defends controversial grooming reportÓ, The Yorkshire Post, 16 Dec 2012 


http://www:yorkshirepost:co:uk/news/main-topics/general-news/children-s-commiss 
ioner-defends-controversial-grooming-report-1-5215737. 
121The charity which was dedicated to working with the schoolgirl victims and their 
families. 
122Paul Vallely, ÒChild Sex Grooming: the Asian QuestionÓ, The Independent, 
10 May 2012 http://www:independent:co:uk/news/uk/crime/child-sex-grooming-the 
-Asian-question-7729068:html. 
123http://www:sasorg:co:uk/anger-as-sex-abuse-report-turns-blind-eye-to-asian-pak 
istani-gangs/. 


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the Government to keep children safe from harm.124 

(emphasis added) 

Since local authorities, local police forces, and national agencies were 
ignoring what was going on, it was even more important that The 
ChildrenÕs Commissioner speak out for the rights of these vulnerable 
children, who were being ignored by virtually every agency and failed 
by every safeguard supposedly put there to protect children. 

The office of The ChildrenÕs Commissioner came into existence in 
2004. At the time that this office was created, surely the most 
notorious issue in child welfare was the grooming/pimping gangs 
being disclosed by Channel 4 reports? Remember that in 2004 Anna 
Hall, who made that controversial documentary, was very much in the 
media and she was stating that what was happening in Bradford was 
happening nationwide (this was confirmed in exculpatory statements 
from child services at Bradford council). Remember also, that in 
2006, the Sikh Awareness Society became a national organisation, 
stating as a reason that the grooming gangs were in operating 
nationwide. Yet we can find no evidence that between 2004 and 2012 
The ChildrenÕs Commissioner paid any attention whatsoever to the 
thousands of schoolgirls being groomed by these gangs. In The Times 
in 2007, Julie Bindel pointed out that the parents were having to do 
the detective work, that the police were then dismissing what they did, 
and that social workers were not listening to the girls or their parents. 
And then in 2008, Panorama did their expose of the grooming gangs. 
How could it be that The ChildrenÕs Commissioner, an office 
specifically set up to champion the views of children who were being 
ignored, could not know that these grooming gangs existed and that 
these children were being failed by virtually every agency that was 
there to protect them? 

When The ChildrenÕs Commissioner came out with their report on 

124ChildrenÕs Commissioner, ÒAbout the CommissionerÓ, http://www:childrensco 
mmissioner:gov:uk/speech_bubble_1. 

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child sexual exploitation in 2012, rather than attempt to acquire more 
data consistent with the definition set out by CEOP, The ChildrenÕs 
Commissioner report conflates two distinctly different forms of child 
sexual abuse: 1) gang-related, and 2) group-related (where the latter 
definition closely matches the phenomenon of localised grooming). It 
is clear from looking at the data accompanying The ChildrenÕs 
Commissioner definitions,125 that with gang-related CSE, there are 
very few Asian perpetrators and very few Asian victims. However, 
with group-related CSE (i.e. what was designated by CEOP as 
Òlocalised groomingÓ), there are relatively few black victims, and (in 
absolute terms) most of the perpetrators are white, but in proportional 
terms white people are hugely under-represented as perpetrators; yet 
even in this data, ÒAsiansÓ are hugely over-represented as 
perpetrators. Since The ChildrenÕs Commissioner still used separate 
terms for these different forms of Child Sexual Exploitation, we can 
compare the two reports in this regard (see section 18. Appendix 8: 
ChildrenÕs Commissioner Charts): we can unpick the conflation 
introduced by The ChildrenÕs Commissioner. The results are really 
not significantly different from the image of the problem represented 
in the data from CEOP. 

With regard to Òlocalised groomingÓ, CEOP found that Asian men 
were 28% of the perpetrators whilst white men were 30% of the 
perpetrators; The ChildrenÕs Commissioner report found that around 
21% of the perpetrators were Asian, whilst white men were 27% of 
the perpetrators. When it came to the victims of Òlocalised 
groomingÓ, CEOP found that Asian girls were 3% of the victims, but 
white girls were 61% of the victims; whilst the CommissionerÕs report 
found that 4% of the victims were Asian, whilst 50% of the victims 
were white. In effect, The ChildrenÕs Commissioner ended up 
re-confirming the findings of CEOP.126 If we express this in tabular 

125where there is racial data , see section 18. Appendix 8: ChildrenÕs Commissioner 
Charts. 
126The only significant aspect of The ChildrenÕs CommissionerÕs intervention into this 

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form, it will be clearer.127 

Ethnicity of Perpetrators (Localised Grooming) 

Source Unknown White Asian 
CEOP 38% 30% 28% 
CC 16% 27% 21% 

Ethnicity of Victims (Localised Grooming) 


Source Unknown White Asian 
CEOP 33% 61% 3% 
CC 15% 51% 4% 

Despite The ChildrenÕs Commissioner spending a year on their 
study, and despite them getting data from more sources and with a 
higher response rate than did CEOP, The ChildrenÕs CommissionerÕs 
report serves to reconfirm what the data available to CEOP showed: 

area, is to highlight that Òlocalised groomingÓ is a far more significant form of Child 
Sexual Exploitation than that conducted by street gangs. 
127We are extracting from section 18. Appendix 8: ChildrenÕs Commissioner Charts, 
the equivalent data to that extracted from the 2011 CEOP report, in our earlier discussion
 in section 5.5 Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre of our analysis. 
Obviously, in none of the tables here do the rows add up to 100%; that is because we 
are simplifying the presentation to concentrate principally on Òlocalised groomingÓ 
and the disparity between the ethnicity of the perpetrators and the victims. If The 
ChildrenÕs Commissioner had chosen not to obfuscate matters, they would have made 
it easier for anyone to do a mapping between their data and the CEOP data, with regard 
to ethnicity and Òlocalised grooming.Ó For our purposes, we are ignoring those perpetrators
 and victims who are black, as race is only a secondary factor when considering 
the characteristics that identify a perpetrator or a victim in this crime (as the evidence 
concerning the Sikh victims shows). A far more significant identifying factor is the 
religion of the perpetrator and the victim. Since the authorities have chosen to ignore 
this factor for the last 10 to 25 years, where we cannot ourselves infer religion from 
data (see section 11. Appendix 1: Grooming Gang Convictions and section 13. Appendix
 3: Name Distribution of Convicts ), we must use the secondary indicators of 
ÒAsianÓ and ÒwhiteÓ for ÒMuslimÓ and Ònon-Muslim.Ó We want to acknowledge that 
doing this means that the Sikh victims of the Muslim grooming gangs are ignored 
when doing this, but we must work with the conflated information provided. This is 
one of the tragedies of the authorities insisting on seeing this in ÒracistÓ terms all these 
years. 

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among perpetrators of Òlocalised groomingÓ, ÒAsiansÓ (Muslims) are 
very significantly over-represented, whilst white men are very 
significantly under-represented. Yet when it comes to the victims, it is 
white children who are the majority of the victims. Whether it was 
planned or not, what The ChildrenÕs CommissionerÕs report does is 
perform tricks with statistics. By merging two distinctly different 
forms of child sexual exploitation, the report manages to make it look 
like there are fewer ÒAsiansÓ involved as perpetrators, and fewer 
white girls as victims: this is because the proportions are altered, 
simply by including more black and white perpetrators, and including 
more black victims. If the ChildrenÕs Commissioner had kept these 
two forms of exploitation separate (perhaps by having two different 
sections in the report), then their findings regarding the discrepancy in 
ethnicity between perpetrator and victim in Òlocalised groomingÓ 
would have been indistinguishable from those of CEOP. It is as if The 
ChildrenÕs Commissioner took some acidic mixture, and added some 
alkali, then said: ÒLook, this mixture is less acidic than people sayÓ: 
the most significant outcome is that they distorted the procedure, not 
that the facts (as far as they are known) were proven to be any 
different. 

In section 19. Appendix 9: Victims to Perpetrators we have 
taken The ChildrenÕs Commissioner data concerning the incidence of 
Asian and white people in the categories of victim and perpetrator, put 
this data on the same chart so to remove the confusion of scale 
introduced by the statisticians working for The ChildrenÕs 
Commissioner, and also included the percentages of the entire 
population who are either Asian or White.128 In doing this, we have 
removed those white and black victims and perpetrators connected to 
street gangs.129 Using our simplified chart, it is indisputable: white 

128According to 2011 Census data, Asians are 7.5% of the UK population, white 
people are 86% of the UK population. ÒCensus shows rise in foreign-bornÓ, BBC 
News, http://www:bbc:co:uk/news/uk-20687168 
129It goes without saying, that form of criminality should be pursued and reported 
(separately) by the media. 

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men are very significantly under-represented as perpetrators in this 
type of crime, and Asian men are very significantly over-represented. 
Just on the data from The ChildrenÕs Commissioner, Asian men are 
6x more likely to be involved in grooming gangs than white men 
(Asians are 3x over-represented, white men are 3x under-represented). 
Since the presentation of the ÒdataÓ in The ChildrenÕs Commissioner 
report leads people to believe130 that there are roughly equal numbers 
of white men and Asian men involved in the grooming gangs, where 
are the prosecutions and convictions against these white men? The 
police and child-care professionals who ignored the grooming gangs 
because they were mostly ÒAsianÓ have good reason to ensure that 
prosecutions of white men take place instead. Given that the 
child-care professionals and police have been ignoring these crimes 
for 25 years, the public can have little confidence in the data which 
was fed to The ChildrenÕs Commissioner.131 Moreover, let us 
re-iterate: the conviction data, where evidence is rigorously assessed 
first by police, then CPS, and finally in a court, is of a known quality. 
And the data from convictions shows that these ÒAsiansÓ are almost 
always Muslims. Furthermore, there is an ideological and cultural 
background which would explain this over-representation of one 
specific ethnic group in these crimes (see section 7. Islamic Cultural 
Background). The data from convictions also shows that when it 
comes to the evidence rigorously assessed in the trial process, the 

130In the Interim Report, the two charts we have put together in 18. Appendix 8: 
ChildrenÕs Commissioner Charts are in fact separated by 12 pages of text, tables and 
other charts -see pp.92-105 http://www:childrenscommissioner:gov:uk/info/csegg1. 
If The ChildrenÕs Commissioner had been interested in examining the disparity in 
ethnicity between victims and perpetrators in localised grooming, they would not have 
presented this data so badly. 
131The agencies who supplied this data to The ChildrenÕs Commissioner have powerful
 incentives to find, fudge or lose data, to ensure that the public do not realise that 
there has been a specific, new form of criminality, which these agencies had studiously 
ignored for decades. There is already evidence that local councils would go to considerable
 lengths to ensure that their negligence would not be uncovered. See section 

5.2 Local Councils. 
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presence of Muslims and the absence of white, non-Muslims in this 
form of criminality is even greater. 

Our single chart removes much of the extraneous information 
included by The ChildrenÕs CommissionerÕs analysis. And this shows 
not only that ÒAsiansÓ are 6x more likely than white men to be 
involved in these crimes, it shows that Asian children are far less 
likely than white children to be victims. This simplified chart thus 
reveals things concealed by the analysis by The ChildrenÕs 
Commissioner: if there was not an ethnic dimension to these crimes, 
if Asian men were grooming Asian children, and if white men were 
grooming white children, then one would expect that there would be 
an equivalence between the ethnicity of the perpetrators and the 
ethnicity of victims.132 But when The ChildrenÕs Commissioner data 
is rendered in this more intelligible form, it is clear that the proportion 
of white victims is far greater than the proportion of white 
perpetrators, yet the proportion of Asian victims is far less than the 
proportion of Asian perpetrators. What the Muslim Council of Britain 
was calling Òa racist mythÓ in 2009, not only contradicted by the 
reporting of Julie Bindel in 2007, but even by The ChildrenÕs 
CommissionerÕs data in 2012: this data shows that ÒAsianÓ men are 
grooming white children. Asian children are not even found among 
the victims in proportions in which Asians are found among the 
general population. Asians are 7.5% of the UK population, but only 
4% of the victims are Asian. Moreover, not only are the Asian 
perpetrators almost certainly Muslims, but it is likely that among 
these Asian victims, that most of the victims are not Muslims but 
Sikhs or Hindus. So, if ÒAsianÓ men are 3x over-represented as 
groomers, and ÒAsianÓ children are 2x under-represented, from which 

132The Muslim WomenÕs Network admits that, at least for Asian victims, the perpetrators
 are also Asians: ÒAsian/Muslim female victims are most vulnerable to offenders
 from their own communities as the overwhelming majority of the offenders 
were from the same background as the victims.Ó Shaista Gohir MBE, ÒUnheard 
Voices: The Sexual Exploitation of Asian Girls and Young WomenÓ, September 
2013, http://www:mwnuk:co:uk//go_files/resources/UnheardVoices:pdf, p.23. 

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community are these ÒAsianÓ men getting their non-Asian victims? 
All of this supports what the director of Edge of the City learned from 
BarnardoÕs back in 1996: the perpetrators are mostly Asian, and the 
victims are mostly white.133 The evidence from convictions, evidence 
which is of a far higher quality than the ÒevidenceÓ supplied to The 
ChildrenÕs Commissioner makes things even clearer: Muslim 
perpetrators out-number non-Muslim perpetrators by 9:1, whereas 
The ChildrenÕs Commissioner analysis claims Asian and white men 
are to be found in almost equal numbers (see Figure 7 of 

18. Appendix 8: ChildrenÕs Commissioner Charts, where the 
ÒchoicesÓ made by The ChildrenÕs CommissionerÕs expert advisers 
results in a chart which suggests there is no ethnic dimension 
whatsoever to this form of criminality). This highly-publicised 
analysis by The ChildrenÕs Commissioner was used by others to 
dismiss the idea that there was any ethnic dimension to these crimes. 
One of the few Muslims who chose to speak out about the 
Muslim grooming gangs, was Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, who took 
apart the report by The ChildrenÕs Commissioner, saying the 
report writers Òtry hard to side-step some difficult facts and even 
warn the rest of us from going where they have chosen not to 
tread.Ó134 As we have pointed out throughout our analysis, the 
agencies who should have listened to the victims and their parents 

133Anna Hall ÒHunt For BritainÕs Sex Gangs, C4Ó Broadcast 2 May 2013, http:// 
www:broadcastnow:co:uk/in-depth/hunt-for-britains-sex-gangs-c4/5054504:article. 

In October 1996... I met Sara Swann, who ran BradfordÕs BarnardoÕs 
Streets and Lanes project. BarnardoÕs was interested in making a film 
to warn teenagers and educate parents ... the girls were white and living
 in multi-cultural Bradford and the perpetrators were Asian... everybody
 wanted to pretend it wasnÕt happening. All anyone seemed 
concerned about was the risk of a race riot if we mentioned it. 

134Yasmin Alibhai-Brown ÒWhy as a Muslim and a Mother I Believe itÕs so Damaging
 to Hide from the Truth about Asian Sex GangsÓ, The Daily Mail, 21 
Nov 2012, http://www:dailymail:co:uk/debate/article-2236081/Why-Muslim-mothe 
r-I-believe-damaging-hide-truth-Asian-sex-gangs:html. 

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frequently ignored what they heard and saw, as much of the evidence 
attests. And now that the issue was gaining publicity, The ChildrenÕs 
Commissioner chose to write a report that seemed to confuse matters. 

By refusing to recognise the specifics of Òlocalised groomingÓ, 
The ChildrenÕs Commissioner ÒgeneralisedÓ these crimes, putting the 
Muslim grooming gangs in with all other child abusers.135 Ms. 
Alibhai-Brown points out that The ChildrenÕs Commissioner report 
disguises that: 

in some British cities... 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.136 

It is bad enough that The ChildrenÕs Commissioner should have failed 
from its inception to identify these crimes and the victims who were 
being ignored by police and social services. But once this crime was 
no longer deniable, The ChildrenÕs Commissioner instead set about 
confusing the specific details, rather than concentrating on unearthing 
them. We ask again: who is The ChildrenÕs Commissioner supposed 
to represent? Is this not a fundamental failure of this office? As Ms. 
Alibhai-Brown states 

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... the ChildrenÕs Commission report needed to 

135It goes without saying that The ChildrenÕs Commissioner should have also been 
speaking out for the victims of, what they chose to call, Ògang CSE.Ó Was 2012 the 
first time that The ChildrenÕs Commissioner office bothered to address this problem 
of ÒgangÓ CSE too? Let us remind ourselves of the purpose of The ChildrenÕs Commissioner:
 to Òspeak up for all children and young people, especially those who are 
not often asked for their views or who might be vulnerableÓ. 
136Yasmin Alibhai-Brown ÒWhy as a Muslim and a Mother I Believe itÕs so Damaging
 to Hide from the Truth about Asian Sex GangsÓ, The Daily Mail, 21 
Nov 2012, http://www:dailymail:co:uk/debate/article-2236081/Why-Muslim-mothe 
r-I-believe-damaging-hide-truth-Asian-sex-gangs:html 

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attend to specifics, and not vague generalities about 
perpetrators.137 

Once again, we conclude that it is the fear of being accused of being 
ÒracistÓ by Muslim organisations, the racism groups, and the Left 
which made an office such as The ChildrenÕs Commissioner abandon 
its core directives and create confusion when what was needed was 
clarity. Ms. Alibhai-Brown reaches the same conclusion: that Òthe 
committee in charge of the report are nervous of causing offence to 
community leaders, of being thought racists.Ó138 

However, we should not make Ms. Alibhai-Brown into a saint. As 
a journalist of many years standing, she too could have chosen to lend 
her support to the likes of Anna Hall and Julie Bindel, the only 
journalists who spoke out about these Muslim grooming gangs 
between 2004 and 2010. Ms. Alibhai-Brown did admit she was partly 
motivated to speak out now because see was worried about matters 
ÒreboundingÓ on ÒAsiansÓ and ÒMuslims.Ó 

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

137Yasmin Alibhai-Brown ÒWhy as a Muslim and a Mother I Believe itÕs so 
Damaging to Hide from the Truth about Asian Sex GangsÓ, The Daily Mail, 
21 Nov 2012, http://www:dailymail:co:uk/debate/article-2236081/Why-Muslim-mot 
her-I-believe-damaging-hide-truth-Asian-sex-gangs:html. We note that Ms.Alibhai-
Brown is still pushing the idea that it is ÒAsian cultureÓ rather than Muslim culture 
which is the problem. 
138Yasmin Alibhai-Brown ÒWhy as a Muslim and a Mother I Believe itÕs so Damaging
 to Hide from the Truth about Asian Sex GangsÓ, The Daily Mail, 21 
Nov 2012, http://www:dailymail:co:uk/debate/article-2236081/Why-Muslim-mothe 
r-I-believe-damaging-hide-truth-Asian-sex-gangs:html. 

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named and put away.139 

Ms. Alibhai-Brown did at least, finally, take a stand and subject this 
obfuscation to criticism. However, if it is true that all the Muslim 
leaders known by the well-connected Ms. Alibhai-Brown wanted the 
groomers exposed, then we must ask: Why were prominent Muslim 
leaders at the beginning of this century denouncing people like Ann 
Cryer for speaking out? Why were Muslim ÒeldersÓ refusing to get 
involved when Ms. Cryer asked for their help before it all became 
public in 2003?140 Why have the Muslim organisations and Muslim 
leaders not defended those who were denounced as ÒracistÓ who 
dared to speak about this? Where were the Muslim groups coming out 
in support of Mohammed Shafiq, when he was receiving death threats 
from those who sought to conceal the activities of the Muslim 
grooming gangs?141 

Like so many other organisations meant to protect children, when 
it came to the sexual exploitation of children by gangs of Muslims, 
The ChildrenÕs Commissioner utterly failed. When the Commissioner 

139Yasmin Alibhai-Brown ÒWhy as a Muslim and a Mother I Believe itÕs so Damaging
 to Hide from the Truth about Asian Sex GangsÓ, The Daily Mail, 21 
Nov 2012, http://www:dailymail:co:uk/debate/article-2236081/Why-Muslim-mothe 
r-I-believe-damaging-hide-truth-Asian-sex-gangs:html. 
140We might also note, that following the Parliamentary investigation into the grooming
 gangs, it was widely publicised that mosques around the country were going to 
read out a sermon condemning these crimes. Yet most of the mosques in Britain did 
not read the sermon condemning the grooming gangs. We must wonder just what section
 of the Muslim community it is which she claims Òwant these monsters exposed, 
named and put awayÓ. In 2009, the Muslim Council of Britain, which represents 
hundreds of Islamic organisations, said that the grooming gangs were Òa racist mythÓ. 
141 Julie Bindel, ÒGirls, Gangs and Grooming: The TruthÓ, Standpoint Magazine, 
Dec 2010, http://www:standpointmag:co:uk/node/3576/full. 

ÒI was one of the first within the Muslim community to speak out about 
this, four years ago,Ó says Shafiq, Òand at the time I received death 
threats from some black and Asian people. But what I said has been 
proved right Ñ that if we didnÕt tackle it there would be more of these 
abusers and more girls getting harmed.Ó 

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finally came out with this report in 2012 it was seen by some as an 
attempt to muddy the water, by conflating Ògang relatedÓ and 
Ògroup relatedÓ sexual exploitation. Instead of teasing out the 
differences between these two different kinds of sexual exploitation, 
The ChildrenÕs Commissioner confuses the matter. However, what is 
clear from The ChildrenÕs Commissioner report, is that in a country 
which is overwhelmingly white, white people are no more than 40% 
of the perpetrators of the groups and/or gangs involved in child-sexual 
exploitation (CSE), and non-white people are responsible for 40% of 
the CSE, and most of these were Asian. When it comes to the ÒraceÓ 
of the victims, 60% were white, about 25% were non-white (and most 
of those were not Asian).142 Black men feature far more prominently 
in The ChildrenÕs Commissioner report because the report specifically 
included (mostly black) street gangs, who use sexual exploitation as 
an initiation rite/control structure within the gangs.143 Thus, if we 
consider the project that The ChildrenÕs Commissioner has 
undertaken, they have re-confirmed one fundamental idea: when it 
comes to groups or gangs who exploit children, white children are far 
more likely to be victims, and non-white adults are far more likely to 
be perpetrators. If the office of The ChildrenÕs Commissioner set out 
to prove that the idea of Muslim grooming gangs was a myth, then the 
Commissioner failed spectacularly.144 The report more or less 

142Compare figure 7 and figure 8, in section 18. Appendix 8: ChildrenÕs Commissioner
 Charts. For about 15% of cases, there was no racial data for either the 
perpetrator or the victim. When you compare figures 7 and 8, bear in mind that the 
scale for figure 8 is half the scale of figure 7 (i.e. the top of the scale for figure 7 is 
60%, the top of the scale for figure 8 is 30%). If the charts used the same scale for 
victims and perpetrators, then the report would have been less misleading. 
143 Mark Townsend,ÒÔBeing raped by a gang is normal Ð itÕs about craving to be 
acceptedÕÓ, The Guardian, 18 Feb 2012, http://www:theguardian:com/society/2012/ 
feb/18/being-raped-by-gang-normal. 
144 What we need to bear in mind with regard to the ÒdataÓ from CEOP report and 
from The ChildrenÕs Commissioner report, is that their data is gathered from disparate 
sources, and the quality of much of that data will not stand up in court. The principles 
of the Norfolk analysis mean that the data has gone through weeks of rigorous questioning
 in court, leading to convictions despite this contestation. Thus, the Norfolk 

170 



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INSTITUTIONAL 
FAILURE 
confirms what the CEOP data showed with regard to Muslim 
grooming gangs. Indeed, all the CommissionerÕs report managed to 
do was to highlight that there is also a significant over-representation 
of black men in other forms of child-sexual exploitation. 

Sikh organisations reported that it was Òdifficult to overstate the 
contemptÓ in which government ministers held The ChildrenÕs 
CommissionerÕs report.145 Yet apart from Yasmin Alibai-Brown it 
was hard to find commentators who took the report apart to show that 
even merging localised grooming with the crimes of street-gangs did 
not manage to conceal the huge over-representation of ÒAsianÓ men as 
perpetrators. Indeed, the report was used by Left-wing 
journalists/activists to claim that this official report supported the idea 
that race was not relevant to the grooming phenomenon. When the 
Parliamentary inquiry concluded, there was no censure of The 
ChildrenÕs Commissioner for the report or even for failing to take up 
the problem of the schoolgirls being ignored by agencies from 2004 
to 2012. Indeed, the Parliamentary inquiry did not censure The 
ChildrenÕs Commissioner but thanked her, twice.146 

This 2012 report was described as an ÒinterimÓ report, part of a 
2-year project called CSEGG, which began in October 2011,147 the 
final report being completed by Autumn 2013. Did the ÒfinalÓ report 
show that The ChildrenÕs Commissioner had taken on board the 

analysis is based on data which has been subjected to the most rigorous of questioning
 -and this data shows that where the evidence is strong enough to bring about a 
conviction, the vast majority of those involved in Òlocalised groomingÓ are Muslim 
men. Thus, even if the reports from CEOP and The ChildrenÕs Commissioner had in 
fact demonstrated that most of the perpetrators were not Muslims, and that 5% of the 
victims were Muslims, this would still be less reliable data than the data provided by 
the convictions in court. 
145http://www:sasorg:co:uk/anger-as-sex-abuse-report-turns-blind-eye-to-asian-pak 
istani-gangs/ . 
146Home Affairs Select Committee report ÒChild Sexual Exploitation and the Response
 to Localised GroomingÓ, 10 Jun 2013, http://www:publications:parliament:u 
k/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmhaff/68/68i:pdf, p.10, p.62 . 
147 http://www:childrenscommissioner:gov:uk/info/csegg1. 

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(supposed) contempt of government ministers, the critique of Muslims 
like Ms. Alibhai-Brown, or the hostility of Sikh victims espoused by 
the Sikh Awareness Society? No. The data and conclusions from the 
ÒinterimÓ report were used by many commentators to argue that there 
was no relevance to discrepancies between the ethnicity of the 
perpetrators in the grooming gangs and the ethnicity of the victims.148 
Yet when The ChildrenÕs CommissionerÕs final report came out in 
2013, supposedly with more complete evidence since it was to be the 
Òfinal reportÓ, it offered no additional evidence to that contained in the 
Òinterim reportÓ.149 Indeed, the Òfinal reportÓ makes up for none of 
the short-comings in data, bemoaned by CEOP in 2011, and by The 
ChildrenÕs CommissionerÕs own interim report of 2012. What can we 
conclude from this? Did the Òinterim reportÓ serve a purpose in 
confusing the data regarding the disparity in ethnicity between 
perpetrators and victims? Did they collect more data, but found that it 
proved even more categorically that white men are under-represented 
amongst perpetrators? 

In the years leading up to the 2012 report, the CommissionerÕs 
office was mostly concerned with issues like bullying at school, 
stopping parents smacking their children, the housing conditions of 
the children of asylum seekers. There was no evidence of any interest 
in the grooming gangs, who operated with impunity because the 
victims were failed by schools, police, social services, the CPS and 
the courts. The ChildrenÕs Commissioner has some specific powers 
that are not shared by other agencies Òto demand answers from 
statutory bodies and to interview in private any child in a location 

148Sunny Hundal, ÒOxford gang-rape case: were the girls exploited because they 
were white?Ó, May 14 2013, http://liberalconspiracy:org/2013/05/14/oxford-gang-r 
ape-case-were-the-girls-exploited-because-they-were-white/. 
149The ChildrenÕs Commissioner, ÒIf Only Someone Had ListenedÓ, 
2013, http://www:childrenscommissioner:gov:uk/force_download:php?fp= 
%2Fclient_assets%2Fcp%2Fpublication%2F743%2FIf_only_someone_had_liste 
ned_Office_of_the_Childrens_Commissioners_Inquiry_into_Child_Sexual_Exploit 
ation_in_Gangs_and_Groups:pdf. 


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FAILURE 
(other than the family home) where he or she is being looked after.Ó150 
The Commissioner chose to prioritise other issues, and did not use 
those powers to investigate the controversial topic of the grooming 
gangs. When Dr. Maggie Atkinson applied for the post of The 
ChildrenÕs Commissioner, she declared that the most distinctive 
feature of her career to date was her ability to lead.151 Readers must 
judge for themselves the extent to which, between 2009 and 2012, her 
office displayed leadership when it came to advocating for the rights 
of the schoolgirl victims of the grooming gangs. Local authority staff 
and police officers faced being branded as ÒracistsÓ if they pursued 
these gangs. It was up to organisations like CEOP, SOCA and The 
ChildrenÕs Commissioner to show leadership at a national level. 

5.8 Home Affairs Select Committee 
In June 2012, the Home Affairs Select Committee started a 6 month 
investigation into Òlocalised groomingÓ, the term coined by CEOP in 
2010. The findings of this investigation were published in the summer 
of 2013.152 If we were to summarise this report it could be best 
summed-up by the failed attempt by one of the committee members 
(David Winnick, Labour MP for Walsall North) to get the committee 
to insert the rider that Òthe perception, that grooming perpetrators are 
largely of Asian, British Asian or Muslim originÓ was false. The 

150Peter Wilby, ÒYoung at heart: The choice of the next childrenÕs commissioner
 has been mired in controversy, but what legacy does the incumbent, Sir 
Al Aynsley-Green, leave his successor?Ó, The Guardian, 3 Nov 2009, http://www:t 
heguardian:com/education/2009/nov/03/childrens-commissioner-aynsley-green. 
151ÒAppointment of The ChildrenÕs Commissioner for England -Children, 
Schools and Families Committee ContentsÓ, http://www:publications:parliament:u 
k/pa/cm200809/cmselect/cmchilsch/998/99808:htm 

152Home Affairs Select Committee report ÒChild Sexual Exploitation and the Response
 to Localised GroomingÓ, 10 Jun 2013, http://www:publications:parliament:u 
k/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmhaff/68/68i:pdf 

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committee rejected the claim that this was a false perception.153 We 
can take it from the rejection of this proposed amendment, that 
the majority of the MPs on the Committee now concluded that 
the perception that these gangs were predominantly ÒAsianÓ or 
ÒMuslimÓ was accurate. It had taken Britain 10 years from the 
original Channel 4 disclosure to admit this. Political activists, 
politicians, journalists, police and child-care professions failed to 
follow up on the original disclosures by Channel 4; worse, they 
embarked upon years of self-censorship and denial. And every year, 
thousands of vulnerable schoolgirls continued to be prostituted by 
Muslim grooming gangs. 

The Home Affairs Select Committee singles out Òthe investigative 
journalismÓ of Andrew Norfolk as the pivotal event.154 This 
parliamentary investigation blamed front-line services for the failure 
to bring Muslim grooming gangs to justice: Òpolice, social services 
and the Crown Prosecution Service must all bear responsibility for the 
way in which vulnerable children have been left unprotected by the 
system.Ó155 However, we think that given the systematic, 
long-standing exploitation by the gangs, given that they were 
trafficking children around the country, and given the 
international similarities with what was happening in the 

153Home Affairs Select Committee report ÒChild Sexual Exploitation and the Response
 to Localised GroomingÓ, 10 Jun 2013, http://www:publications:parliament:u 
k/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmhaff/68/68i:pdf p.73 
154Home Affairs Select Committee report ÒChild Sexual Exploitation and the Response
 to Localised GroomingÓ, 10 Jun 2013, http://www:publications:parliament:u 
k/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmhaff/68/68i:pdf p.27. However, as we have pointed out 
above: even though Norfolk has admitted to knowing about the grooming gangs since 
he moved to Yorkshire in 2003, we cannot find evidence of him reporting on this until 
October 2010: we cannot find any report by him of the two major grooming cases in 
2009 that led to convictions (including one case near him in Yorkshire, in which 75% 
of the convicted men were named ÒMohammedÓ). 
155Home Affairs Select Committee report ÒChild Sexual Exploitation and the Response
 to Localised GroomingÓ 10 Jun 2013 http://www:publications:parliament:u 
k/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmhaff/68/68i:pdf p.10 

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INSTITUTIONAL 
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Netherlands, central, government-led organisations such as The 
ChildrenÕs Commissioner and CEOP should have been the 
central object of criticism for their failures to investigate, analyse, 
coordinate and educate the front-line services. The Ministry of 
Justice as well as the CPS should be in the dock concerning the 
failures in the criminal justice scheme to implement procedures which 
would have enabled the exploited victims to give successful 
testimony. And finally, SOCA and the UKHTC should be held 
responsible for their failure to treat these gangs as traffickers and 
serious, organised criminals.156 Behind closed doors, the Home 
Office is also likely to have known by 2007 about the characteristics 
of these Muslim grooming gangs, as by that time the Home Office 
were already funding CROP.157 A former minister, Òresponsible for 
tackling child sexual exploitationÓ, stated that there had been Òthree 
working groups on child sexual exploitation that he established, none 
of which had produced any practical actions.Ó158 

Thus, we have two major government departments whose 
Ministers cannot feign ignorance of these grooming gangs prior to the 
Home Affairs Select CommitteeÕs investigation, and who were aware 
of the success or failure of various initiatives. It is a catalogue of 
failures. Failures can be attributed to agencies at every single step of 
the way. It is hard to think of an agency which is not culpable of 
neglect. As the report states: 

The failure of these cases has been both systemic and 

cultural. Rules and guidelines existed which were not 

156 That SOCA produced My Dangerous Loverboy in 2008 when Parliament only 
came to accept Òthat grooming perpetrators are largely of Asian, British Asian or 
Muslim originÓ shows that SOCA and/or UKHTC were aware of the truthfulness of 
this perception back in 2008 or 2007. 
157Julie Bindel, ÒMothers of PreventionÓ, The Sunday Times, 2007 http://www:the 
sundaytimes:co:uk/sto/news/uk_news/article72310:ece 

158Home Affairs Select Committee report ÒChild Sexual Exploitation and the Response
 to Localised GroomingÓ 10 Jun 2013 http://www:publications:parliament:u 
k/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmhaff/68/68i:pdf p.11 

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FAILURE 
followed. People employed as public servants 

appeared to lack human compassion when dealing 

with victims. Children have only one chance at 

childhood. For too long, victims of child sexual 

exploitation have been deprived of that childhood 

without society challenging their abusers. Such a 

situation must never happen again.159 (emphasis in 

original) 

Yet the report zones in on the management of Rotherham and 
Rochdale councils, and South Yorkshire Police, because (to date) they 
have apparently performed worse than the others. But the blame has 
to be spread far and wide. As the Parliamentary inquiry was drawing 
to a close, a court case relating to Oxford exposed that the police and 
social services in that area had also been neglectful in protecting 
schoolgirls from a Muslim grooming gang. Yet failures by councils 
and police relating to the Oxford case are not addressed in the report 
(the horrors and longevity of the abuse uncovered in the Oxford trial 
surpassed even the 2012 Rochdale trial). That the problems are 
national and persistent is clear from when the controversy over these 
gangs first erupted in Bradford in 2003 and 2004: those at the heart of 
the controversy stated that the problems were nationwide. And from 
local beginnings in Leeds and the West Midlands, both CROP and 
SAS were operating nationwide by 2006. Considering that the Home 
Office was quietly funding CROP by 2007, we have to regard the 
CommitteeÕs singling out of Rotherham and Rochdale with some 
suspicion. 

There is one tier of child-care professionals on which which we 
have not focussed: the ÒLocal Safeguarding Children BoardsÓ 
(LSCB). These were established by the 2004 ChildrenÕs Act. Tasked 
with Òco-ordinating between and scrutinising the work of agencies, 

159Home Affairs Select Committee report, ÒChild Sexual Exploitation and the Response
 to Localised GroomingÓ, 10 Jun 2013, http://www:publications:parliament:u 
k/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmhaff/68/68i:pdf p.11. 

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FAILURE 
the LSCB is responsible for providing safeguarding training, 
undertaking serious case reviews and publishing an annual report on 
the effectiveness of safeguarding in the local area.Ó160 Considering 
the furore caused by the BNP campaigning on the issue of Muslim 
grooming gangs, and that surrounding the Channel 4 documentary, 
there is every reason why it should have been a major focus of these 
LSCBs. Yet we can find no evidence that most of them made it a 
priority to safeguard schoolgirls from the Muslim grooming gangs. 
The parliamentary report states the unbelievable statistic that only 1 in 
4 of the LSCBs were correctly implementing requirements to monitor 
the prevalence of, and responses to, child sexual exploitation within 
their area.161 This is another indicator that future events will reveal 
Rotherham and Rochdale to be far less exceptional than the 
Parliamentary inquiry would lead us to believe: 75% of the local 
authorities were not even following the legal requirements in this area. 
Rochdale and Rotherham might have been worse than some, but such 
statistics reveal that the negligence in this area of social policy was to 
be found across the country. A full Public Inquiry would probably 
produce even more shocking statistics. 

The Home Affairs Select Committee claims that the concept of 
Òlocalised groomingÓ was only recognised following the successful 
convictions from Operation Retriever, which began in Derbyshire in 
2009.162 However, that the Home Office was funding CROP in 2007, 
and that SOCA and UKHTC commissioned My Dangerous Loverboy 
in 2008 makes this claim look uninformed at best, and at worst, 

160Home Affairs Select Committee report ÒChild Sexual Exploitation and the Response
 to Localised GroomingÓ 10 Jun 2013 http://www:publications:parliament:u 
k/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmhaff/68/68i:pdf p.16 
161Home Affairs Select Committee report ÒChild Sexual Exploitation and the Response
 to Localised GroomingÓ 10 Jun 2013 http://www:publications:parliament:u 
k/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmhaff/68/68i:pdf p.16. 
162Home Affairs Select Committee report ÒChild Sexual Exploitation and the Response
 to Localised GroomingÓ 10 Jun 2013 http://www:publications:parliament:u 
k/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmhaff/68/68i:pdf p.4 

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INSTITUTIONAL 
FAILURE 
deliberately misleading. The controversy in 2003 and 2004 around the 
grooming of schoolgirls in Bradford could not have been unknown to 
the committee, since Ann Cryer testified before them about this. And 
the controversy erupted in Bradford in 2003 concerning Channel 4Õs 
revelations in 2003, that police and social services there had been 
conducting an investigation since 2001. It seems as if the Home 
Affairs Select Committee is involved in re-writing history: how could 
government departments have been unaware of BarnardoÕs Streets 
and Lanes project, started in Bradford in 1995?163 Until 2010, all the 
local and national child-care organisations were publicly denying 
what they knew was going on. The parliamentary report says: 

those involved in child protection were more used to 

dealing with cases of familial abuse and so the 

recognition of localised grooming as a form of abuse was 

not recognised by professionals. They were therefore 

unable to piece together the different parts of a puzzle in 

order to create a clear picture of what was happening. 164 

Again, if this is the line that Parliament wishes to take, then this 
points to the failure of national organisations like SOCA, CEOP, 
UKHTC and The ChildrenÕs Commissioner. It must surely have fallen 
to them (and to a lesser extent, academics and child-care charities) to 
have informed and shaped the professional understanding of the 
specific features of Òlocalised grooming.Ó As Andrew Norfolk pointed 
out in 2011: 

For more than a decade, child protection experts have 

identified a repeated pattern of sex offending in towns 

163We have shown that between 1995 and 2000, staff comments and news reports 
about that project were describing the phenomenon which came to be known as Òlocalised
 groomingÓ, and the project was funded by almost £700,000 from statutory 
authorities. 
164Home Affairs Select Committee report ÒChild Sexual Exploitation and the Response
 to Localised GroomingÓ 10 Jun 2013 http://www:publications:parliament:u 
k/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmhaff/68/68i:pdf p.7. 

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5. 
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INSTITUTIONAL 
FAILURE 
and cities across northern England and the Midlands 
involving groups of older men who groom and abuse 
vulnerable girls aged 11 to 16 after befriending them on 
the street. Most of the victims are white and most of the 
convicted offenders are of Pakistani heritage, unlike other 
known models of child-sex offending in Britain, 
including child abuse initiated by online grooming, in 
which the vast majority of perpetrators are white.165 

It appears that the Parliamentary inquiry wanted to re-write history. 
The description of grooming given by Sara Swann in 2000, showed 
that the professional understanding of the phenomenon then was no 
different than in 2010.166 

The most staggering admission by the committee was that it 
needed to be spelt out to child-care professionals that children cannot 
consent to sex, it is a legal impossibility: 

it should be the fundamental, working assumption of all 
front-line staff working with children and young people 
that sexual relations between an adult and a child under 
the legal age of consent are non-consensual, unlawful and 

167

wrong.

The committee failed to point out that the judiciary also needed to be 
reminded of this. Too often it has been said how difficult these cases 
are to prosecute, because the girls appeared to be consenting. It 
should be impossible to mount that argument. 

165Andrew Norfolk, ÒRevealed: conspiracy of silence on UK sex gangsÓ, The 
Times, 5 Jan 2011 http://www:thetimes:co:uk/tto/news/uk/crime/article2863058:ece. 
166Sara Swann, ÒHelping girls involved in ÔprostitutionÕ: a Barnardos ExperimentÓ, 
pp.278-282 of Home Truths About Child Sexual Abuse: Policy and Practice, Catherine 
Itzen (ed.), Routledge, London, 2000. See our discussion of this project in section 

4.4 1995 Bradford: Streets and Lanes. 
167Home Affairs Select Committee report ÒChild Sexual Exploitation and the Response
 to Localised GroomingÓ 10 Jun 2013 http://www:publications:parliament:u 
k/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmhaff/68/68i:pdf p.14. 
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5. 
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INSTITUTIONAL 
FAILURE 
The committee found that the only reason why children from care 
homes were disproportionately represented among the victims was 
because these children were in fact more vulnerable to the gangs. 
Thus, the greatest defence of a child against these gangs was to have 
caring parents (but as we saw in BindelÕs 2007 report, these parents 
were ignored by the police even when the parents had done the initial 
detective work).168 The parents and schoolgirls were failed by so 
many agencies. In many ways, this Parliamentary report also fails the 
victims. 

5.9 BarnardoÕs 
In section 4.4 1995 Bradford: Streets and Lanes, we briefly 
discussed the Streets and Lanes project, which BarnardoÕs began in 
1995, in order to help schoolgirls lured into a life of Òprostitution.Ó In 
2011, BarnardoÕs referred to this project in their acclaimed Puppet on 
a String report, which demanded Òurgent actionÓ on child sexual 
abuse.169 

This project BarnardoÕs started in Bradford in 1995 does not seem 
to have led the charity to campaign in the wider society for changes in 
the law, nor campaign to get the police and social services to fulfil 
their statutory obligations, nor to investigate why it has been 
predominantly Muslim men who were involved in this form of sexual 
exploitation of children. The priority of this project seems to have 
been about freeing the girls from the gangs, or preventing the gangs 
claiming new victims, or even just providing sexual health checks to 
the victims. Those are all commendable aims, but given how much 
BarnardoÕs and their staff knew about the grooming phenomenon, 

168Home Affairs Select Committee report ÒChild Sexual Exploitation and the Response
 to Localised GroomingÓ 10 Jun 2013 http://www:publications:parliament:u 
k/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmhaff/68/68i:pdf p.12. 
169Puppet 
on 
a 
String: 
the 
Urgent 
Need 
to 
Cut 
Children 
Free 
From 
Sexual 
Exploitation 
2011 http://www:barnardos:org:uk/ctf_puppetonastring_report_final:p 
df pg.1. 

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INSTITUTIONAL 
FAILURE 
doesnÕt the public have the right to ask why they werenÕt taking an 
active campaigning role, back in 1995 at the latest? Parliament and 
national agencies are purporting that nothing was known about 
Òlocalised groomingÓ until 2011. What was BarnardoÕs doing in the 
intervening 15 years to draw this phenomenon to the attention of 
government and national agencies? Did BarnardoÕs not think that the 
gangs needed to be stopped by law enforcement, or at the very least, 
the supply of victims needed to be forewarned. 

The Child Exploitation Online Protection Centre was created in 
2006, and by then BarnardoÕs had more than a decade of experience 
dealing with the victims of the grooming gangs, with the Director of 
their Bradford project precisely describing the Òlocalised groomingÓ 
process by the year 2000. How could it be that it took CEOP another 
11 years, and only in response to a Òrapid assessmentÓ, for CEOP to 
discover the phenomenon of Òlocalised groomingÓ? Did BarnardoÕs 
not think it important to lobby CEOP between 2006 and 2011? Where 
was BarnardoÕs support for Channel 4 in 2003 and 2004? Why was 
BarnardoÕs silent when the Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police 
persuaded Channel 4 to withdraw their documentary? Why was 
BarnardoÕs not publicly supporting local MP Ann Cryer in 2003 and 
2004? Why did BarnardoÕs remain silent in 2004 when Bradford 
Council and West Yorkshire Police stated there was Òno evidenceÓ 
that these grooming gangs existed? How did BarnardoÕs respond in 
2005 when West Yorkshire Police closed down their investigation into 
the grooming gangs? Why did BarnardoÕs not lend support to CROP 
in Leeds, or to Julie Bindel in 2007? We cannot find any information 
that will allow us to answer these questions. It seems strange that 
BarnardoÕs started to demand Òurgent actionÓ in 2011, when for 15 
years they had been so close to many of the pivotal events which were 
core to the denial that this problem existed. 

Despite being cited by the Parliamentary investigation, the 30 
page BarnardoÕs 
report from 2011, barely mentions Òlocalised 
groomingÓ. As we have found is typical of reports from BarnardoÕs 

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INSTITUTIONAL 
FAILURE 
over many years, they never address any characteristics of the men 
who do the grooming. The BarnardoÕs report does spend a lot of time 
talking about online grooming, a facet of grooming which CEOP had 
focussed on to the point of eliminating any discussion of localised 
grooming. One would expect that with the grooming phenomenon 
moving to centre stage in 2011 and 2012, that a report from 
BarnardoÕs would actually discuss this phenomenon. 

When the 2011 BarnardoÕs report talks about ÒtraffickingÓ they 
cite a case in Òthe south westÓ, an area where there has been no 
evidence at all of localised grooming. The only time the BarnardoÕs 
report does talk about localised grooming is when they report on the 
massive and highly publicised cases from Rochdale and Derby, cases 
which the whole country would already have known about. Where 
was the expert information from BarnardoÕs experience in Bradford 
from 1995 onwards? According to Anna Hall (who made 2004 
documentary for Channel 
4), it was from her encounters with 
BarnardoÕs 
Streets 
and 
Lanes 
project in 1996 that she learned 
about the Òoverwhelmingly AsianÓ grooming gangs. 

BarnardoÕs seem to have gone out of their way to avoid 
identifying the glaring and specific patterns concerning the ethnicity 
of the grooming gangs, although BarnardoÕs does go into detail about 
Òthe characteristics of children at risk of sexual exploitation.Ó170 Yet 
even in 2002, with no mention of the contrast in ethnicity between the 
majority of the perpetrators and the majority of the victims, 
publications were mentioning that the BarnardoÕs Streets and Lanes 
project was exposing: 

a ÒgroomingÓ process which is undertaken by the 

ÒboyfriendÓ or ÒpimpÓ in producing a child prostitute. 

This process not only draws young women/girls into 

prostitution; it creates complete dependency, which 

170ÒEffective Work with Sexually Exploited Children and Young PeopleÓ,
 http://www:barnardos:org:uk/effective_work_with_sexually_exploited_childre 
n_young_people_2008-2:pdf p.3. 

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INSTITUTIONAL 
FAILURE 
perpetuates their abuse through prostitution. They are 
almost always lead into prostitution by a man, often aged 
18 to 25, who begins a relationship with a vulnerable 
girl... The pattern of control typically involves four 
stages: 1. Ensnaring 2. Creating dependency 3. Taking 
control 4. Total dominance The end result of this 
grooming process is that the ÒboyfriendÓ who has 
become the all important person in the girlÕs life, has 
created a willing victim in a completely dominating 
relationship.171 

Thus, it is clear that sometime between 1995 and 2000, the 
Òlocalised groomingÓ pattern of exploitation was recognised by 
BarnardoÕs, and by those talking to the charity about their work 
in Bradford (contra 
the claims of CEOP and The ChildrenÕs 
Commissioner). 

In early 2011, following the sentencing of those convicted in a 
major grooming trial which concluded in Derby at the end of the 
previous year, former Home Secretary Jack Straw said some Pakistani 
men saw white girls as Òeasy meat.Ó172 What was so surprising about 
this admission, was that since the controversy over the Edge of the 
City documentary in 2004, no-one in the public eye (apart from Julie 
Bindel) had dared to make any explicit connection between Muslims 
and the grooming gangs. 

In reporting the remarks of Jack Straw MP, that some Pakistani 
men saw white girls as Òeasy meatÓ, the media presented the Chief 
Executive of BarnardoÕs as saying Òthe case was more about 
vulnerable children of all races who were at risk from abuseÓ, and that 

171Suzanne Knight ÒChildren Abused through ProstitutionÓ, Emergency 
Nurse, vol.10, no.4, 2002, pp.27-30 http://rcnpublishing:com/doi/abs/10:7748/en 
2002:07:10:4:27:c1069 p.28. 
172ÒWhite girls Ôeasy meatÕ to Pakistani men, says StrawÓ, The Independent, 8 
Jan 2011, http://www:independent:co:uk/news/uk/crime/white-girls-easy-meat-to-p 
akistani-men-says-straw-2179347:html. 

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5. 
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INSTITUTIONAL 
FAILURE 
ethnicity was basically irrelevant.173 Let us remember that Jack Straw 
had successfully represented one of the areas in Britain with a very 
high proportion of Pakistanis; yet when he pointed out that being 
male and Pakistani were significant features in this criminality, the 
media ensure that BarnardoÕs Chief Executive is widely quoted to 
undermine what Jack Straw has stated. Were the remarks of 
BarnardoÕs Chief Executive taken out of context, or is it really 
BarnardoÕs policy to discourage people from considering the ethnicity 
of the perpetrators? Well, after releasing the Puppet on a String report 
in 2011, the Chief Executive of BarnardoÕs made a point of stating 
that ethnicity should be marginalised: 

From our experience, we know that in some areas 
ethnicity is a factor, but in many other areas it isnÕt... If 
you focus on one model of sexual exploitation, children 

173ÒJack Straw: Some White Girls are ÔEasy MeatÕÓ, BBC News website, 8 Jan 
2011 http://www:bbc:co:uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-12141603. In many reports 
of StrawÕs comments, Martin Narey, the Chief Executive of BarnardoÕs is quoted as 
disagreeing with Straw that there is any ethnic or racial dimension to this crime. However,
 if we read carefully what the Chief Executive of BarnardoÕs says in some of 
these reports, it is entirely consistent with our thesis that it is not race that is the significant
 factor in these crimes, but religion. Thus in David Batty, ÒWhite girls seen 
as Ôeasy meatÕ by Pakistani rapists, says Jack StrawÓ, The Guardian, 8 Jan 2011, 
http://www:theguardian:com/world/2011/jan/08/jack-straw-white-girls-easy-meat, it 
says: 

The BarnardoÕs chief executive, Martin Narey, said the case was more 
about vulnerable children of all races who were at risk from abuse. 
Street grooming was Òprobably happening in most towns and citiesÓ 
and was not confined to the Pakistani community.ÒI certainly donÕt 
think this is a Pakistani thing. My staff would say that there is 
an over-representation of people from minority ethnic groups Ð 
Afghans, people from Arabic nations Ð but itÕs not just one nation,Ó 

said Narey. (emphasis added) 

Whilst being reported as disagreeing that being a Pakistani is a salient fact in being a 
perpetrator in these crimes, Narey is actually saying that salience is reduced, because 
the other (Muslim) men who perpetrate this crime are from countries other than Pakistan
 e.g. Afghanistan and Arabic countries. Once again, the media conflate race and 
religion and sow confusion. 

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who are being exploited in different circumstances wonÕt 

see that itÕs an issue for them as well. Young people who 

need support wonÕt come forward because they donÕt fit 

the model thatÕs being presented.174 

Yet this is exactly what BarnardoÕs has done. It has focused on one 
model: a generic model, where it is every adult who is a possible 
perpetrator, and every child who is a possible victim. What is 
different about the Muslim grooming gangs has been totally obscured. 
This is precisely the point that Andrew Norfolk made: Òmost of the 
victims are white and most of the convicted offenders are of Pakistani 
heritage, unlike other known models of child-sex offending in 
Britain.Ó Despite being on Òthe front-lineÓ dealing with the victims in 
Bradford since 1995, despite much research, we can find no evidence 
of BarnardoÕs drawing attention to this singular difference, and many 
statements from them indicating that ethnicity is not relevant (or at 
least, only relevant when it comes to considering victims, to make 
sure non-white victims are considered, even when they are a minority 
of the victims). All the signs are that the problem with the Muslim 
grooming gangs had massively increased: as Mohammed Shafiq 
repeatedly predicted, if the questions of ethnicity were ignored the 
problem would get worse. 

We have searched the BarnardoÕs website to see if at any time in 
the last 18 years we can find any mention by them of the contrast in 
ethnicity between the perpetrators and the victims. In a two year study 
by BarnardoÕs (ending in 2006), 13 out of 32 cases reported were 
Òyoung womenÓ who were sexually exploited. In 21 cases the Òyoung 
womanÓ identified the exploiting man as her Òboyfriend.Ó In 13 cases 
this fitted the model of a pimp deliberately grooming a teenage girl 
for prostitution. 

174ÒBarnardoÕs: focus on race in sexual exploitation cases could lead to more riskÓ, 
18 Jan 2011, http://www:communitycare:co:uk/articles/18/01/2011/116089/focus-o 
n-race-in-grooming-cases-could-lead-to-more-risk:htm. This was the newly appointed
 Chief Executive speaking, and the ÒreporterÓ has exaggerated what she said. 

185 



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In five cases a much older male was involved; in each 
case he was a known or convicted sex offender and 
appeared to be primarily interested in the girl for his own 
use Ð although issues of being ÒsharedÓ or sold to 
ÒfriendsÓ also appeared, this was not in a pimping arena. 
At 12 and 13 these were the youngest girls in the sample, 
and despite the fact that the men involved were in their 
30s, 40s and 50s, they too considered their abuser to be 
their Òboyfriend.Ó175 

In this report there is no indication of the ÒethnicityÓ of the 
exploitative adult men. And this is not because BarnardoÕs works in a 
world unaware of political correctness and oblivious to the politics of 
ethnicity: the report did consider ethnicity in ensuring that the cases 
examined should represent a spread of ethnicities in Britain.176 This 
piece of ÒresearchÓ looks more like promotional material for the 
BarnardoÕs way of doing things, why ÒBarnardoÕs worksÓ, and as 
such, it seems to have steered away from any information which could 
have confirmed the existence of the (overwhelmingly Muslim) 
grooming gangs. It is bizarre that a mere 5 years later, their 
Puppet 
on 
a 
String 
report should complain about Òa shocking lack 
of awarenessÓ; when this 2006 report from BarnardoÕs 
addresses 
the ethnicity of the victims, but ignores the ethnicity of the 
perpetrators. In 2009, the Muslim Council of Britain was describing 
the grooming gangs as a racist myth,177 so why would BarnardoÕs be 
shocked in 2011 that there was a lack of awareness of this 
phenomenon? Before 2011, when had BarnardoÕs ever spoken out 
about the reality of these grooming gangs? 

175Sara Scott and Paula Skidmore ÒReducing the Risk: Barnardos Support for 
Sexually Exploited Young PeopleÓ 2006 http://www:barnardos:org:uk/reducing_the 
_risk_report:pdf p.25. 
176Sara Scott and Paula Skidmore ÒReducing the Risk: Barnardos Support for 
Sexually Exploited Young PeopleÓ, 2006, http://www:barnardos:org:uk/reducing_t 
he_risk_report:pdf p.16 
177http://www:mcb:org:uk/vote2009/stopfarright:html. 

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In a 2004 joint project between BarnardoÕs and Dutch 
organisations, BarnardoÕs clearly had knowledge of the ÒLoverboysÓ 
project in the Netherlands.178 

Through a number of exchange visits and meetings, the 
implementation of a specially designed monitoring tool 
and collection of case study materials, the project set up a 
systematic comparative evaluation of the work of UK and 
NL schemes. This enabled schemes in both countries to 
compare their assessments of young people at risk of 
sexual exploitation. Through this method, common ways 
of working to prevent and intervene against child sexual 
exploitation were clearly identified, as well as some 
national differences.179 

This 2004 report makes no mention of the ethnicity/religion of the 
perpetrators, even though one of the principal focuses was on 
liaison and comparison between staff from BarnardoÕs 
Streets 
and 
Lanes 
project which started in Bradford, and the ÒLoverboysÓ 
project in the Netherlands. This document focuses on identifying 
the characteristics of children who are likely to be vulnerable to 
sexual exploitation and pimping without ever focusing on the 
characteristics of the perpetrators. 

In 2007 BarnardoÕs produced another partnership project, 
comparing the UK with the Netherlands and Estonia. This project did 
not involve any focus on the ÒLoverboysÓ project in the Netherlands, 
nor the Streets and Lanes project in Bradford. However, there was a 
plenary presentation from a Dutch representative Òon the loverboy 
problemsÓ in Amsterdam, but no mention is made of BarnardoÕs 

178Paula Skidmore, ÒWhat Works in Child Sexual Exploitation: Sharing and 
LearningÓ, July 2004, http://www:barnardos:org:uk/final_report_by_paula_skidmor 
e_in_english:pdf p.5. 
179Paula Skidmore, ÒWhat Works in Child Sexual Exploitation: Sharing and 
LearningÓ, July 2004, http://www:barnardos:org:uk/final_report_by_paula_skidmor 
e_in_english:pdf p.17. 

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Streets and Lanes project.180 There was also a presentation from an 
imam from Eindhoven Òon the issues and recognition of the problem 
within the Muslim community and the different attitudes towards girls 
and boys involved in prostitution activities.Ó181 We cannot imagine 
that there is much of a problem with young Muslim men being 
prostituted in the Netherlands, so we conclude that this talk concerned 
the men being involved in prostitution as pimps. The report does refer 
to the analysis of 32 young women sexually exploited in BarnardoÕs 
2006 report, but as we noted above, in that analysis BarnardoÕs had 
no interest in the ethnicity of the perpetrators.182 This 2007 report 
also records that a presentation was held by the Platform of Islamic 
Organisations in Rijnmond (Holland), where Ò1 project was started on 
the ÔloverboyÕ problem due to the fact that a number of victims and 
perpetrators have Muslim backgrounds.Ó183 Another presentation 
from Holland that was part of the 2007 report stated: 

Social control has no effect. That is why the awareness 

and condemnation of the social problem and the danger 

of the loverboys needs to be encouraged in the Moroccan 

community. For instance, mosques to state that it is 

unacceptable.184 

180ÒBlueprints of Experience: working to prevent and reduce child sexual exploitation
 in the United Kingdom, Netherlands and EstoniaÓ, January 2008 http: 
//www:barnardos:org:uk/blueprints_reduce_child_sex_exploit_2007:pdf p.17. 
181ÒBlueprints of Experience: working to prevent and reduce child sexual exploitation
 in the United Kingdom, Netherlands and EstoniaÓ, January 2008, 
http://www:barnardos:org:uk/blueprints_reduce_child_sex_exploit_2007:pdf p.18. 
182ÒBlueprints of Experience: working to prevent and reduce child sexual exploitation
 in the United Kingdom, Netherlands and EstoniaÓ, January 2008 http: 
//www:barnardos:org:uk/blueprints_reduce_child_sex_exploit_2007:pdf p.13. 
183ÒBlueprints of Experience: working to prevent and reduce child sexual exploitation
 in the United Kingdom, Netherlands and EstoniaÓ, January 2008, 
http://www:barnardos:org:uk/blueprints_reduce_child_sex_exploit_2007:pdf p.20. 
184ÒBlueprints of Experience: working to prevent and reduce child sexual exploitation
 in the United Kingdom, Netherlands and EstoniaÓ, January 2008, 
http://www:barnardos:org:uk/blueprints_reduce_child_sex_exploit_2007:pdf p.21. 

188 



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Two further presentations in the 2007 project concerned the 
ÒLoverboyÓ problems in the Netherlands. Whilst the Dutch 
participants in the project focussed almost exclusively on the 
Loverboy problem, the BarnardoÕs 
team did not appear to 
mention the overwhelming role that Muslim men in Britain play 
in grooming gangs (the British equivalent to the Loverboy 
problems.) It is truly astonishing that in so many international 
meetings between two countries who both suffer from gangs who 
groom schoolgirls, BarnardoÕs should not talk about their Streets and 
Lanes project, and point out the similarities (and, presumably, some 
differences). The Dutch participants were clearly aware of an Islamic 
connection (at the very least in terms of demography, even if they had 
not articulated that there might well be doctrinal motivations). What 
did BarnardoÕs do to make the British public aware of the 
ÒLoverboysÓ in Holland, and the similarities with the grooming gangs 
in Britain?185 Did BarnardoÕs staff really fail to notice that there was 
an Islamic connection in both these forms of sexual exploitation? 

Year after year, BarnardoÕs projects do not mention the grooming 
gangs. Throughout these reports, BarnardoÕs seems to be more 
concerned with self-promotion than with drawing attention to this 
shocking phenomenon. The only time BarnardoÕs gave any indication 
that they knew there was a problem with Muslim grooming gangs in 
Britain was this 2011 report, which came out after a year in which, in 
6 different trials around England, a total of 32 Muslim men were 
convicted for crimes where they groomed schoolgirls. After such a 
run of conclusive evidence, it was frankly unnecessary for BarnardoÕs 
to say anything, and what they did say added nothing to the debate. 
And one has to wonder: did BarnardoÕs only come out with this 
report in 2011 because they were aware that Norfolk was working on 
an analysis that would prove the existence of the grooming gangs? It 

185We think it likely that BarnardoÕs were one of the principal sources informing 
SOCA and/or UKHTC about the Loverboys problem in Holland, leading to the commissioning
 of My Dangerous Loverboy in 2008. 

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would have reflected very badly on BarnardoÕs if NorfolkÕs report 
came out, and the organisation which had been working with the 
victims of the gangs over 16 years ago had never issued any kind of 
report about this phenomenon. 

Despite Streets and Lanes from 1995 being the origin of what 
eventually became Channel 4Õs controversial 2004 documentary, we 
cannot find any evidence that BarnardoÕs have ever mounted any kind 
of publicity campaign about the Muslim grooming gangs. None of 
this is to say that any of the other childrenÕs charities come out of this 
any better. We are not aware of any childrenÕs charity, with the 
exception of CROP, which went out of the way to state who in 
particular was committing this kind of crime. 

5.10 Academic Experts 
We wanted to make sure that we were not missing any instances of 
courageous academics who had used their academic freedom to 
research and report on the grooming gangs, even when the child-care 
professionals and the media were too politically correct to do so. On 
the NSPCC website we found a Òreading list of key research into child 
sexual exploitationÓ, which shows how academics and other child 
protection experts have basically ignored the grooming gangs.186 

There are two main academic institutions whose work we can 
examine to see how much they have done to speak out about the 
grooming gangs: the International Centre for the Study of Sexually 
Exploited and Trafficked Young People (Bedfordshire University) and 
the Jill Dando Institute of Security and Crime Science (University of 
London). If one consults the NSPCC Òlist of key researchÓ, one will 
see that the bulk of the list is made up of documents from BarnardoÕs, 
Bedfordshire Centre, or the Jill Dando Institute. 

186NSPCC ÒResearch on child sexual exploitationÓ Jul 2013 http: 
//www:nspcc:org:uk/Inform/resourcesforprofessionals/sexualabuse/sexual_explo 
itation_research_wda85130:html. 

190 



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It was only at the end of 2011 that Sue Jago and Professor Jenny 
Pearce from Bedfordshire University published research into the 
failings of Local Safeguarding Children Boards.187 Once again, it 
seems that it was after the spate of successful prosecutions in 2010, 
when CEOP, Andrew Norfolk and BarnardoÕs started to address the 
hitherto unspoken problem, that the University of Bedfordshire 
academics also became involved. We have to ask: what research was 
this centre (or its staff) doing on this subject between 1995 and 2011? 
We can understand that there are reasons why charities may want to 
tread within the borders of safety when it comes to political 
correctness, as bad publicity could affect their funding, and charities 
can be forgiven for fearing that some pressure groups might be 
ruthless enforcers of this ideology. However, when it comes to 
academics, they are supposedly guided by truth, not by political 
correctness and ideology. 

In 2009 Prof. Pearce (Director of this Centre at Bedfordshire 
University) authored a book on sexual exploitation.188 In that book 
Prof. Pearce was perfectly capable of describing the phenomenon of 
Òlocalised groomingÓ, which CEOP went on to supposedly discover 
two years later. According to Prof. Pearce: 

the Ògrooming model for sexual exploitationÓ, explained 
the process whereby an abusive adult entices a young 
person into becoming dependent upon them. Invariably, 
this involved the young person believing they are in love 
with their abuser. The pattern moves through a process 
where the abuse flatters the young person, giving them 
attention, accommodation and other gifts. The young 
person increasingly becomes dependent upon the abuser 
who invariably isolates them from family and friends and 
encourages them to become reliant upon drugs and 

187http://www:beds:ac:uk/news/2011/october/exploitationstudy 
188Jenny Pearce, ÒYoung People and Sexual Exploitation: ItÕs not Hidden, you 
Just ArenÕt LookingÓ, Routledge, 2009 

191 



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alcohol. The young person is then forced or coerced into 

swapping or selling sex to raise money for the 

Òboyfriend.Ó189 

This is the form of grooming which the Home Affairs Select 
Committee claimed was only recognised following the successful 
convictions in Derbyshire in November 2010. It also clearly 
matches what BarnardoÕs staff were describing as happening in 
Bradford in 1995190 and 2000.191 The repeated occurrence of 
descriptions of this phenomenon before 2011 shows that Parliament 
and CEOP were involved in a cover-up, trying to claim that what was 
going on was a new phenomenon, when it had been identified by 
child-care professionals years earlier. 

Although she does refer to BarnardoÕs Streets and Lanes project, 
Prof. Pearce does not make any comparison between the Dutch 
ÒLoverboyÓ phenomenon and the British grooming gangs. Her book 
does not even discuss the controversy around Channel 4Õs Edge of the 
City, or Julie BindelÕs ÒMothers of Prevention.Ó This is not because 
Prof. Pearce is oblivious to ethnicity: in her book she goes on to 
complain that Òthe dominant image of a sexually exploited child... is 
of them as a white young woman.Ó She urges the agencies involved 
not to adopt these race (and gender) blinkers, in case it Òhas a negative 
impact... on the service provision to Black and minority ethnic 
communities.Ó192 This is, of course, very commendable. However, 
there is no injunction to say that such race-awareness should also be 

189Jenny Pearce, ÒYoung People and Sexual Exploitation: ItÕs not Hidden, you 
Just ArenÕt LookingÓ, Routledge, 2009 p.21 
190ÒScandal of child-sex on Bradford streetsÓ, Telegraph & Argus, 14 Jul 
1998, http://www:thetelegraphandargus:co:uk/archive/1998/07/14/8075434:Scandal 
_of_child_sex_on_Bradford_streets/. 
191Sara Swann, ÒHelping girls involved in ÔprostitutionÕ: a Barnardos ExperimentÓ, 
pp.278-282 of Home Truths About Child Sexual Abuse: Policy and Practice, Catherine 
Itzen (ed.), Routledge, London, 2000. 
192Jenny Pearce, ÒYoung People and Sexual Exploitation: ItÕs not Hidden, you 
Just ArenÕt LookingÓ, Routledge, 2009 p.21; see also, p.121. 

192 



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extended to considerations of the perpetrators or the motivations of 
the abusers. In several places she discusses the ethnicity of the 
victims. But we can find no attempt to discuss the ethnicity of the 
perpetrators. So, just as court cases were coming to light in 2009 
and 2010, showing that grooming gangs were disproportionately 
Muslim (as Anna Hall had come to realise in Bradford in 1996), Prof. 
Pearce is advising that professionals should be searching out minority 
ethnic victims; but there is no indication that minority ethnicities 
might be found amongst the perpetrators. It seems that ethnicity can 
only be considered salient when it comes to the victims of crime, but 
must not be mentioned when it comes to the perpetrators. 

Whilst Prof. Pearce may have made significant omissions in her 
work with regard to what some experts are calling Òthe biggest child 
protection scandal of our timeÓ,193 the work of academics associated 
with the Jill Dando Institute of Security and Crime Science is worse. 
Cockbain and Brayley, are described in The Independent as the 
Òauthors of the first independent academic analysis looking at 
Ôon-street groomingÕ, where young girls, spotted outside, including at 
the school gates, have become targets.Ó194 The Independent report 
goes on to say of the research by Cockbain and Brayley that 

their most recent work studies just five cases Ð though of 

the 52 offenders involved totals 83 per cent are Asian 

Pakistani, 11 per cent Asian other and 6 per cent 

white. 195 (our emphasis) 

This hugely disproportionate presence of ÒAsiansÓ, particularly those 
from the Islamic state of Pakistan, is entirely in keeping with our 

193Andrew Norfolk, ÒPolice Files Reveal Vast Child Protection ScandalÓ, The 
Times, 24 Sep 2012 http://www:thetimes:co:uk/tto/news/uk/crime/article3547661:e 
ce. 
194Caroline Davies and Karen McVeigh, ÒChild sex trafficking study sparks exaggerated
 racial stereotypingÓ, The Guardian, 6 Jan 2011 http://www:theguardian:c 
om/law/2011/jan/06/child-sex-trafficking-racial-stereotyping. 
195The Independent does not give the publication details of this report by Cockbain 
and Brayley. 

193 



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analysis of the CEOP data, the ChildrenÕs Commissioner data, and all 
the convictions for this type of crime in Britain since 1997.196 

At least Cockbain and Brayley have not ignored the phenomenon; 
but what they did was to attempt to claim that the perpetrators could 
not be Muslims, even if they described themselves as ÒMuslimsÓ. 
Cockbain and Brayley are quoted as saying: 

...religion seems to be a red herring here, in that many 
offenders seem to be Muslim only in a nominal sense. 
Prior to arrest many drank alcohol, took drugs, did not 
have beards, and all engaged in extramarital sex with 
underage girls. Hardly the hallmarks of a strict 
Muslim. 197 (our emphasis) 

It seems extraordinary that non-Muslim academics such as Cockbain 
and Brayley should set themselves up as the people who can define 
who is or is not a Muslim: a Muslim man without a beard is only a 
ÒnominalÓ Muslim? How many times must some Muslim man go to 
the mosque each day before he is considered a Muslim in name only? 
Whilst the Koran may have some restrictions on the consumption of 
alcohol, where does the Koran say that Muslims cannot sell or take 
drugs? That a major supplier of hashish is Morocco, and the major 
suppliers of heroin are Afghanistan and Pakistan should show that this 
is an embarrassingly ignorant understanding of the restrictions of 
Islam and the behaviour of Muslims. Iran has the worldÕs worst 
problem with heroin addiction.198 Does this mean that the 3.5 million 
heroin addicts in the Islamic Republic of Iran are not Muslims? 

196Whether or not the non-Pakistani Asians in their analysis were Muslims is hard to 
know. 
197Paul Vallely, ÒChild Sex Grooming: the Asian QuestionÓ, The Independent, 
10 May 2012 http://www:independent:co:uk/news/uk/crime/child-sex-grooming-the 
-Asian-question-7729068:html. Whether these remarks were spoken directly to the 
journalist, or are quotations from a paper authored by Cockbain and Brayley is hard 
to determine. 
198ÒIran and heroin: a lesson for the west?Ó, Channel 4 News, 10 Mar 2006, http: 
//www:channel4:com/news/iran-and-heroin-a-lesson-for-the-west. 


194 



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Cockbain and Brayley seem to be saying that only those Muslims 
who conform to the most extreme image of a fundamentalist Muslim 
are to be regarded as Muslims. Does this mean that only Muslim 
women who wear a burka or niqab are to be considered Muslims, and 
that the majority of Muslim women who wear only a hijab are not real 
Muslims? Yasmin Alibhai-Brown does not even wear a hijab, which 
many fundamentalist Muslims would say means she is not a Muslim. 
It seems very strange that two female academics from the Jill Dando 
Institute should be supporting the idea that only the most overtly 
fundamentalist Muslims are a genuine measure of what it means to be 
a Muslim. Should we extend this, and say that the 75% of British 
Muslims who donÕt want to kill apostates are ÒMuslim only in a 
nominal senseÓ? 

This is not the only incident where Cockbain and Brayley declare 
what is and is not the behaviour of genuine Muslims. In an article on 
The Guardian website, authored by Cockbain and Brayley, they state: 
ÒThe defendants in question are at most nominally Muslim. 
Practising Muslims certainly arenÕt supposed to have sex with 
children.Ó199 Here Cockbain and Brayley seem to be going further, 
suggesting that it may be appropriate to regard the perpetrators as 
non-Muslims (considering that 25% of British Muslims think that 
those who leave Islam should be killed, it is dangerous to say that a 
Muslim is not a Muslim). It would seem that it is precisely the issue 
of these men having sex with children which would discount them 
from eligibility to be Muslims. However, if Cockbain and Brayley 
paid attention to the legality of sex with children according to 
manuals of sharia law (manuals which are found in public libraries in 
Britain), perhaps these academics would notice reports from feminists 
in London of under-age Muslim girls200 being married off by imams 

199(Our emphasis) Ella Cockbain and Helen Brayley ÒThe truth about ÔAsian sex 
gangsÕÓ (Comment is Free), The Guardian, 8 May 2012 http://www:theguardian:com 
/commentisfree/2012/may/08/Asian-sex-gangs-on-street-grooming. This article has 
since disappeared from The GuardianÕs website. 
200see Pavan Amara, ÒIslington Girls Forced into Marriage at the Age of NineÓ, Is


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in mosques to devout old Muslim men, not 5 miles from Òthe Jill 
Dando Institute... at University College LondonÓ.201 If we adopt the 
criteria which seem to inform the workd of Cockbain and Brayley, we 
would have to declare that these devout old Muslim men were not 
Muslims, and maybe even declare that the imams who married the old 
men to the under-age children were not Muslims.Even if the 
evidence of their own study shows that the gangs in Britain are 
mostly Pakistani Asians (Muslims), Cockbain and Brayley rule 
that race and religion are to be considered irrelevant: if 
necessary, the men must be designated as being Muslim in name 
only, even if these men were brought up as Muslims, and define 
themselves as Muslims. 

In the article on The Guardian website, entitled ÒThe Truth about 
ÔAsian sex gangsÕÓ, Cockbain and Brayley describe themselves as 
Òresearchers specialising in this crimeÓ.202 As such, we should expect 
them, more than anyone else, to have understood the history of this 
phenomenon, and to have investigated any connection with Islamic 
doctrine and the historical behaviour of Muslims (particularly since 
these academics have decided to list criteria that differentiate Òstrict 
MuslimsÓ from Ònominal MuslimsÓ). Cockbain and Brayley offer no 
evidence to show that the behaviour of the grooming gangs is 
un-Islamic, other than their own assertions. That so many sources of 

lington Tribune, 27 Jan 2012, http://www:islingtontribune:com/news/2012/jan/isling 
ton-girls-forced-marriage-age-nine. More details on the legality of sex with children 
can be found here: 7.6 Sharia Law: Child Marriage. The ÒmoderateÓ imam quoted in 
that story Òexplained that Sharia law stated an individual can marry when they begin 
pubertyÓ, and it is clear that the Muslim schoolgirls were providing sexual services to 
their Òhusbands.Ó 
201Paul Vallely, ÒChild Sex Grooming: the Asian QuestionÓ, The Independent, 
10 May 2012 http://www:independent:co:uk/news/uk/crime/child-sex-grooming-the 
-Asian-question-7729068:html. 
202Ella Cockbain and Helen Brayley ÒThe truth about ÔAsian sex gangsÕÓ (Comment
 is Free), The Guardian, 8 May 2012 http://www:theguardian:com/comment 
isfree/2012/may/08/Asian-sex-gangs-on-street-grooming. This article was on The 
Guardian website until late 2013, but has now been removed. 

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evidence demonstrate that Muslim men are hugely over-represented 
as the perpetrators in the grooming gangs should have been a signal to 
Cockbain and Brayley that they need to examine the history and 
doctrine of Islam. Indeed, Cockbain and Brayley are knowingly 
rejecting the claims by others that there is an Islamic dimension to 
this crime: they explicitly refer to Nick Griffin of the BNP and to the 
EDL. This was the opportunity for Òresearchers specialising in this 
crimeÓ to start looking at Islamic doctrine and the behaviour of other 
Muslims in Britain and around the world, to see if men having sex 
with children had any foundation in Islam. Cockbain and Brayley 
criticise others for ÒgeneralisationÓ, but they work with a fantasy 
version of Islam. 

Rather than concentrate on Òracial profilingÓ Cockbain and 
Brayley suggest improved detection and prevention techniques: 

there are plenty of things to be getting on with that donÕt 
depend on offender profiling. The best bits of policing 
nationwide need to become more widely adopted: 
innovative anti-exploitation teams, training programmes 
for front-line officers and brave approaches to covert 
investigations. Often dubbed the missing part of the 
jigsaw, healthcare and education have a crucial part to 
play in spotting and supporting victims...203 

We would draw the attention of Cockbain and Brayley to the 
BarnardoÕs staff, who in 1996 were talking to Anna Hall about 
Òoverwhelmingly AsianÓ204 grooming gangs in Bradford. That 
BarnardoÕs team had an anti-exploitation team who were involved in 
supporting victims with healthcare and education. There is no 
indication that such activities managed to stop the grooming gangs: 

203Ella Cockbain and Helen Brayley ÒThe truth about ÔAsian sex gangsÕÓ (Comment
 is Free), The Guardian, 8 May 2012 http://www:theguardian:com/commentisfr 
ee/2012/may/08/Asian-sex-gangs-on-street-grooming. 
204Anna Hall ÒHunt For BritainÕs Sex Gangs, C4Ó., Broadcast, 2 May 2013, http:// 
www:broadcastnow:co:uk/in-depth/hunt-for-britains-sex-gangs-c4/5054504:article. 


197 



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INSTITUTIONAL 
FAILURE 
ten years later, it was still reported that the problems were just as bad 
in Bradford. If the BarnardoÕs project had succeeded between 1996 
and 2003 in eliminating Muslim grooming activities, Channel 4 
would have had no basis for making Edge of the City there in 2004. 
And just a year after Cockbain and Brayley espoused their naive 
views, West Yorkshire Police charged 45 men in the largest grooming 
case so far.205 Or perhaps Cockbain and Brayley might like to read 
our section 4.13 2008 My Dangerous Loverboy, about the 
educational film commissioned by UKHTC in 2008, and which has 
yet to receive distribution. CEOP were reporting that they trained 
thousands of front-line staff every year. These activities have been 
tried (or at least suggested) before, and none of them have shown any 
effectiveness at stopping the gangs. It is truly astonishing to see these 
experts trot out such naive opinions, apparently unaware of the history 
of this problem. 

These experts advise against any focus on the most clear 
characteristic of this crime: groups of ÒAsianÓ (Muslim) men and 
non-Muslim schoolgirls; to do that supposedly risks targeting the 
Ònon-deviant majority.Ó Yet we have had 25 years in which the 
ethnicity of the perpetrators of these crimes has been denied. And 
all the indicators are that this did nothing to stop the crime nor to 
improve detection and conviction rates. It achieved the reverse: it 
allowed the subset of men who groom, rape and pimp schoolgirls to 
hide among the Ònon-deviant majorityÓ, that is, the population of 
white men, who are vastly under-represented in this type of crime. To 
ignore the distinctive features of this type of crime, means that instead 
of focusing on a group who are maybe 1% of the UK population 

205Suzannah Hills, ÒUKÕs biggest child sex gang uncovered as 45 men 
are arrested over abuse of girls as young as 13Ó, Daily Mail, 18 Aug 
2013, http://www:dailymail:co:uk/news/article-2396486/UKs-biggest-child-sex-gan 
g-uncovered-45-men-arrested-abuse-girls-young-13:html. The report states that 
some of the men are white, some are Asian. LetÕs hope for the sake of the reputation
 of Cockbain and Brayley, that this case reverses the trend, and is 95% white and 
5% Muslim, which is what one would expect if there were no other factors. 

198 



5. 
SYSTEMIC 
INSTITUTIONAL 
FAILURE 
(Muslim men), police forces should be focusing on 100% of the UK 
population (i.e. everyone, Muslims and Christians, men and women, 
the old and the young). It is nonsense, and would stretch police and 
social service resources enormously, and in the middle of the worst 
economic situation since the 1930s. Ignoring the astonishing fact, that 
a group who are a tiny percentage of the population should make up 
almost all the perpetrators of a horrific yet highly lucrative criminal 
operation, would do nothing to help the victims. It is a recipe for 
carrying on with the same situation that has persisted for the past 25 
years. 

Cockbain and Brayley assert that since conclusions are being 
drawn from small samples, it could be misleading. 

There have been so few investigations of large offending 

groups that a few cases involving big non-Asian groups 

could easily shift these offender profiles in a whole new 

direction. Whether this happens or not remains to be 

seen, but entrenched stereotypes have a nasty habit of 

persisting, even when the evidence moves on.206 

These ÒspecialistsÓ made this observation in 2012. Yet as our list of 
convictions for the subsequent years shows,207 the proportion of 
Muslims convicted of these crimes has continued to remain at around 
90%. Thus, the evidence continues to show that the pattern 
demonstrated by Andrew Norfolk in 2011, a pattern which was 
observed as long ago as 1995 by staff working for BarnardoÕs, is still 
to be found in the data. At the time these academics wrote this piece, 
Andrew Norfolk had identified 56 convictions over a period of 14 
years. But within 3 years of NorfolkÕs analysis, the number of 
convictions has doubled in that short time, and the pattern still 
obtains. The truth about the grooming gangs is that all the evidence so 

206Ella Cockbain and Helen Brayley ÒThe truth about ÔAsian sex gangsÕÓ (Comment
 is Free), The Guardian, 8 May 2012 http://www:theguardian:com/commentisfr 
ee/2012/may/08/Asian-sex-gangs-on-street-grooming 
20711. Appendix 1: Grooming Gang Convictions. 

199 



5. 
SYSTEMIC 
INSTITUTIONAL 
FAILURE 
far indicates that they are overwhelmingly Muslim men. 

Cockbain and Brayley attack racial profiling. But this is a straw 
man: the question is not about Òracial profilingÓ, but about Òreligious 
profilingÓ or Òcultural profiling.Ó Cockbain and Brayley attempt to 
employ a reductio ad absurdum, invoking the idea of fingerprinting all 
the Pakistanis in Britain.208 Yet they shy away from the far more 
reasonable process, of investigating what it is about Islamic doctrine 
and Muslim culture that could have led to the formation of this new 
kind of criminality (both in Britain and in the Netherlands). And in 
terms of cutting down the incidence of this crime, these academics 
should be asking why is it that the Muslim community have protected 
these criminal gangs, in full knowledge of what these gangs were 
doing. Until there is a recognition of the history and scale of this 
problem, until there are signs that the perpetrators are more likely to 
be convicted, in the interim what is required is an education 
programme: warning schoolgirls what the profile of this kind of 
perpetrator is, and the techniques they use to entrap the schoolgirls 
into becoming sex slaves: seduction, addiction, subjugation, 
prostitution. In section 7. Islamic Cultural Background we will 
examine what there is in Islamic doctrine and Muslim culture which 
could produce this grooming phenomenon. This is the very thing 
from which academic researchers have shied away. 

208Ella Cockbain and Helen Brayley ÒThe truth about ÔAsian sex gangsÕÓ (Comment
 is Free), The Guardian, 8 May 2012 http://www:theguardian:com/commentisfr 
ee/2012/may/08/Asian-sex-gangs-on-street-grooming. 

200 



6. Abuse of the Narrative of Racism 
ItÕs a real shame when votes come before young 
girlsÕ lives. 

Ð groomed victimÕs mother, Standpoint, 2010 
6.1 Political Correctness 
The narrative of racism has held such sway in Britain for the last 30 
years, that it has enabled the Muslim grooming gangs to extend their 
operations with Òvirtual impunity.Ó1 It was the accusations of 
ÒracismÓ, and the fear of what that could to do the career of council 
workers and police officers, which was used to silence all discussion 
of the predominantly Muslim grooming gangs between 1995 and 
2009. In some of the trials, the perpetrators even tried to allege that 
they were only being prosecuted because the police were racist.2 But 
it has taken almost two decades to finally get the police to bring these 
criminals to justice. Many of those going through the courts are being 
prosecuted for criminality that occurred almost a decade ago.3 This 

1Andrew Norfolk, ÒPolice Files Reveal Vast Child Protection ScandalÓ, The Times, 
24 Sep 2012 http://www:thetimes:co:uk/tto/news/uk/crime/article3547661:ece. 
2ÒRochdale Grooming Trial: Police Knew about Sex Abuse in 2002 but Failed to 
ActÓ, The Telegraph, 9 May 2012, http://www:telegraph:co:uk/news/uknews/crime/ 
9254982/Rochdale-grooming-trial-police-knew-about-sex-abuse-in-2002-but-faile 
d-to-act:html. 
3The Oxford gang convicted in 2013 were being tried for some offences that happened 
9 years earlier. Harriet Arkell, ÒÔMy mother begged Oxford social services to 
rescue me from sex abuse NINE YEARS AGOÕÓ, Daily Mail, 15 May 2013, 


http://www:dailymail:co:uk/news/article-2324790/My-mother-begged-Oxford-socia 
l-services-rescue-sex-abuse-NINE-YEARS-AGO-Victim-known-Girl-C-13-says-c 


201 



6. 
ABUSE 
OF 
THE 
NARRATIVE 
OF 
RACISM 
shows how much political correctness has benefited the criminals at 
the expense of the children. Fundamentally, it is not the ÒraceÓ of the 
perpetrators or the victims which is pivotal to these cases, but the 
religion of both. 

If BarnardoÕs, the police, the social services, the media, the Left 
had all spoken out more bravely and truthfully against the Muslim 
men prostituting schoolgirls, then the British National Party (BNP) 
would only have been one voice amongst many, and their views on 
the matter would have been of no importance. It was the silence of so 
many on this issue, the false racialisation of the problem, which meant 
that the problem could be seen as serving the political goals of the 
BNP. According to Anna Hall, her Edge 
of 
the 
City 
documentary 
was taken up by the BNP after 
the BNP found out that there were 
calls to ban it: ÒAfter the council viewed it, West YorkshireÕs chief 
constable asked for the film to be postponed amid fears of more 
riots. All hell broke loose. The BNP got hold of the story and used 
the film as propaganda. Police and social services said nothing.Ó4 
The attempts to suppress the phenomenon from receiving any public 
awareness turned the grooming gangs into an issue the BNP could 
appropriate: it was the refusal of child-care and policing agencies to 
acknowledge the truth, the willingness of pressure groups to censor 
the truth, which gave the BNP a platform for this story. We conclude 
that the failure of local and national agencies to fulfil their 
responsibilities meant they were aiding the BNP, providing the 
party with a campaign that could not fail to gain them support. 
Whilst every other organisation refused to tackle this crime because of 
the fear of being labelled ÒracistÓ, they gifted the scandal of the 
Muslim grooming gangs to the BNP. And if society continues to 
marginalise this problem, then there is always the possibility that the 
grooming gang phenomenon will provide future support to an 

laims-dismissed-inappropriate:html. 
4Anna Hall ÒHunt For BritainÕs Sex Gangs, C4Ó Broadcast, 2 May 2013, http://ww 
w:broadcastnow:co:uk/in-depth/hunt-for-britains-sex-gangs-c4/5054504:article. 


202 



6. 
ABUSE 
OF 
THE 
NARRATIVE 
OF 
RACISM 
organisation like the BNP. Whilst the scandal of the grooming gangs 
might well have brought supporters to the BNP, it seems clear that the 
BNP taking up this issue did not lead to increased prosecutions. From 
2004 until 2009, organisations like the Muslim Council of Britain 
were able to insist that the idea of gangs grooming white girls was a 
Òracist mythÓ5, a position supported by the near total lack of news 
stories about the grooming gangs in those 5 years. But by 2013, the 
Muslim Council of Britain was behind the effort to get all the 
mosques in Britain to deliver a sermon denouncing grooming gangs.6 
The BNPÕs adoption of the issue of the grooming gangs in 2004 didnÕt 
bring about this change. Something happened between 2009 and 
2013. 

If the media and the authorities had paid attention to the 
grooming of Sikh schoolgirls in the 1980s, 1990s and beyond, then 
the issue of Muslim grooming gangs could have been tackled 
without the issue of ÒraceÓ ever being raised. Instead, the 
authorities shirked their responsibilities to protect the Sikh 
schoolgirls, leaving Sikh men (Shere Punjab, and latterly, the Sikh 
Awareness Society) to deal with the problem as best they could, given 
the lack of action and the denials by police and child-care 
professionals, and the silence of the media. To the extent that the BNP 
could exploit these Muslim grooming gangs, it was because of 15 
years of systemic failures by the authorities and the media. As the 
Sikh Media Monitoring group said, efforts to tackle the problem 
needed to focus on the Muslim community: ÒitÕs a small element who 
treat white and Sikh girls as sexual playthings, and we arenÕt going to 
tackle it successfully unless the politically correct lobby stop putting 
up a smokescreen to hide the fact that this issue is about the Muslim 
community.Ó7 If the child-care professionals, the police and the media 

5http://www:mcb:org:uk/vote2009/stopfarright:html. 
6Vikram Dodd, ÒImams in 500 mosques to denounce grooming and abuse of childrenÓ,
 The Guardian, 28 Jun 2013, http://www:theguardian:com/world/2013/jun/28/ 
imamas-500-mosques-denounce-grooming. 
7Rebecca Camber & James Tozer, ÒTeenager who Lured Girls into House to 


203 



6. 
ABUSE 
OF 
THE 
NARRATIVE 
OF 
RACISM 
had been acting on the evidence (from 1988, 1989, 1996, 1998, 2001) 
that Sikh girls were being groomed, then the BNP could not have 
made this a case about ÒAsian gangsÓ preying on white children. But 
because of the indifference of the metropolitan elite to the cultural 
conflict between Muslims and Sikhs, the criminal behaviour of 
Muslim men preying on Sikh girls (and white girls) was ignored. 
Whilst propounding multiculturalism, the metropolitan elite refuse to 
learn anything about Islam; the elite give lip-service to ÒdiversityÓ but 
refuse to countenance the idea that other cultures might have radically 
different values. 

6.2 Muslims, not ÒAsiansÓ 
Sikh Media Monitoring are not the only group to have criticised the 
media and the authorities for misdirecting attention, and pretending 
these gangs were ÒAsianÓ rather than ÒMuslim.Ó In May 2012, a joint 
statement was released by the Network of Sikh Organisations UK, 
The Hindu Forum of Britain, and The Sikh Media Monitoring 
Group UK denouncing the use of the word ÒAsianÓ to describe 
these grooming gangs.8 They said the word ÒAsianÓ was used in 
order to stop people from realising that the vast majority of the 
criminals were Muslims, and that the vast majority of the victims 
were non-Muslim girls. And as was the case with most of the white 
victims, the cases where the victims were Hindu or Sikh, the cases 
never reach the courts. 

Even in 2013, when for a decade the evidence has been mounting 
that these groups are overwhelmingly Muslim in both Britain and the 
Netherlands, the parliamentary inquiry seems to be deliberately 

be Raped by Asian Gang is Jailed for Seven YearsÓ, The Daily Mail, 3 Sep 
2011, http://www:dailymail:co:uk/news/article-2033022/Teenager-lured-girls-house 
-gang-raped-Asian-gang-jailed-seven-years:html. 
8ÒComplaints over use of ÔAsianÕ Label in Grooming CasesÓ, BBC News website, 
16 May 2012, http://www:bbc:co:uk/news/uk-18092605. 


204 



6. 
ABUSE 
OF 
THE 
NARRATIVE 
OF 
RACISM 
ignorant or profoundly racist: 

...many of those involved in investigating the issue of 
localised grooming have warned against citing race as a 
key factor in these cases, it is not difficult to see why the 
British Pakistani community might feel that the 
suggestion that this is an ÒAsian problemÓ is inaccurate 
and unfair. There is certainly evidence of localised 
grooming being carried out by offenders from other 
ethnic groups. Tim Loughton cited cases involving 
offenders from central Africa.9 

It is as if the politicians think that only Asians can be Muslim, even 
when the media are talking up Mo Farah (a Muslim from East Africa) 
at every opportunity. There are black and Asian Muslims who are 
outstanding sportsmen. There are white and black and Asian Muslims 
who are terrorists. Are our elected politicians so stupid and so racist 
that they cannot see that Cat Stevens, Mohammed Ali, Malcolm X, 
were all Muslims who were not Asian? Moreover, not all Asians are 
Muslims. Or are the elite just playing word-games, thinking the 
public are so stupid they can be easily misled?10 ÒMuslimÓ is not a 

9Home Affairs Select Committee report ÒChild Sexual Exploitation and the Response
 to Localised GroomingÓ, 10 Jun 2013, http://www:publications:parliament:u 
k/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmhaff/68/68i:pdf p.55. Notice how there is no concern for 
Sikhs, Hindus, etc. who have been tarred for at least a decade with the association that 
the grooming gangs are ÒAsian.Ó There only seems to be concern for Muslims. 
10Strangely, even a Left-wing, Asian commentator like Sunny Hundal, whose parents 
are Sikhs, conflates ideology (religion) with biology (race). In claiming that there was 
no relevance to the huge over-representation of ÒAsianÓ men among the grooming 
gangs, Hundal states: 

During the Rochdale case the Judge said: ÒYou preyed on girls because
 they were not part of your community or religionÓ Ñ this 
is repeatedly cited by some people. But itÕs also untrue. As was 
revealed after the ring-leader in the Rochdale case also Òrepeatedly 
raped an Asian girl over many years.Ó Sunny Hundal, ÒOxford gang-
rape case: were the girls exploited because they were white?Ó, May 
14 2013, http://liberalconspiracy:org/2013/05/14/oxford-gang-rape-c 

205 



6. 
ABUSE 
OF 
THE 
NARRATIVE 
OF 
RACISM 
racial category, but the esteemed Parliamentarians seem to find this 
concept exceedingly difficult to grasp. Showing that there are black 
members of grooming gangs tells us nothing about the religion of 
those black people. 

This generic use of the word ÒAsianÓ not only enabled Muslim 
criminal behaviour to be concealed amongst the law-abiding 
behaviour of Sikhs, Hindus and Buddhists, but meant that Sikh 
and Hindu men would end up being associated with the criminal 
behaviour of Muslim men, even when their own sisters and 
daughters were among the victims targeted by these Muslim 
gangs. Moreover, by commentators and pressure groups insisting that 
the issue involved ÒAsianÓ rather than ÒMuslimÓ gangs, it concealed 
what could turn out to be the specific motivation for this crime: 
Muslim culture and Islamic doctrine. And this is why Andrew 
NorfolkÕs work was so pivotal: by analysing the (mostly Islamic) 
names of those convicted, he was able to demonstrate the association 
between being convicted of a grooming offence and being a Muslim 
man. 

6.3 ÒRacismÓ Protected the Rapists 
When politicians finally came to discuss the issue of grooming gangs, 
almost a decade after they first came to the attention of Channel 4, 

ase-were-the-girls-exploited-because-they-were-white/ (our emphasis)
 

The judge pointed out that the (all Muslim) grooming gang on trial targeted people 
outside their religion, and Hundal then conflates religion with race. Hundal provides 
no evidence that the Asian girl who was raped by this Asian Muslim was also Òpart of 
his religionÓ. Perhaps Hundal thinks that all Asians in Britain form one community? 
He seems unaware of the long history of Sikhs resisting the Muslim gangs grooming 
Sikh girls. See section 3. Sikh Victims of Grooming Gangs, section 4.1 1988 
Sikh/Muslim violence, section 4.6 1998 Sikh Awareness Society starts, section 

4.7 2001 Derby and ÒReal CaliphateÓ, and section 4.11 2005 Luton and ÒReal 
CaliphateÓ. 
206 



6. 
ABUSE 
OF 
THE 
NARRATIVE 
OF 
RACISM 
Parliament attributed the objective nature of NorfolkÕs 2011 analysis 
with having finally made people realise that there was undeniable 
proof that the public were not wrong to associate ÒAsianÓ men with 
these gangs.11 However, Norfolk attributed the BNP championing the 
cause of the vulnerable schoolgirls as the reason why people ignored 
the problem for another decade: 

The far right leapt on the story... I think that it almost 
acted as a brake for several years on anybody seriously 
looking at whether there was any truth in what she was 
saying but, as the years passed, I noticed cases cropping 
up from time to time across Yorkshire and Lancashire 
with a very similar pattern.12 

Norfolk, the journalist who got investigative awards for his reporting 
on the grooming gangs, appears here to voluntarily admit that he 
noticed cases cropping up but did not write about them.13 We have 
shown how there were numerous occasions in the twelve years 
preceding Edge of the City, when Sikhs were warning about Muslim 
grooming gangs preying on Sikh schoolgirls.14 Perhaps not 
surprisingly, the BNP showed no interest in those Sikh victims, but 
the media, sociologists and the advocates of multiculturalism had also 
ignored these stories. The extent to which the BNP could claim the 

11Section 1.1 of the Home Affairs Select CommitteeÕs report discusses NorfolkÕs 
analysis from January 2011. Home Affairs Select Committee report ÒChild Sexual
 Exploitation and the Response to Localised GroomingÓ, 10 Jun 2013, http: 
//www:publications:parliament:uk/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmhaff/68/68i:pdf. In this 
way they indicate that his report was fundamental to their investigation. 
12Home Affairs Select Committee report ÒChild Sexual Exploitation and the Response
 to Localised GroomingÓ, 10 Jun 2013, http://www:publications:parliament:u 
k/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmhaff/68/68i:pdf p.52. 
13See also 4.16 2011 Andrew NorfolkÕs pivotal article. See also NorfolkÕs interview 
with the Sikh Awareness Society http://www:youtube:com/watch?v=WbUIfvYbjRc&f 
eature=player_detailpage&t=301. 
14See the following sections, covering events from 1988 to 2001: 4.1 1988 
Sikh/Muslim violence, 4.2 1989 Sikhs convicted, 4.6 1998 Sikh Awareness Society 
starts, 4.7 2001 Derby and ÒReal CaliphateÓ. 

207 



6. 
ABUSE 
OF 
THE 
NARRATIVE 
OF 
RACISM 
long-standing problem of Muslim grooming gangs as positive 
publicity for their agenda was directly related to the preceding 10 to 
20 years in which politicians, police, social services and the Muslim 
community refused to do anything about the grooming gangs. 

The decisive period when the narrative of racism was used to shut 
down discussion and investigation into the Muslim grooming gangs 
was around the Channel 4 documentary in 2004. It was widely 
reported that a variety of pressure groups, along with West Yorkshire 
Police, attempted to block the broadcast of Edge of the City. 15 As The 
Guardian reported at the time: 

Groups such as Unite Against Fascism, the 1990 Trust, 

and the National Assembly Against Racism began to 

flood Channel 4 with requests to delay transmission. The 

Chief Constable of West Yorkshire, Colin Cramphorn, 

joined the call, and Channel 4 complied.16 

However, in 2004 Channel 4 said that their decision to withdraw the 
documentary was unrelated to any attempt by the BNP to make 
political capital from it.17 Thus, we can accept the judgement from 
The Guardian, that the TV company paid more attention to the 
combined efforts of these pressure groups and the Chief Constable of 
West Yorkshire, than to any advantage the BNP might have gained 
from addressing the documentary. 

15ÒCampaign to Stop Race DocumentaryÓ, BBC News website, 17 Aug 2004, 
http://news:bbc:co:uk/1/hi/entertainment/3572776:stm; Julie Bindel, ÒGirls, Gangs 
and Grooming: The TruthÓ, Standpoint Magazine, Dec 2010, http://www:stand 
pointmag:co:uk/node/3576/full; Matt Born, ÒRace fears halt film on Asian sex 
ÔgroomingÕÓ, The Telegraph, 21 May 2004, http://www:telegraph:co:uk/news/uknew 
s/1462413/Race-fears-halt-film-on-Asian-sex-grooming:html. 
16Anthea Milnes, ÒÔÕThe BNP hijacked my filmÓÓ, 9 Aug 2004, The Guardian, http: 
//www:theguardian:com/media/2004/aug/09/channel4:otherparties. 
17Channel 4 said Òthe partyÕs attempt to capitalise on the documentary had not influenced
 its decision.Ó Matt Born, ÒRace fears halt film on Asian sex ÔgroomingÕÓ, 
The Telegraph, 21 May 2004, http://www:telegraph:co:uk/news/uknews/1462413/Ra 
ce-fears-halt-film-on-Asian-sex-grooming:html. 


208 



6. 
ABUSE 
OF 
THE 
NARRATIVE 
OF 
RACISM 
The BNP only championed Edge of the City, when the police 
wanted to suppress it on the basis that it might cause Muslims to riot, 
and that the riots and/or the grooming scandal might influence how 
people voted in the up-coming elections. Yet that is what it means to 
live in a liberal democracy. Issues are discussed, facts are debated; 
issues should not be suppressed because of the threat of mob violence. 
In a civilised society democracy is used to bring about change 
peacefully and gradually. Instead, the threat of mob violence, a form 
of cultural terrorism, triumphed over democracy: ÒChannel 4 has 
pulled a documentary about social workers in Bradford from its 
schedule after police warned it could increase racial tension.Ó18 The 
Police were able to use the threat that Muslims might riot as an excuse 
to put pressure on Channel 4 not to show its documentary. Even 
though Channel 4 stated that the BNPÕs interest in the issue did not 
affect their decisions, for many years afterwards, most journalists 
refused to pay any attention to the problems faced by thousands of 
schoolgirls across the country. It would seem that journalists claim 
they avoided reporting on the grooming gangs because it had been 
turned into an issue about race, and the journalists did not want to do 
anything to assist then BNP. However, even if the BNP wanted the 
scandal to be about race, there was nothing stopping journalists from 
learning about the Sikh victims, and thus concluding that race was not 
the issue. No organisation seemed to spend any effort finding a way to 
deal with the grooming gang phenomenon, whilst not helping the 
BNP. So they left the gangs to prey on schoolgirls, and (with a couple 
of notable exceptions) they left the BNP alone to raise the subject of 
the grooming gangs. 

When the Channel 4 documentary was withdrawn from the 
schedule in 2004, it was to be screened some months after the 
election. But after the election, pressure groups began another 
campaign to stop it from ever being shown. 

18"Documentary pulled over race fear", BBC News, 20 May 2004, http://news:bbc :co:uk/1/hi/entertainment/tv_and_radio/3733215:stm. 

209 



6. 
ABUSE 
OF 
THE 
NARRATIVE 
OF 
RACISM 
An online campaign has been launched to try and stop 
Channel 4 from airing a documentary that features claims 
Asian men are grooming white girls for sex. Edge of the 
City, set in Bradford, had been shelved in May after 
police warned it could incite racial violence ahead of 
local and European elections. The Black Information 
Link website asks readers to lobby Channel 4, police and 
the Culture Secretary to stop the film.19 

The documentary was eventually shown, very late at night. Following 
this low-key broadcast, West Yorkshire Police and Bradford Council 
were able to further diminish claims made in the documentary, 
implying that the claims within it were groundless: Òthey had spent 
the past two years investigating the allegations, but had found Ôno 
evidence of systematic exploitation.ÕÓ20 Moreover, one year after 
these pressure groups helped to stop the documentary being shown, 
West Yorkshire Police quietly closed the investigative unit at the heart 
of this documentary.21 The police, the council and local MPs were 
saved the embarrassment of having to face elected representatives 
who could have held the police and social workers to account for their 
failures and inactivity. After 2005, the grooming gangs in Bradford 
were brushed under the carpet, even though their activities in that city 
had been officially known about for a decade.22 There wasnÕt to be 
another prosecution there until 2012.23 

19ÒCampaign to Stop Race DocumentaryÓ, BBC News website, 17 Aug 2004, http: 
//news:bbc:co:uk/1/hi/entertainment/3572776:stm. 
20"Race documentary broadcast on C4", BBC News website, 27 Aug 2004, http: 
//news:bbc:co:uk/1/hi/entertainment/3600730:stm. 
21See section 4.10 2005 Radio 5 programme. 
22See section 4.4 1995 Bradford: Streets and Lanes. 
23In August 2013, almost a decade after claiming there was Òno evidenceÓ for the 
existence of these gangs in West Yorkshire, 45 men in that area, aged between 20 
and 60, were arrested in an operation apparently against one gang. Ò45 arrested 
in police probe into Ôbiggest ever child sex abuse gangÕÓ, Halifax Courier, 20 
Aug 2013, http://www:halifaxcourier:co:uk/news/crime/45-arrested-in-police-probe 
-into-biggest-ever-child-sex-abuse-gang-1-5967618. The men arrested were from 


210 



6. 
ABUSE 
OF 
THE 
NARRATIVE 
OF 
RACISM 
Even in reporting on this controversy in 2004, the BBC 
unproblematically designated the documentary as a Òrace 
documentaryÓ, and in the article in The 
Telegraph 
by Matt Born 
in 2004, he puts quotation marks around ÒgroomingÓ but not 
around Òrace.Ó The media too were incapable of separating out 
being Muslim (a religious belief, open to white, Asian and black 
people) from the colour of the skin of most of the Muslims in Britain. 
If the separation of religious belief from nationality and skin colour 
had been articulated, and the Asian Sikh girls being groomed by 
Asian Muslim men had not been ignored, there would be no difficulty 
in understanding that the core issue here is religious belief and 
culture, not racial or national origin. Since the National Union of 
Journalists is a major sponsor of Unite Against Fascism, we cannot 
say if the apparent inability of journalists to distinguish between 
biology (ÒraceÓ) and ideology (ÒIslamÓ) comes down to stupidity or 
the political allegiance of journalists. The journalists who showed 
courage and professionalism are few. 

Before the end of 2010, Julie Bindel was the only journalist we 
can find who repeatedly investigated the grooming gangs, despite 
being castigated as an anti-Muslim bigot by Left-wing websites 
dedicated to opposing criticism of Islam: 

When I first wrote about the issue of Asian grooming 

gangs in 2007, my name was included on the website 

Islamophobia Watch: Documenting anti-Muslim Bigotry. 

So was that of Ann Cryer, the former Labour MP for 

Keighley in Yorkshire, who had been at the forefront of 

attempting to tackle the problem, after receiving requests 

for help from some of the parents of children caught up 

the three towns in the area, and are reportedly all connected to the rape and sexual 
assault of under-age girls: ÒAll the allegations are said to be ÔhistoricÕ, having taken 
place at least two years ago.Ó ÒBritainÕs biggest child sex grooming gang thought 
to have been busted after cops arrest 45 menÓ, The Mirror, 18 Aug 2013, http: 
//www:mirror:co:uk/news/uk-news/britains-biggest-child-sex-grooming-2181438. 

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with the gangs in her constituency.24 

Bindel was not alone in being castigated by Left-wing supporters of 
Muslims. Ann Cryer had also been criticised before by prominent 
Muslims within the Labour Party. In July 2002 Shahid Malik, a 
Muslim member of LabourÕs National Executive Committee (and 
later Home Office Minister under a Labour Government), criticised 
Cryer after she spoke out about the criminal behaviour of ÒAsianÓ 
gangs in her constituency whose criminality and violence was Òout of 
control.Ó In relation to that incident, Shahid Malik was quoted 

calling on Ms CryerÕs constituents to Òstand up againstÓ 
her. ÒShe has failed the ethnic minority community in 
Keighley,Ó he said. ÒHer comments are offensive and I do 
not think she should be the MP in Keighley under the 
Labour Party.Ó25 

These ÒAsianÓ gangs in the constituency she represented were getting 
away with criminal behaviour because of the fear generated by 
political correctness.26 When one considers that in her remarks, Ms. 
Cryer had gone to the trouble of exonerating most ÒAsianÓ, it is 
surprising to see her come in for such criticism. In the light of these 
previous attacks on her in 2002, it was brave of Ms. Cryer to speak 
out again in 2003 and 2004. 27 Some Muslims did offer Ann Cryer 

24Julie Bindel, ÒGirls, Gangs and Grooming: The TruthÓ, Standpoint Magazine, 
Dec 2010 http://www:standpointmag:co:uk/node/3576/full 
25ÒAsian Gangs ÔOut of ControlÕÓ, BBC News, 6 Jul 2002, http://news:bbc:co:uk/1/ 
hi/uk_politics/2102470:stm. 
26ÒAsian Gangs ÔOut of ControlÕÓ, BBC News, 6 Jul 2002, http://news:bbc:co:uk/1/ 
hi/uk_politics/2102470:stm. 
27It seems very likely that there is more to this story than the public were told at the 
time. That Shahid Malik should have criticised her, suggests the gangs were probably 
Muslim (and another Muslim is quoted in CryerÕs defence). The story reported that 
the gangs 


are resorting to turf wars and totally disregarding the law.... she has 
criticised leading representatives of the Asian communities... burying 
their heads in the sand and not acknowledging there is a problem... 

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their support on the issue of lawless gangs in her constituency. Dr 
Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, of the Muslim Parliament, was one of the 
Muslims who supported her: ÒAnn Cryer is the local MP and she 
knows her own community.Ó28 In 2010, Julie Bindel was noting that 
there were Muslims who were prepared to speak out about the 
grooming gangs. Mohammed Shafiq, of the Ramadhan 
Foundation was advocating that imams and community leaders 
speak out about sexual exploitation, and for doing this Òblack and 
Asian peopleÓ threatened to kill him.29 Shafiq had the foresight to 
see that without intervention, the grooming gangs would expand 
and more schoolgirls would be victims: ÒBut what I said has been 
proved right Ñ that if we didnÕt tackle it there would be more of these 
abusers and more girls getting harmed.Ó Julie Bindel pointed out that 
Zlakha Ahmed from Rotherham also spoke out in 2010, saying: 

this abuse is appalling and needs to be raised within the 
community. There are still people denying that it happens 
so the more of us who speak out about it the better.30 

Unfortunately, it seems for every Muslim who supported those who 
spoke out about the Muslim grooming gangs, there were Muslims and 

ÒThese young men and their appalling behaviour are becoming role 
models...They are the ones with the fast cars and smart suits.If we do 
not defeat them their children will become part of the problem.Ó 

It seems very likely that these gangs were involved in the network of criminal activities 
around drug-dealing and grooming. Clearly these gangs are involved in something 
lucrative, hence the turf wars. As with reports about the grooming activities, thereÕs 
no indication that the Muslim leaders were going to show any leadership. ItÕs even 
possible that there was gang violence with Sikhs or Hindus, attempting to stop their 
female relatives from being groomed. ÒAsian Gangs ÔOut of ControlÕÓ, BBC News, 
6 Jul 2002, http://news:bbc:co:uk/1/hi/uk_politics/2102470:stm. 
28ÒAsian Gangs ÔOut of ControlÕÓ, BBC News, 6 Jul 2002, http://news:bbc:co:uk/1/ 
hi/uk_politics/2102470:stm. 
29Julie Bindel, ÒGirls, Gangs and Grooming: The TruthÓ, Standpoint Magazine, 
Dec 2010 http://www:standpointmag:co:uk/node/3576/full. 
30Julie Bindel, ÒGirls, Gangs and Grooming: The TruthÓ, Standpoint Magazine, 
Dec 2010 http://www:standpointmag:co:uk/node/3576/full. 


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proponents of multiculturalism who criticised them or threatened 
them. 

6.4 Racist Aspects of Grooming 
There is an aspect of racism involved in these grooming gangs, but 
it is reverse of what the racism groups would have us believe: that 
is, the gangs can have racist motivations. In 2011, it was again, 
Mohammed Shafiq who was prepared to point out that it is the 
Muslim grooming gangs who exhibit anti-white racism: 

There is a perception that some of these young men do 
not see white girls as equal, as valuable, of high moral 
standing as they see their own daughters, and their own 
sisters, and I think thatÕs wrong...ItÕs a form of racism 
thatÕs abhorrent in a civilised society.31 

It is no surprise that Mohammed Shafiq was getting death threats 
from black people and Asians alike, when he stated: 

it is clear that they [the grooming gangs] do not value 
white teenagers because they think they are less valuable 
or honourable than their own daughters or sisters and by 
targeting white girls there would be no fall back in the 
community.32 

Julie Bindel took this point further, and argued that what the gangs 
were doing was more than Òsimple opportunismÓ, and that there was a 
racist motivation driving some of the gangs: Òpimping of white 
females by black and ethnic-minority men can be a type of revenge 

31ÒJack Straw: Some White Girls are ÔEasy MeatÕÓ, BBC News, 8 Jan 2011, http: 
//www:bbc:co:uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-12141603. 
32Mohammed Shafiq, ÒUntitled Article on Rochdale Trial for MENÓ http://www:m 
ohammedshafiq:net/grooming---the-men:php. 


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against whites.Ó33 In one of the prosecutions, the judge even brought 
this up in the trial, saying that the gang 

those girls were raped, callously, viciously and violently. 
Some of you acted as you did to satiate your lust, some of 
you to make money, all of you treated them as though 
they were worthless and beyond respect... I believe that 
one of the factors that led to that was that they were not 
of your community or religion.34 

Even at the end of 2013, the MP for Rochdale (the town with the 
greatest number of convictions at that point in time) that these gangs 
are racist, and that the Muslim community refuses to recognise what it 
has produced.35 

Another aspect of racism which has been ignored, is the way 
in which the grooming gangs used the narrative of racism to 
disrupt families and stop them from protecting their own 
children. The group who have articulated the clearest understanding 
of the Muslim grooming gang phenomenon points out: 

What is missing here is an understanding of the 
emotional dynamics of grooming. For grooming to work, 
the child needs to be trapped into a coercive relationship 
with their abuser, and then forced to perform sex with 
growing numbers of older men. But why donÕt the 
schoolgirls just run away from this abusive and 
exploitative situation? Why do they keep going back for 

33Julie Bindel, "Mothers of Prevention", The Sunday Times, 30 Sep 2007, http: 
//www:thesundaytimes:co:uk/sto/news/uk_news/article72310:ece. 
34ÒÔYou preyed on girls because they were not part of your community or religionÕ,
 says judge as he jails Rochdale sex gang for 77 yearsÓ, 15 May 2012, 
Manchester Evening News, http://www:manchestereveningnews:co:uk/news/local-n 
ews/you-preyed-on-girls-because-they-were-687987. 
35Rosa Silverman, ÒAsian communities Ôin denialÕ about grooming, says Rochdale 
MPÓ, The Telegraph, 9 Dec 2013, http://www:telegraph:co:uk/news/uknews/crime/ 
10507023/Asian-communities-in-denial-about-grooming-says-Rochdale-MP:html. 


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OF 
RACISM 
more abuse? Because the grooming has driven a massive 
wedge between child and parent.36 

It might be easy to understand how the groomers could insert 
themselves into the affection of schoolgirls who were in the care of 
social services (by gang members offering the girls gifts, attention, 
ÒloveÓ, an entry into the world of adulthood, etc.). But it is more 
difficult to understand how the groomers manage to insert themselves 
between schoolgirls and loving parents. One of the ways in which 
they did this was to exploit the narrative of racism, and accuse the 
parents who tried to intervene of being Òracists.Ó 

The pimps are adept at trading on teenage rebellion 
and use similar methods...of convincing the girls all 
white people are racist. This is part of the controlling 
process, to instil guilt in the girls. ÒLike most teenagers, 
I was going through a phase of arguing with my mum,Ó 
says Gemma. ÒAmir told me they didnÕt understand me 
and were racist and ignorant. I believed him.Ó Gemma 
was given an Asian name by Amir, and told she had to 
read the Koran, a story support workers tell me is not 
uncommon. ÒThey erode the girlsÕ identities,Ó says 
Kosaraju, Òto make them more compliant and needy.Ó37 

Thus, the narrative of racism was misused by the gangs to prevent the 
schoolgirls from believing their parents: the gangs could use it as a 
tool to make the girls estranged from their carers, and thus make the 
schoolgirls even more vulnerable. The narrative of racism was also 
misused by Left-wing organisations and the media, to assert that the 
2004 documentary was simply a ÒracistÓ documentary and its contents 
could therefore be dismissed by Òright-thinkingÓ people: framing the 

36PACE, ÒThe grooming of children for sexual exploitation is largely misunderstoodÓ,
 21 Jan 2013, http://www:paceuk:info/the-grooming-of-children-for-sexual-e 
xploitation-is-largely-misunderstood/. 
37Julie Bindel, ÒMothers of PreventionÓ, The Sunday Times, 30 Sep 2007, http://ww 
w:thesundaytimes:co:uk/sto/news/uk_news/article72310:ece. 

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OF 
RACISM 
issue in this way meant that many people did not bother to research 
more deeply into the conflation between religion and race, nor into the 
relative proportions of Asian men (really, Muslims) who were to be 
found among the gang members and their customers. And the 
narrative of racism could be used as a self-justification by the police to 
excuse why they were not pursuing these gangs. Oft-used narratives 
can becomes so familiar that we no longer question their applicability 
to individual cases, and just let them lead us along a well-trodden 
mental paths, where we supply missing information using familiar 
assumptions. Throughout the existence of the Muslim grooming 
gangs, this narrative has done immense harm to the schoolgirls (but its 
use also stopped the Asian victims from getting the help they needed). 

Despite receiving an honourable mention for admitting that the 
Muslim grooming gangs exist, Mohammed ShafiqÕs solutions are 
unworkable, and have been tried before. 

There needs to be more honest and open dialogue with 

the Police and authorities where these issues are 

addressed, a local marketing campaign with 

advertisements and leaflets talking [sic] detailing the 

crimes and what happens if you are involved in this 

evil.38 

This kind of thing was done years earlier in similar situations, and it 
appeared to change nothing.39 Mohammed Shafiq has advocated 
sharia law, and it is possible that he thinks sharia law would be the 

38Mohammed Shafiq,ÒUntitled Article on Rochdale Trial for MENÓ, http://www:m 
ohammedshafiq:net/grooming---the-men:php. 
39In 2007 Julie Bindel pointed out that police in Lancashire and Yorkshire had sent 
letters to Muslims suspected of grooming, warning them they were with under-age 
girls, and getting them to sign the letters to show they knew the girls were under the 
age of consent. This achieved nothing. Julie Bindel, ÒMothers of PreventionÓ, The 
Sunday Times, 30 Sep 2007, http://www:thesundaytimes:co:uk/sto/news/uk_news/arti 
cle72310:ece. 

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OF 
THE 
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RACISM 
solution to these crimes.40 Shafiq insists that these kinds of crimes are 
un-Islamic, even going so far as to describe them as Òa crime against 
humanity.Ó41 It is heartening to see a Muslim speak out about these 
crimes with some vigour, despite the threats to his own life. He 
shames many of the journalists, child-care professionals and 
politicians. However, he offers no new or substantial solutions. Later 
we will examine if these crimes have any relationship to Islamic 
values. 

Mohammed ShafiqÕs warning, that left unchallenged the grooming 
gangs would extend their operations, shows he had more insight on 
this subject than any of the journalists or academic experts. However, 
we donÕt think he foresaw that permitting these grooming gangs to get 
away with this for so long would start to fuel racist views in the 
parents of the victims and in the wider public. 

One of the many tragedies resulting from this 
phenomenon is how it is fuelling racism and mistrust of 
whites towards Pakistanis where little existed previously. 
Although racism can be rife in towns such as Blackburn, 
Jean claims that before her daughterÕs life was ruined she 
bore no animosity towards the Asian community. Things 
have changed. When ordering a taxi, Jean spends several 
minutes looking through the telephone directory, 
explaining she is looking for a Òwhite-run firm.Ó42 

In 2008, it was reported the BBC sacked a presenter who repeatedly 
asked a taxi company not to provide Asian drivers.43 It would be 

40Mohammed Shafiq, ÒSky News discussion on sharia lawÓ, http://www:youtube:c 
om/watch?v=6AZd7LK_cPI. 
41Mohammed Shafiq,"Untitled Article on Rochdale Trial for MEN", http://ww 
w:mohammedshafiq:net/grooming---the-men:php. 
42Julie Bindel, ÒMothers of PreventionÓ, The Sunday Times,30 Sep 2007, http://ww 
w:thesundaytimes:co:uk/sto/news/uk_news/article72310:ece. 
43ÒBBC Radio host sacked after call to taxi firm requesting Ônon-AsianÕ driverÓ, 
Daily Mail, 12 Nov 2008, http://www:dailymail:co:uk/news/article-1084702/BBC-R 
adio-host-sacked-taxi-firm-requesting-non-Asian-driver:html. 


218 



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THE 
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OF 
RACISM 
interesting to know what BBC staff say to each other off-air, when 
discussing these Muslim grooming gangs, and what they say about 
the relationship of grooming gangs to taxi firms and takeaway food 
businesses. 

The following year the EDL was formed. This organisation was 
not formed in response to the grooming gangs, but in response to 
Muslim fundamentalists in Luton attacking British troops. If EDL 
were just violent thugs as claimed by the media, then we might expect 
to have seen EDL leading violent attacks against Muslim grooming 
gangs (as Sikhs did in 1989, 2001, and 2013). Instead, the English 
have been surprisingly quiescent concerning the activities of the 
grooming gangs, and the failure of the institutions to deal with them 
for so many years. We can find no instances of the indigenous 
population using communal violence to deal with grooming gangs, 
the way that Sikhs have on a number of occasions. However, through 
their 50 or so demonstrations and their internet presence, the EDL did 
much to educate people about the grooming gangs, and were probably 
pivotal in forcing the authorities to finally start a concerted effort to 
bring the grooming gangs to court. Considering the anger felt by most 
people in Britain about the evidence emerging about this grooming 
phenomenon, it is good fortune that the EDL are not a racist or fascist 
organisation.44 Within the first six months of its existence, a group 

44The EDLÕs policies are clearly not racist, as their ÒMission StatementÓ makes 
clear: http://www:englishdefenceleague:org/mission-statement/. With Sikh, LGBT 
and Jewish ÒDivisionsÓ, it seems clear they welcome diversity within their organisation,
 and within the concept of ÒEnglishnessÓ with which they operate. The media 
have consistently ignored photographs and video of non-white people on EDL demonstrations.
 In fact, when the media have reported on EDL inviting Jews, Sikhs, Gays 
to EDL protests, the media spun it in such a way that they presented EDL as a white 
supremacist organisation: Robert Verkaik, ÒJewish? Gay? Join us, white extremists 
sayÓ, 27 Nov 2010, The Independent, http://www:independent:co:uk/news/uk/politics 
/jewish-gay-join-us-white-extremists-say-2145003:html. In the 4 years of EDLÕs existence,
 there was not one photo or video of an attack on a minority supporter of 
the organisation, nor any evidence of racist or homophobic chanting. However, after 
years of the media misrepresenting EDL as a racist/fascist organisation, the leader of 

219 



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THE 
NARRATIVE 
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RACISM 
of black men and white men from EDL were interviewed on the 
BBCÕs premier news programme, where they burned a swastika 
to demonstrate the opposition of their organisation to Nazism.45 

Much to the chagrin of the far left, a year later the police National 
Domestic Extremism unit spent months studying the EDL and 
concluded that the EDL were not a far-right organisation.46 As a 
society we should be relieved that EDL has not been a racist or Nazi 
organisation, which could have grown powerful from the failure to 
address 25 years of sexual exploitation of schoolgirls by Muslim 
gangs.47 Nevertheless, the possibility that the EDLÕs ranks might 
grow, and that the EDL might resort to the violent tactics used by 
some Sikhs in Britain, must serve to keep the authorities focussed on 

the EDL resigned, saying that he was spending too much time trying to keep racists 
out of the EDL. http://news:sky:com/story/1151663/tommy-robinson-stands-down-f 
rom-the-edl. Should some racists turn up to EDL demonstrations that would hardly 
be surprising, since most of the media and the politicians keep telling racists that the 
EDL is the place for them. It appears that the mediaÕs attempts to ensure that EDL 
was seen as a home for racists had finally worn down the leadership. Whether or not 
EDL survives, and whether or not it manages to keep racists at bay is yet to be seen. 
45Paraic OÕBrien ÒUnder the skin of English Defence LeagueÓ, BBC Newsnight, 
12 Oct 2009, http://news:bbc:co:uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/8303786:stm. In the 
Summer of 2013, the EDL leader once again made clear, in front of thousands of 
supporters and the assembled media, that Nazis were not welcome at EDL demonstrations:
 http://www:youtube:com/watch?v=8I1QpjSIbJ0. Thus, from 2009 to 2013, 
within the forms of communication under their control, they were sending a clear message
 that they were opposed to Nazism and they welcomed non-white supporters. As 
is typical, the media did not report on what strikes us as significant remarks. 
46John Millington ÒÔEDL not far-right,Õ says police extremism chiefÓ, The Morning
 Star, 23 Nov 2010, http://www:morningstaronline:co:uk/index:php/news/content/ 
view/full/98004. Strangely, the The Morning Star article has now disappeared from 
that Communist organisationÕs website. A screenshot of it can be seen in section 

17. Appendix 10: Police Report on EDL. 
47Following the resignation of the high profile leader of EDL at the end of 2013, the 
organisation may yet transform into the racist/fascist organisation which journalists 
and left-wing political activists purported it to be. Considering that all the attempts 
by EDL to be a politically-correct organisation have been misrepresented, it is hard 
to see why those running EDL would continue to bother fighting against racist/fascist 
elements who would want to take it over. 
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showing that steps are being taken against the grooming gangs. It is 
hard to say whether or not it was the formation of the EDL which led 
to the sudden increase in prosecutions against grooming gangs, but we 
cannot find another event in 2009 which could have brought about the 
revolution in our societyÕs response to this problem.48 The sudden 
increase in convictions began in July 2009, some 4 months after EDL 
started demonstrating across England. It seems likely that the 
threatening image of EDL portrayed in the media will be serving to 
keep the attention of the authorities on how easily the grooming 
problem could lead to violence. 

48See 12. Appendix 2: Grooming Gang Chronology. Also see the chronology of 
chapter 4. Chronology: Cover-up to Collapse. 

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7. Islamic Cultural Background 
I will never ever understand what has made them so 

evil and ignorant that still to this day they think 

theyÕve not done anything wrong. 

Ð grooming gang victim, BBC 
News, 2010 
We have shown that it is now widely accepted, even by the 
parliamentary investigation, that for more than a decade, a new 
phenomenon has existed in Britain: gangs made up almost entirely of 
Muslim men were luring schoolgirls into a life of drugs, rape and 
prostitution. Where this much has finally been recognised, it has 
been ÒAsian cultureÓ that is blamed rather than Islamic culture. 
That Islam could be the basis for this criminality is always ruled 
out of the question, with no investigation of Islamic theology, the 
history of Islam, or the rulings of sharia law.1 Yet we cannot afford 

1For example, William Oddie, ÒThe Oxford ÔAsian grooming gangÕ were not 
in fact all Asian. But they were all Muslim: is this a problem we are afraid 
to face?Ó, 15 May 2013, Catholic Herald, http://www:catholicherald:co:uk/comm 
entandblogs/2013/05/15/the-oxford-Asian-grooming-gang-were-not-in-fact-all-A 
sian-but-they-were-all-Muslim-is-this-a-problem-we-are-afraid-to-face/. Oddie 
recognises that Asians are being unfairly blamed for this crime, when Islam is the 
common factor for 90% of the perpetrators, not their country of origin. 

I am not saying that the problem is Islam per se, any more than I am 
saying that itÕs the racial origin of the perpetrators (which in this case 
it canÕt be). But there is one generalisation that can safely be made: it 
is that Muslim men tend to have a low opinion of, how shall I put this, 
the general level of chastity of white women. 

Where do Muslim men (from widely dispersed Muslim countries) get this attitude to 
women, if not from Islam? Furthermore, Oddie is left looking somewhat uninformed 
on this subject, when one considers the long history of claims that Muslim men were 

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CULTURAL 
BACKGROUND 
to dismiss this question out of hand: not only are non-Muslim Asian 
men (e.g. Sikhs) almost entirely absent from these gangs, but 
non-Muslim Asian schoolgirls (Sikhs, Hindus) are targets of the 
gangs.2 The presence of these characteristics in such extreme 
opposition indicates that there is almost certainly not a random 
explanation for these events. When one introduces the similarities 
with Muslim gangs and the organised child-sexual exploitation in the 
Netherlands, then the pattern becomes even clearer. 

We must look at Islamic doctrine and the history of Islam to see if 
there are things which are more deeply-rooted and pervasive than the 
reported activities of these pro-Caliphate groups. 

7.1 ÒAsian gangÓ: racist duplicity 
From the first days when the phenomenon of the Muslim grooming 
gangs made it into the national debate, the phenomenon was 
described (in the media and by experts) as being connected with 
ÒAsiansÓ and ÒracismÓ. The problem was framed incorrectly in racial 
terms: the problem was with Muslim gangs (we assume it is obvious 
by now: not all Muslims are Asians, not all Asians are Muslims). 

When the story of these gangs first burst into the national media in 

grooming Sikh schoolgirls in Britain. When this is taken into account, it is clear that 
the skin colour of the victims is not a general explanation: focusing on the gangsÕ 
attitudes to the ÒchastityÓ (i.e. morality, behaviour, availability) of their Asian and 
Caucasian victims, the fact that the victims are overwhelmingly non-Muslims, leads 
us back to Islam. Oddie might expect Sikh and Hindu men to have the similar attitudes
 to chastity, yet Muslims make up 90% of all those convicted for these type of 
crimes, while non-Muslim Asians are not found among the perpetrators in significant 
proportions. See section 11. Appendix 1: Grooming Gang Convictions. 
2Even when the victims of a grooming gang are Muslim, the perpetrators were still 
Muslim men. ÒAsian/Muslim female victims are most vulnerable to offenders from 
their own communities as the overwhelming majority of the offenders were from the 
same background as the victims.Ó Shaista Gohir MBE, ÒUnheard Voices: The Sexual 
Exploitation of Asian Girls and Young WomenÓ, September 2013, http://www:m 
wnuk:co:uk//go_files/resources/UnheardVoices:pdf p.23. 

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2003, Ann Cryer (Labour MP for Keighley, outside Bradford) said ÒI 
believe there is a very strong cultural reason, itÕs nothing to do with 
the religion lets [sic] make it quite clear, its [sic] to do with the Asian 
culture, which wants these young men to marry these very young girls 
from their village...Ó3 Ten years later, Andrew Norfolk (who had lived 
in that area for those following ten years) is quoted in the 
parliamentary investigation saying: 

If you come from a rural Mirpuri, Kashmiri community, 
where, whatever state law says, village tradition and 
sharia says that puberty is the green light for 
marriageÑas it doesÑand if you recognise that most 
girls in this country are hitting puberty at 11 or 12, 
perhaps one begins to understand why it is not just lone 
offenders. There has to be something, given that so 
often this is a normalised group activityÑnot among a 
major criminal gang, but among friends, work 
colleagues and relativesÑthat does not have the same 
sense of shame attached to it as would be the case for 
your typical White offender, who works alone because 
if he told too many people, somebody would report him.4 
(emphasis added) 

So, in 2003 Ann Cryer was blaming ÒAsian cultureÓ, and ten years 
later Andrew Norfolk is still scratching round, blaming Òvillage 
tradition.Ó In 10 years the national debate has moved on by just one 
small step: instead of blaming the culture of an entire continent, the 
spokesmen given voice by the media are blaming the culture of single 
villages. But what doctrines and history shape this culture cannot be 
mentioned. The phenomenon of Muslim men grooming non-Muslim 

3ÒAsian Rape AllegationsÓ, Channel 4 News, 27 Aug 2003, (from archive.org) 

http://web:archive:org/web/20100620042427/http://www:channel4:com/news/articl 
es/society/law_order/Asian+rape+allegations/256893. 
4Home Affairs Select Committee report ÒChild Sexual Exploitation and the Response
 to Localised GroomingÓ, 10 Jun 2013, http://www:publications:parliament:u 
k/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmhaff/68/68i:pdf, p.54. 

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CULTURAL 
BACKGROUND 
schoolgirls has been widely accepted by the public (if not by 
politicians, those who run the childrenÕs charities, nor academics). 
However, there is still no attempt in the media or among academics to 
explain why this phenomenon of schoolgirls being systematically 
groomed for prostitution should have appeared in Britain and in 
Holland (and probably other European countries) with significant 
Muslim populations. Norfolk gives some indication that he might 
think it is more than just Òvillage traditionÓ, when he mentions the 
concept of ÒshariaÓ in the quotation above.5 

By 2011 Jack Straw MP characterised the problem thus: Òthere is 

5On at least two occasions, Andrew Norfolk has made statements implicating Òvillage 
traditionÓ and sharia law as an explanation for why Muslims find these crimes less 
objectionable. See also https://www:youtube:com/watch?v=RZCQ9ZWfCuQ#t=388. 
Andrew Norfolk seems not to understand, that there is an enormous difference between
 a village tradition (like clog-dancing) and the idea that certain behaviour is 
likely to get a Muslim man into Heaven, because the Muslim man would be following
 the example of Mohammed. And it is not just illiterate peasants who arrived 
in Britain 5 years ago who want sharia law: 40% of Muslim university students in 
Britain want sharia law -see ÒThe latest WikiLeaks revelation: 1 in 3 British Muslim
 students back killing for Islam and 40% want Sharia lawÓ, Daily Mail, 22 
Dec 2010, http://www:dailymail:co:uk/news/article-1340599/WikiLeaks-1-3-British 
-Muslim-students-killing-Islam-40-want-Sharia-law:html. Moreover, there would 
have to be more to this grooming phenomenon than the idea that sharia law says 
that a Muslim can marry a girl who has reached puberty: these gangs were not marrying
 these non-Muslim schoolgirls, but were consciously luring schoolgirls into sex-
slavery, and prostituting the schoolgirls to other men. This was not some kind of misguided,
 inter-generational, cross-cultural Love Story. If it was just a question of the 
implementation of village tradition/sharia, meaning that Muslim men married underage
 girls in Britain, that too happens in Britain and is bad enough -see Pavan Amara, 
ÒIslington Girls Forced into Marriage at the Age of NineÓ, Islington Tribune, 27 
Jan 2012, http://www:islingtontribune:com/news/2012/jan/islington-girls-forced-mar 
riage-age-nine. But we doubt that Norfolk wants to pursue the other aspects of sharia, 
which state that Muslims can enslave non-Muslims, and that Muslims can prostitute 
those slaves. The pro-Caliphate groups, like those which have been associated with 
efforts to seduce/groom non-Muslim girls, are very serious about implementing full 
sharia law. Manuals of sharia law specify the that homosexual people are to be executed
 -see Section o12.2, Reliance 
of 
the 
Traveller: 
a 
Classic 
Manual 
of 
Islamic 
Sacred 
Law, Keller translation, 1991 

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CULTURAL 
BACKGROUND 
a specific problem which involves Pakistani heritage men... who 
target vulnerable young white girls. We need to get the Pakistani 
community to think much more clearly about why this is going on.Ó6 
However, there is no sign that Òthe Pakistani communityÓ are giving 
any thought to why this happens with Pakistani Muslim men in 
Britain, when there is no evidence of Pakistani Christians or 
Pakistani Hindus in Britain who are involved with the gangs: that 
the perpetrators are mostly Pakistani is far less pertinent than that they 
are Muslim. Furthermore, there is no sign at all that Sikh men have 
been involved in this type of criminality. The only incidents with 
Hindu perpetrators occurred in Blackpool, a town where Muslim 
gangs had been grooming girls for years without prosecution,7 or 
when the Hindu men are part of a larger Muslim gang.8 As we have 
seen, various Hindu and Sikh organisations in Britain have objected to 
the racism of the media and the politicians who were describing the 
gangs as ÒAsianÓ: the media and politicians (and presumably the 
BNP) focussed on ÒraceÓ rather than ÒreligionÓ (culture), even when 
in 2003 about half the Asians in Britain were not Muslims.9 It seems 
that many of those journalists and public figures who point out other 

6ÒJack Straw: Some White Girls are ÔEasy MeatÕÓ, BBC News, 8 Jan 2011, http:// 
www:bbc:co:uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-12141603. Emphasis added. We think 
that Òthe Pakistani communityÓ know that Islamic doctrines is the reason the grooming 
gangs exist, but that they do not want non-Muslims to realise this. 
7Two Hindu men were convicted in Blackpool in 2006, but extensive grooming was 
going on there as early as 2003: ÒFollowing CharleneÕs disappearance in 2003, police
 found more than 60 girls were being groomed for sex by non-white men centred
 around 11 Blackpool takeaways.Ó James Tozer, ÒPolice ÔhidÕ abuse of 60 
girls by Asian takeaway workers linked to murder of 14-year-oldÓ, The Daily 
Mail, 7 Apr 2011, http://www:dailymail:co:uk/news/article-1374443/Police-hid-abu 
se-60-girls-Asian-takeaway-workers-linked-Charlene-Downes-murder:html. Moreover,
 it seems likely that these two Hindu men were part of some larger network 
in Blackpool: Ben Rossington, ÒTwo jailed for teenÕs gang rapeÓ, The Gazette, 
11 Apr 2006, http://www:blackpoolgazette:co:uk/news/local/two-jailed-for-teen-s-g 
ang-rape-1-371018. 
8See the case from Leicester, in 2013. 
9ÒCensus 2001Ó, BBC News website, http://news:bbc:co:uk/1/shared/spl/hi/uk/03/ce 
nsus_2001/html/religion:stm. 

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7. 
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CULTURAL 
BACKGROUND 
races and nationalities in the grooming gangs, rely on the public not 
realising that such people from Iraq, Afghanistan, North Africa, 
Central Africa are more than likely going to be Muslims. These 
spokesmen will use these ethnic details as a way of ÒprovingÓ that the 
gangs have many ethnicities, and that it is thus irrelevant that most of 
those convicted are Pakistani Muslims. If this was part of a conscious 
process of concealment, it could hardly have been better executed. 

Despite all the experts knowing that not all the Muslims in Britain 
who do this are Asian, despite knowing that an almost identical 
pattern of criminality has been going on in Holland, and that the 
Muslims in Holland who are doing it are from Turkey and Morocco, 
the experts refuse to look at Islam as a causal factor, even when there 
is no other cause that can be seen. ÒAll except two of the men were of 
Pakistani origin. The Karrar brothers were from north Africa.Ó10 One 
would expect that the fact that one of those north African brothers in 
the Oxford trial in 2012 was called ÒMohammedÓ, and that 
ÒMohammedÓ is the most common name of all the men in 
Andrew NorfolkÕs original overview from 2011, should have 
signalled that the names of these men are more significant than 
the countries from which their parents came.11 Yet even in his 
2012 interview with the Sikh Awareness Society, Norfolk claims what 
is going on is Ònot an Islamic issue.Ó How can he make this emphatic 
claim? Simple: Norfolk says that since not all Muslim men are 
involved, Islam cannot be a factor.12 This argument seems to be that 
Islam cannot command that these men exploit young girls, or else the 

10Arthur Martin, "Faces of True Evil: Judge Jails Depraved Sex Gang for 95 
Years After they Committed Grotesque Abuse on Girls as Young as 11", The 
Daily Mail, 27 Jun 2013, http://www:dailymail:co:uk/news/article-2349784/Sadistic 
-paedophile-sex-gang-brothers-given-lengthy-prison-sentences-exploiting-underag 
e-girls:html. 
11Andrew Norfolk, ÒRevealed: conspiracy of silence on UK sex gangsÓ, The Times, 
5 Jan 2011, http://www:thetimes:co:uk/tto/news/uk/crime/article2863058:ece. 
12Norfolk points out that in Blackburn, a hotspot for these grooming gangs, those 
involved all come from the Kashmiri Muslims not from the Gujarati Muslims. http: 
//www:youtube:com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=WbUIfvYbjRc&t=799. 


227 



7. 
ISLAMIC 
CULTURAL 
BACKGROUND 
exploitation we see from the grooming gangs would be universal 
wherever there were Muslims in Britain. However, this is nonsense: it 
is analogous to arguing that Christianity could not have been a factor 
in the Crusades, since Christianity forbids killing, and not all 
Christians took part in the Crusades. Moreover, Andrew NorfolkÕs 
claim that Muslims from Gujarat have not been involved could quite 
simply be based on a lack of evidence for the involvement of Gujarati 
Muslims (we have been told by both CEOP and The ChildrenÕs 
Commissioner that the evidence about these crimes has not been 
consistently gathered). It seems that the experts will try to split hairs, 
rather than actually look at what aspects of Islamic doctrine could 
lead some Muslims to find this kind of horrendous crime acceptable. 
It would help their case if they could even find some injunctions from 
Islam which would forbid or outlaw these crimes (such evidence is 
never forthcoming). 

There is tacit admission from Parliament that Islam is 
fundamentally connected to this crime. Why did the Home Affairs 
Select Committee have input from a Sheikh, but not from a Bishop? 
Because Pakistani Christians in Britain are not involved in this 
criminality? If there is no connection with Muslims/Islam, why was 
there to be a sermon in mosques in June 2013?13 This tacit admission 
goes all the way back to the first time this crime got national media 
attention, too. In 2003 (or earlier), when Ann CryerÕs constituents 
came to her about their daughters being groomed, she did not go to 
the police; she contacted Òvillage eldersÓ and asked them to tell 
the Muslim men to stop doing it, because Òit is un-IslamicÓ. She 
did not go to the Sikh or Hindu temples, or to the local church, or the 
local working-menÕs club. Perhaps more significantly than most 
people realise, the Muslim leaders refused to tell their fellow 

13Vikram Dodd, ÒImams in 500 Mosques to Denounce Grooming and Abuse of 
Children: Co-ordinated Effort to Deliver Same Sermon Across the Country Follows
 Convictions of Muslim Men for Series of Horrific CasesÓ, The Guardian, 
28 Jun 2013, http://www:theguardian:com/world/2013/jun/28/imamas-500-mosques 
-denounce-grooming. 

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7. 
ISLAMIC 
CULTURAL 
BACKGROUND 
Muslims: this behaviour is un-Islamic.14 

We also the confirmatory behaviour of the British judiciary, who 
give light sentences to devout Muslim men who rape under-age girls, 
excusing the menÕs behaviour if they have had a very Islamic 
upbringing. As late as May 2013, the media were reporting that a 
Muslim man in Nottingham who: 

had ÒrapedÓ an underage girl, was spared a prison term 
after the judge heard that the na•ve 18-year-old attended 
an Islamic faith school where he was taught that women 
are worthless. Rashid told psychologists he had no idea 
that having sex with a willing 13-year-old was against 
the law; besides, his education had taught him to believe 
that Òwomen are no more worthy than a lollipop that has 
been dropped on the ground.Ó15 

So, Islamic religious values are being be used by judges in British 
courts, as extenuating circumstances for child-rape. But Islamic 
religious values are not to be mentioned as an explanatory factor 
with the grooming/pimping gangs, where Muslims who are less 
than 5% of the population yet who make up anywhere from 28% 
to 90% of the perpetrators of a distinct and new kind of crime?16 

14This occurred in 2003 in Keighley, and then occurred again nationally in 2013, when 
the vast majority of mosques did not read the sermon condemning the grooming gangs. 
15Emphasis added. Allison Pearson, ÒOxford grooming gang: We will 
regret ignoring Asian thugs who target white girlsÓ, The Telegraph, 15 
May 2013, http://www:telegraph:co:uk/news/uknews/crime/10060570/Oxford-gro 
oming-gang-We-will-regret-ignoring-Asian-thugs-who-target-white-girls:html. 
16The figure of 28% comes from the CEOP Òrapid assessmentÓ -see section 

5.5 Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre. The figure of 90% comes 
from our analysis of those convicted -see section 11. Appendix 1: Grooming Gang 
Convictions. What we need to bear in mind with regard to the ÒdataÓ from CEOP 
report and from The ChildrenÕs Commissioner report, is that their data is gathered 
from disparate sources, and the quality of much of that data will not stand up in court. 
The principles of the Norfolk analysis mean that the data has gone through weeks of 
rigorous questioning in court, leading to convictions despite this contestation. Thus, 
the Norfolk analysis is based on data which has been subjected to the most rigorous 
229 



7. 
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CULTURAL 
BACKGROUND 
This is double-think. 

Setting themselves up as the arbiters of who is or is not a Muslim, 
some non-Muslim academics claim that the Muslim men convicted 
are Muslims in name-only. But there is a significant amount of 
evidence to show that many of those convicted were devout Muslims. 
In one of the trials, one of the gang members was a mosque 
official. 17 In another trial, the gang were caught after abducting and 
raping girls as part of their Eid celebrations. 18 In a case where six 
men were convicted in Leicester of crimes relating to paying a 16 year 
old Sikh girl for sex and/or prostituting her, the media did not report 
that 5 of the 6 men were Muslim. Almost no report carried an artistÕs 
impression of the accused, one of whom was in the dock in the 
clothing and beard of a devout Muslim.19 When Ashtiaq Asghar 
decided to murder a groomed girl who had got pregnant, he said ÒIÕm 
gonna send that kuffar [non-Muslim] bitch straight to HellÓ, showing 
he was viewing the victim and her ÒpunishmentÓ in Islamic terms.20 
Some of those who have worked extensively with the victims of the 
gangs, report how the gangs give the schoolgirls ÒMuslimÓ names, 

of questioning -and this data shows that where the evidence is strong enough to bring 
about a conviction, the vast majority of those involved in Òlocalised groomingÓ are 
Muslim men. Questions need to be asked concerning the huge discrepancies between 
the ethnic background of those convicted, and the claims made by CEOP/The ChildrenÕs
 Commissioner. 
17ÒProfiled: Guilty members of Rochdale sex grooming gangÓ, Manchester 
Evening News, 9 May 2012, http://www:manchestereveningnews:co:uk/news/greater 
-manchester-news/profiled-guilty-members-of-rochdale-sex-687971. 
18Katherine Faulkner, ÒMuslim gang jailed for kidnapping and raping 
two girls as part of their Eid celebrationsÓ, The Daily Mail, 21 Apr 
2012, http://www:dailymail:co:uk/news/article-2132985/Muslim-gang-jailed-kidna 
pping-raping-girls-Eid-celebrations:html. 
19This report on the BBC news website is one of the few to display this image. http: 
//www:bbc:co:uk/news/uk-england-23896937. 
20Paul Sims, ÒGroomed for sex then thrown into a canal and killed: Life for 
man who murdered white girl for ÔshamingÕ Asian familyÓ, Daily Mail, 22 
Dec 2011, http://www:dailymail:co:uk/news/article-2077205/Teenage-mother-stabb 
ed-death-thrown-canal-bringing-shame-family:html. 

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7. 
ISLAMIC 
CULTURAL 
BACKGROUND 
and force them to read the Koran.21 As the Muslim journalist Yasmin 
Alibhai-Brown states (whilst still mis-describing them as ÒAsianÓ): 
ÒThe rapists are all probably considered very good Muslims, praying 
and fasting in the daytime, then prowling and preying at night on girls 
they think of as barely human.Ó22 Thus, there are plenty of reasons to 
regard the members of these grooming gangs as practising Muslims. 
Furthermore, a Muslim leader has finally come out and stated that 
imams in Britain are responsible for this new phenomenon of 
grooming gangs, because Muslim men are taught in mosques that 

women are Òsecond-class citizens, little more than chattels or 
possessions over whom they have absolute authority.Ó23 

Even if the Muslim men who are involved in these crimes had 
never set foot in a mosque in their adult lives, we believe that Islamic 
culture must still be examined as a motivating factor. Indeed, we have 
nothing else to look at for motivation, since being Asian, being Sikh, 

21ÒGemma was given an Asian name by Amir, and told she had to read the Koran, a 
story support workers tell me is not uncommon.Ó Julie Bindel, ÒMothers of PreventionÓ,
 The Sunday Times, 30 Sep 2007, http://www:thesundaytimes:co:uk/sto/news/u 
k_news/article72310:ece. 
22Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, ÒAsian Grooming GangsÓ, 21 May 2012, http://alibhai-b 
rown:com/Asian-grooming-gangs/. 
23Hayley Dixon,ÒÔImams promote grooming ringsÕ, Muslim leader claimsÓ, The 
Telegraph, 16 May 2013, http://www:telegraph:co:uk/news/uknews/crime/10061217/ 
Imams-promote-grooming-rings-Muslim-leader-claims:html. Taj Hargey also castigated
 the same groups we have taken to task in our study: 

this scandal happened at all is precisely because of such politically 
correct thinking. All the agencies of the state, including the police, 
the social services and the care system, seemed eager to ignore the 
sickening exploitation that was happening before their eyes. Terrified 
of accusations of racism, desperate not to undermine the official creed 
of cultural diversity, they took no action against obvious abuse... 

Also, let us not forget the claims, reported by the media and by Sikh organisations, 
that from the 1990s until 2005, that there was evidence of devout, pro-Caliphate Muslim
 organisations in Britain, not only instructing Muslim men to groom non-Muslim 
women, but also it was claimed that these organisations were issuing instructions on 
how to do this. 

231 



7. 
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CULTURAL 
BACKGROUND 
being Hindu has nothing like the correlation that being Muslim has 
with these crimes. 

The duplicity comes from those people who allege that it was 
racists who were imagining (or construing data to claim) that the 
majority of the perpetrators of the grooming gangs were ÒAsiansÓ, 
whilst such people simultaneously refuse to recognise and investigate 
the many examples (1988, 1989, 1996, 2001) before the Edge of the 
City incident, where it was (non-Muslim) Asian girls who were the 
victims of the Muslim grooming gangs. Those who wanted to use the 
problem of the Muslim grooming gangs to talk up the issue of racism, 
were simultaneously turning a blind eye to the suffering not just of 
white schoolgirls, but also the suffering of Asian schoolgirls. 

7.2 Islamic Morality, Muslim Culture 
Over hundreds of years the stories, morality and principles from the 
Koran, the Hadiths, and the Sira (The Life of Mohammed) must have 
passed into Islamic culture.24 These things have affected what 
Muslims view as right and wrong. These things shape their view of 
the world. This is not to say that the whole of these textual corpuses 
would have passed into the store of knowledge of any particular 
Muslim, or Muslim family, or Muslim community in Britain. But it is 

24We realise that these three different categories of religious texts in Islam may be 
confusing to the layman. The Koran is the core text of Islam, believed by Muslims to 
be the direct word of their God, communicated to Mohammed. However, in Islam the 
behaviour of Mohammed is considered to be exemplary, to be followed by all Muslims.
 Thus, the Sira and the Hadiths are of secondary importance. However they are 
still of great importance, as they allow Muslims to know how Mohammed behaved, so 
that they might copy his behaviour. The Sira is a narrative biography of Mohammed; 
the Hadiths are collections of short reports of MohammedÕs behaviour, from a variety 
of different people. The Sira and the Hadiths also serve as the chronological framework,
 against which contradictory verses in the Koran can be resolved. If a later verse 
contradicts and earlier verse, then the later verse countermands the earlier verse. Thus, 
Muslims need Hadiths and Sira not just for detailed information about MohammedÕs 
behaviour, but also to order the KoranÕs verses chronologically. 

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CULTURAL 
BACKGROUND 
inevitable that parts of them would. Even with Islam being a recent 
addition to British society, most non-Muslims in Britain now 
ÒknowÓ that halal meat, the burka, Òhonour killingÓ, and even 
terrorist violence are associated with Islam (knowing where any 
of these are mandated/forbidden in any particular texts is 
something most Muslims could not provide). 

The culture in countries which have majority Muslim populations 
is ÒIslamic cultureÓ; quite often these countries define themselves as 
ÒIslamic states.Ó But even when they do not go as far as that, a 
country which was subjugated by the armies of Islam 1000 years ago 
or more, cannot have escaped ÒIslamic valuesÓ from pervading the 
culture of the country. Indeed, we would contend that even those who 
remain non-Muslims in those countries will still have acquired some 
Islamic values. Whilst Muslims may not be able to cite chapter and 
verse for particular beliefs they have (such as beliefs about genies), 
those beliefs have suffused their upbringing and their world-view. It is 
astonishing to see how glibly supposed experts in sociology, politics 
or theology will create an impermeable barrier between religion and 
culture, as if the two can never affect each other. 

To understand this in the context of ÒChristian countriesÓ (even 
those which are not legally defined as ÒChristian statesÓ), consider the 
concept of Òa crusade.Ó It is 1000 years since the actual Crusades took 
place, yet the flags of many countries still bear a cross, and there can 
be Òcrusades against crimeÓ, Òcrusades against povertyÓ, and so on. 
Organisations from the time of the Crusades still exist (St. JohnÕs 
medical services, from the Order of St. John). Yet the actual Crusades 
are a tiny and almost insignificant part of Christian history (there were 
only 9 Crusades, compared to over 500 Muslim Holy Wars against 
Christian Europe). We have many stories where Richard the Lionheart 
is a key figure, and in the 21st century, the English Defence League is 
once again using the iconography of the Crusades. If something like 
the Crusades can still resonate and shape the culture and 
world-view of a secular Britain, it is obvious that stories, morals 

233 



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CULTURAL 
BACKGROUND 
and values from Islamic theology and Islamic history must shape 
the world-view of Muslims; these things have been passed down 
in mosques and Muslim homes since the time of Mohammed. 

We will look at values and stories from the Koran, the Hadiths, 
and The Life of Mohammed (the Sira) to see how these texts and 
stories could make Muslims in Britain and Holland take part in, or 
excuse, the activities of the grooming gangs. We are not offering this 
as proof that Muslims were specifically and consciously 
implementing these values: although there is evidence that there are 
Sikhs and Hindus who believe that these Muslims were motivated by 
Islamic values.25 We are going to look at the elephant in the room, 
which everyone else has been determined to ignore for the past 25 
years. Are there aspects of Islamic doctrine which could have shaped 
Muslim culture, such that these crimes seem acceptable to some 
Muslim men? Are there aspects of Islamic doctrine which can explain 
why the Muslim community refused to stop them, or which can 
explain why so many Muslims held back from informing the police 
and courts about what they knew (in the worst cases, we have 
evidence of Muslims actively trying to help destroy the court cases, to 
ensure that the perpetrators did not get punished). These are pressing 
questions, and it is shameful that they have not been articulated in the 
last 25 years. 

25ÒÔThe attitude of showing disrespect towards non-Muslim girls by a small minority
 of Muslim men through some confused religious sanction needs to be tackled
 head on by the mosques,Õ said Anil Bhanot of Hindu Council, UK.Ó, Yudhvir 
Rana, ÒSigh of relief among Hindu, Sikh communities in UKÓ, The Times of India,
 Jul 2 2013, http://articles:timesofindia:indiatimes:com/2013-07-02/other-news/ 
40328466_1_hindu-council-anil-bhanot-uk. 

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CULTURAL 
BACKGROUND 
7.3 Koranic Instructions 
The Koran26 instructs Muslim men to make their women and girls 
cover up, and those women and girls who are not covered are liable 
for abuse: Òtell your wives and your daughters and the women of the 
believers to bring down over themselves [part] of their outer 
garments. That is more suitable that they will be known and not be 
abused.Ó27 Any woman who commits sexual intercourse outside the 
limits permitted by Islamic rules are to be killed: ÒThose who commit 
unlawful sexual intercourse of your women -bring against them four 
[witnesses] from among you. And if they testify, confine the guilty 
women to houses until death takes them.Ó28 The Koran lays down 
strictures as to how a decent Muslim woman must dress, and 
restricts her sexual freedom. And if she dresses inappropriately, 
or is sexually permissive, then she is to expect abuse and even 
death, with no legal repercussions for the husband who kills her (or 
for the people who abuse her for being ÒimmodestlyÓ dressed). We 
can see from this, that Muslim men in Britain and Holland would 
distinguish between virtuous women (Muslim women) and immodest 
or ÒlewdÓ non-Muslim women. Indeed, in London a devout Muslim 
man, named Sunny Islam, set about raping and beating non-Muslim 
women because they were, in his judgement, behaving lewdly by 

26Historically, and even in some Muslim countries today, non-Muslims were not allowed
 to touch the Koran nor speak about what it contains. This is in keeping with 
the principle in Islam that non-Muslims are considered inferior to Muslims (some 
Muslims even put non-Muslims into the same category as faeces). Consequently, 
many Muslims are outraged to have a non-Muslim argue with them about what is 
in the Koran. Also, with this new development in history -non-Muslims being 
able to find out that Islam seeks to subjugate non-Muslims -there are translations 
of the Koran which do their best to make the Koran sound softer (and even confusing)
 to non-Muslims. In the light of this, we think it advisable that non-Muslims 
do not rely on just one translation of the Koran, but that they should use websites
 which offer many different translations of the Koran side by side, for example 
http://www:usc:edu/org/cmje/religious-texts/quran/. 
27The Koran, surah 33, verse 59 http://quran:com/33/59 
28The Koran, surah 4, verse 15 http://quran:com/4/15 

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BACKGROUND 
being out at night without a controlling father, husband or brother.29 

This is all reprehensible, to say the least. However, there are 
worse things in Islamic doctrine. We know it will come as a shock30 
to many untrained individuals to discover that Islam has a very 
accepting attitude concerning the morality of slavery, and so we will 
provide references to books by black British academics (Azumah), 
African American professors (Thomas Sowell), anti-Apartheid 
campaigners (Ronald Segal), Indian historians (K.S. Lai) and Islamic 
scholars (Sultan Tabandeh) to show that the morality and legality of 
slavery in Islam is not some fiction. Perhaps talking of slavery in the 
context of the grooming gangs may seem exaggerated: however, that 
is how Sikhs were describing these gangs back in the 1980s (see 
section 4.2 1989 Sikhs convicted), and some of the victims in recent 
trials have been described as Òsex slaves.Ó31 These values must be 
considered if we are to look at how Islamic doctrine and tradition 

29Nick Enoch, ÒÔStrict MuslimÕ raped four women at knifepoint to Ôpunish
 them for being on the streets at nightÕÓ, Daily Mail, 25 Jan 
2012, http://www:dailymail:co:uk/news/article-2091669/Sunny-Islam-Strict-Musli 
m-raped-4-women-knifepoint-punish-them:html. 
30Political activists in the west have been very selective in their opposition to slavery.
 They consistently emphasise a few hundred years of white European Christians 
trading black African slaves, but are virtually silent on the much longer and much 
larger trade in slaves by Muslims. Even academics have got a terrible record of 
concealing this trade. See John Alembillah Azumah, The 
Legacy 
of 
Arab-Islam 
in 
Africa, Oneworld, Oxford, 2001, pp.14-17. These academics and activists not only ignored
 the Islamic slave-taking and trading of white and Asian slaves, but also of black 
African slaves. The conclusion one must draw is that these activists and academics 
were not interested in the horror of slavery per se, but in denigrating European values. 
31Moreover, the police are now describing the victims of these gangs in 
these terms: Vicky Smith, ÒChild sex slave gangs in EVERY city in 
Britain: Police chiefÕs warning after Oxford grooming horrorÓ, The Mirror,
 15 May 2013, http://www:mirror:co:uk/news/uk-news/child-sex-slave-gangs-e 
very-1891898. The association of slave-taking with these grooming gangs was 
also made back in 2008; see Kathryn Knight, ÒIs political correctness stopping
 police ending the misery of the teenage sex slaves?Ó, Daily Mail, 27 
Mar 2008, http://www:dailymail:co:uk/femail/article-546809/Is-political-correctness 
-stopping-police-ending-misery-teenage-sex-slaves:html. 

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CULTURAL 
BACKGROUND 
could have made this crime seem acceptable to those brought up as 
Muslims. 

From before the start of Islam until just after World War 2, slavery 
was not only legal in Islamic countries: it was an all-pervasive part of 
Islamic history, actively and extensively practised throughout their 
culture:32 slave-taking and trading was practised as part of Islam from 
before Britain was even a Christian country, right up until men were 
walking on the moon. Whilst the Koran does not contain 
injunctions telling Muslims they can have slaves, laying that out 
explicitly was not necessary: the morality and legality of slavery 
was taken for granted at the time of Mohammed, and he himself 
had slaves and took women as slaves. Whilst Mohammed is 
credited by Muslims with ending extant but immoral practices 
such as infanticide,33 he did not seek to end slavery. The conditions 
under which Muslims can acquire slaves are not specified in the 
Koran. Having said that: the Koran contains no injunctions telling 
Muslims that slavery is immoral or illegal. But the Koran contains 
instructions telling Muslims how they can treat their slaves. 

The Koran makes a distinction between legal wives and slaves, 
and instructs Muslim men that they can have sex with either their 
wives or their slaves: ÒWe have made lawful to you your wives whom 
you have given their dowries, and those whom your right hand 
possesses out of those whom Allah has given to you as prisoners of 
war.Ó34 Whilst Muslim men cannot have sex with the wives of other 

32See Emmet Scott, The Impact of Islam, New English Review Press, 2014, pp.16-18, 
pp.61-74, pp.142-153. 
33ÒMohammed and WomenÓ, http://www:pbs:org/muhammad/ma_women:shtml. 
See also p.3 of ÒKhutba -Tackling Street Grooming in the UKÓ, 2013, http://www:m 
cb:org:uk/uploads/Khutbah%20-%20Street%20Grooming%20final%20version:pdf. 
34The Koran, surah 33, verse 50 http://www:usc:edu/org/cmje/religious-texts/quran 
/verses/033-qmt:php. It might not be immediately obvious to the untrained reader, 
but Òright hand possessÓ is a metaphor for ÒslaveÓ, as can be found in contemporary 
discussions of this phrase on Islamic websites. http://forums:understanding-Islam:c 
om/showthread:php?7663-Who-are-women-whom-your-right-hand-possess. 


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Muslim men, they can have sex with enslaved women, even if the 
enslaved woman has a husband: Òall married women (are forbidden 
unto you) save those (captives) whom your right hands possess.Ó35 

Not only are Muslim men permitted legally and morally to rape 
their slaves, but they are also forgiven if they turn a slave girl into 
a prostitute: Òdo not compel your slave girls to prostitution, when 
they desire to keep chaste, in order to seek the frail good of this 
worldÕs life; and whoever compels them, then surely after their 
compulsion Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.Ó36 It is clear, that these kind 
of Islamic views easily lend themselves to Muslim men seeing 
women as objects, to be controlled and dominated by men. It would 
lead them to believe that if some non-Muslim woman within their 
control could be prostituted, there would be no moral or legal 
consequences for them within an Islamic world-view.37 

There are also features of Islam which are supremacist and 
which look with contempt at non-Muslims. According to the 
Koran, non-Muslims are the worst of all living creatures, thus 
sub-human: ÒThe disbelievers among the People of the Book and the 
pagans will dwell forever in hell; they are the worst of all creatures.Ó38 
Some Muslims take the Koranic description of infidels as the worst of 
creatures, and put non-Muslim into the same category of dirty things 
as faeces and dead bodies.39 One of the police officers who managed 

35The Koran, surah 4, verse 24 http://www:usc:edu/org/cmje/religious-texts/quran/v 
erses/004-qmt:php. 
36The Koran, surah 24, verse 33 http://corpus:quran:com/translation:jsp?chapter= 
24&verse=33. Since any woman who does not wear a hijab/burka is considered to 
be ÒlewdÓ in Islamic doctrine, the Muslim grooming gangs could quite easily rationalise
 their pimping as being in accord with Islam, i.e. they were not pimping out 
slave girls who Òdesire to be chaste.Ó 
37It is not uncommon to find someone who is described as Òa moderate MuslimÓ who 
insists that they will only obey English law that does not conflict with Islamic law. 
38The Koran, surah 98, verse 6 http://corpus:quran:com/translation:jsp?chapter=98&v 
erse=6. 
39This Islamic website explains this view of non-Muslims: http://www:al-Islam:org/l 
aws/najisthings:html. 

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to get convictions for a gang in Bradford in Leeds in 1997 said ÒThe 
men held those young girls in extremely low esteem; they thought that 
this somehow justified the violation that was taking place.Ó The Koran 
refers to non-Muslims as animals, and the standard term for a 
non-Muslim in Arabic is ÒkafirÓ, a highly derogatory term.40 

Furthermore, we should not be surprised when Muslims who 
said they disapproved of the grooming/raping gangs still said 
Òthey would never have dreamt of going to the police about it, 
because you do not turn on your own communityÓ41, as this too is 
part of Islamic theology. The Koran tells Muslims that they must 
always band together against non-Muslims: ÒLet not the believers 
Take for friends or helpers Unbelievers rather than believers.Ó42 As 
one of the few Muslims who has been prepared to speak 
(anonymously) about the grooming gangs said to Andrew Norfolk: 

Òa lot of peopleÓ knew of the abuse but that he and others 
were Òtoo scared to do anything about it.Ó He points to a 
widespread view that betraying members of oneÕs own 
community to the police would be an even greater sin 
than child sexual exploitation.43 

We know it sounds incredible, but there is so much evidence to show 
that the vast majority of Muslims put their loyalty to other Muslims 
(the Ummah) above all else. It is a part of Islam, a concept that 
weaves through Islamic texts. The Islamic world-view is so deeply 
ingrained in Muslims, that they would rather allow schoolgirls to be 

40http://alquranwasunnahislamicsiteoflearning:yuku:com/topic/888#:UjDwHsasio8. 
41Home Affairs Select Committee report ÒChild Sexual Exploitation and the Response
 to Localised GroomingÓ, 10 Jun 2013, http://www:publications:parliament:u 
k/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmhaff/68/68i:pdf, p.53. 
42The Koran, surah 3, verse 28. http://corpus:quran:com/translation:jsp?chapter=3&v 
erse=28. 
43Andrew Norfolk, ÒÔSome of these men have children the same age; they are 
bad applesÕ; Sexual grooming; The grooming of white girls by gangs of Pakistani 
heritage is an issue that few in the community will addressÓ, The Times, 5 Jan 
2011. 

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raped, drugged, and pimped than tell the police that it was going on. 

Whilst most of what we have covered so far in Islamic theology 
sounds like it only relates to adult women, it is time to turn to the 
issue of what constitutes a woman under Islamic law and morality. 
Aisha was MohammedÕs favourite wife, and she was only aged 6 
years old when he married her. It is on the basis of Mohammed 
marrying her when she was 6 years old and him consummating that 
marriage when she was 9 years old, that girls around the ages of 9 to 
15 are married off in many Muslim countries (Iran, Saudi Arabia, 
Malaysia, Yemen, etc.) In the chapter where divorce is discussed in 
the Koran, it contains provisions for the divorce of a wife who has not 
yet begun to menstruate: ÒAnd those who no longer expect 
menstruation among your women -if you doubt, then their period is 
three months, and [also for] those who have not menstruated. And for 
those who are pregnant, their term is until they give birth.Ó44 This is a 
subject which many western Muslims will dispute or deny; 
whether that is out of shame or ignorance we cannot say. But that 
ÒIslamic statesÓ (e.g. Saudi Arabia, Yemen) permit 9 year old 
girls to be married cannot be denied (some of these child-brides die 
giving birth shortly after they are married).45 

44The Koran, surah 65, verse 4 http://quran:com/65/4 
45See Sara Nelson, Bride Aged 8 Dies After Suffering Internal Sexual Injuries
 During Wedding Night With Man, 40, Huffington Post, 9 Sep 2013, 

http://www:huffingtonpost:co:uk/2013/09/09/bride-aged-8-dies-internal-sexual-inj 
uries-wedding-night-_n_3892892:html; Ali al-Ahmed, ÒWhy is no one protecting 
Saudi ArabiaÕs child brides?Ó, The Guardian, 8 Nov 2011, http://www:theguardian :com/commentisfree/2011/nov/08/saudi-arabia-child-brides-marriage; ÒChild bride, 
12, dies in Yemen after struggling to give birth for THREE daysÓ, Daily Mail, 17 
Mar 2010, http://www:dailymail:co:uk/news/article-1213168/Fawziya-Abdullah-Y 
oussef-dies-labour-Child-bride-12-dies-Yemen-struggling-birth-THREE-days:html; 
Emma Graham-Harrison, ÒAfghan judges free three jailed for torture of child 
bride Sahar GulÓ, The Guardian, 11 Jul 2013, http://www:theguardian:com/world 
/2013/jul/11/afghan-judges-free-sahar-guls-torturers; ÒContemporary Paedophilic 
Marriages in IslamÓ http://wikiIslam:net/wiki/Contemporary_Pedophilic_Islamic 
_Marriages. 

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Some Muslims will point out that in medieval Europe, Kings took 
young wives. That might very well be true, but our societies have 
laws and morals which evolve. This is a problem when a group of 
people insist on holding onto an unchanging morality that is 
supposedly the direct and eternal word of god. This is how we end 
up with a situation like that in 2012 in London, where 9 year old 
Muslim girls were being married off to old men, and trapped in 
primary school in the day whilst providing sexual services to the 
old man in the evening.46 It also explains how it could be that so 
many of the Muslim men in the grooming gangs were fixated on girls 
as young as 10: 

The youngest identified victim was 10, with 14 and 15 
the peak ages for exploitation... ÒOffenders tend to prefer 
younger victims. The exploitation tails off in most cases 
as the children get older and offenders identify and 
groom new, younger victims.Ó47 

Even in the middle of 2013, primary schools in England (where the 
oldest child is 11 years old) were sending home letters to parents 
warning them of groups of Asian men sat in cars outside the school 
gates (one of the classic behaviours of the Muslim grooming gangs).48 
If one examines websites providing coverage of Islamic countries, 
one can find contemporary stories of Òchild prostitution in the guise of 
marriage.Ó49 

46Pavan Amara, ÒIslington Girls Forced into Marriage at the Age of NineÓ, Islington
 Tribune, 27 Jan 2012, http://www:islingtontribune:com/news/2012/jan/isling 
ton-girls-forced-marriage-age-nine. 
47Andrew Norfolk, ÒPolice Files Reveal Vast Child Protection ScandalÓ, The 
Times, 24 Sep 2012, http://www:thetimes:co:uk/tto/news/uk/crime/article3547661:e 
ce. 
48See the photographic copies of letters sent to parents of primary school children in 
Leeds and Sheffield, 14. Appendix 4: Leeds School Warning and 15. Appendix 5: 
Sheffield School Warning. 
49Cam McGrath, ÒUnderage Girls Are EgyptÕs Summer RentalsÓ, Inter Press Service
 News Agency, http://www:ipsnews:net/2013/08/underage-girls-are-egypts-sum 
mer-rentals/. 

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That Aisha was 6 years old when Mohammed married her was not 
disputed for 1300 years. It was only in India in the 1920s that a new 
interpretation arose.50 In the 1920s some Indian Muslims started to 
argue that Aisha was 10 years old when Mohammed married her (that 
is not much of an improvement to modern, western civilisation.) 
When Muslims claim that MohammedÕs favourite wife was 18 or 25 
when he had sex with her, the view they are putting forward is not 
how most of the Muslim world interprets this or has interpreted it. 
The laws in various Islamic states show that they think that Aisha 
was under 10 when Mohammed had sex with her. And to 
Muslims, Mohammed is regarded as the perfect man; it is part of 
their religion that they should emulate his behaviour.51 

We can imagine many readers struggling to comprehend how the 
KoranÕs statements about slavery could be taken seriously by Muslims 
in the 21st century. Surely only an extreme Muslim would refuse to 
condemn such things? However, it is cultural blindness to assume that 
Muslims feel the same way about the literal interpretation of their 
religious texts as the Christians and ex-Christians in Britain feel about 
the Old Testament and the New Testament: it is a refusal to see that 
people from different cultures can do things differently and can 
believe different things. To remedy this incomprehension, we would 
remind people of the statements of Mehdi Hasan, political director of 
The Huffington Post and a frequent guest on the BBC TVÕs Question 
Time, who contrasted Muslims and non-Muslims thus: ÒOnce we lose 
the moral high-ground we are no different from the rest, of the 
non-Muslims; from the rest of those human beings who live their lives 

50This was at a time when Muslims also started to claim that Islam was Òthe religion 
of peaceÓ, when Muslims started to re-write history. http://www:Muslim:org/Islam/a 
isha-age:htm. 
51The reader should note that the name ÒMohammedÓ is by far the most common first 
name among the men listed in the tables compiled using the Norfolk definition: section 

11. Appendix 1: Grooming Gang Convictions. See also the chart that highlights the 
frequency of names, section 13. Appendix 3: Name Distribution of Convicts. 
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CULTURAL 
BACKGROUND 
as animals...Ó52 Another example is a discussion on Twitter between 
historian Tom Holland and Mohammed Ansar. Mohammed Ansar is 
presented by the media in Britain as a moderate Muslim, yet in one 
discussion he asked: If slaves are treated justly, with full rights, 
and no oppression whatsoever... why would anyone object.53 By a 
slave having Òfull rightsÓ and being Òtreated justlyÓ, we presume this 
moderate Muslim means that the slave is granted the rights which 
slaves are granted in Islam, such as being able to work outside their 
ownerÕs business. In another discussion, we can see this moderate 
Muslim state that he would never denounce any part of the Koran.54 It 
is hard to imagine a modern-day devout Christian, touted by the 
media for his moderation, asking what is wrong with slavery, or 
saying that the no part of the Bible can be criticised nor denounced. It 
is hard to imagine such a moderate Christian associating 
non-Christians with animals. 

It is clear from this, that even the most moderate, most integrated 
Muslims have very different values from Christians (and 
post-Christians) in Britain, including areas of morality where we 
non-Muslims might assume all people think the same. But even in 
more contentious moral areas such as homosexuality, there are 
surveys where 61% Christians in Britain support equal rights for gay 
people,55 Contrasting surveys show that 61% of Muslims in Britain 

52Here is the video where you can see a version of Islam which the multiculturalists
 would have us believe does not exist: http://www:youtube:com/watch?v= 
h4hpfqFt-0Q#t=30. 

We know that keeping the moral high-ground is key. Once we lose 
the moral high-ground we are no different from the rest, of the non-
Muslims; from the rest of those human beings who live their lives as 
animals, bending any rule to fulfil any desire. 

See also Douglas Murray, ÒMehdi Hasan and the EDLÓ, 30 Jul 2013, http://blogs:s 
pectator:co:uk/douglas-murray/2013/07/mehdi-hasan-and-the-edl/. 
53http://twitter:com/MoAnsar/status/224553175858954240. 
54https://twitter:com/MoAnsar/status/340930760271884290. 
55Stephen Gray, UK study: 61% of Christians back equal rights for gay couples, 
Pink News, 14 Feb 2012, http://www:pinknews:co:uk/2012/02/14/uk-study-61-of-chr 


243 



7. 
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CULTURAL 
BACKGROUND 
want to see people criminalised for being gay. 56 Across many 
different topics, it seems that the moral views of Muslims in Britain 
are very different from the moral views of Christians in Britain. Yet 
the proponents of multiculturalism deny there are any significant 
differences, whilst praising diversity. When we look not at the views 
of moderate, integrated Muslims but at the views of those popularly 
described as ÒextremistsÓ or ÒfundamentalistsÓ, things look much 
darker. 

Those who propound and defend multiculturalism say that people 
from different cultural backgrounds have different values, and that we 
must all accept these values as being of equal validity. But when it 
comes to examining what those different values are, multiculturalists 
suddenly lose interest in the details of these differences and lose 
interest in the consequences that follow from these different values. 
Yet we have seen, that even those Muslims who are classed as liberal 
or moderate have views which would be considered extreme if those 
views were espoused by a non-Muslim in Britain. Are we really 
surprised that conflicts and problems arise when communities with 
these different values are living side-by-side? These conflicts and 
problems are just concealed by the advocates of multiculturalism. 
Proponents of multiculturalism dare not examine the views of Islamic 
fundamentalists, that (significant) minority of Muslims in Britain who 
want sharia law. 

What multiculturalists do not seem to understand is that 
pre-Islamic Arabia was a multicultural society: the pagan 
Meccans permitted Mohammed to preach this new religion, which 
denigrated the prevailing religion. After 13 years of listening to 

istians-back-equal-gay-rights/. 
56Munira Mirza, Abi Senthilkumaran and Zein JaÕfar, Living apart together:
 British Muslims and the paradox of multiculturalism, Policy Exchange,
 2007, http://www:policyexchange:org:uk/images/publications/living%20apa 
rt%20together%20-%20jan%2007:pdf, p.47. 40% of Muslim students in Britain want 
sharia law, and manuals of sharia law which can be found in public libraries in Britain, 
make it clear that under sharia law the criminal penalty for homosexuality is death. 

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CULTURAL 
BACKGROUND 
Mohammed blaspheme against paganism, the Meccans finally 
drove him out. Mohammed went to Medina, a Jewish city, and 
the multiculturalist Jews of Medina permitted Mohammed to 
preach there. But within 20 years, Mohammed and his Muslims 
would not permit a single pagan or Jew to live in either Mecca or 
Medina. Mohammed and his army of Muslims used assassination, 
mass murder, rape and slavery to destroy any set of values other than 
Islam.57 Multiculturalism died, and Islamic totalitarianism thrived. 

Multiculturalists think that Muslims will embrace 
multiculturalism; yet Islam was established 1300 years ago to destroy 
multiculturalism. Muslims even have a contemptuous Arabic word for 
multiculturalism, Jahiliyyah: 

Jahiliyyah... takes the form of claiming that the right to 

create values, to legislate rules of collective behavior, and 

to choose any way of life rests with men...58 

57These atrocities are well-documented in Ibn IshaqÕs The Life of Mohammed, the 
most authoritative biography of Mohammed, a biography written by a devout Muslim. 
The most tolerance that the Islamic world ever showed to non-Muslims was to allocate 
ÒDhimmiÓ status to Jews and Christians: at best, this was a form of apartheid, where 
the Dhimmis were third-class citizens. We can be sure that Muslims in contemporary 
secular society would be outraged if we imposed third-class citizenship on them as 
Islam does on non-Muslims. See Bat YeÕor, The 
Dhimmi: 
Jews 
and 
Christians 
under 
Islam, Associated University Presses, New Jersey, 1985. It is truly amazing that the 
media and schools in Britain seek to ÒeducateÓ the non-Muslim majority in Britain 
about Islam, without telling the public that in Islam we are denigrated. 
58 Sayyid Qutb, Milestones, Islamic Book Service, New Delhi, 2001, p.11 . QutbÕs 
book contains chapters with title such as ÒThe Universal LawÓ, ÒIslam is the Real 
CivilisationÓ, not to mention ÒJihad in the Cause of GodÓ, which show that Muslim 
fundamentalists have nothing but contempt for the ideology of multiculturalism. Milestones
 was written in 1964, and Sayyid Qutb was not some minor figure in the history 
of 20th century Islam, but was the major theoretician of The Muslim Brotherhood. 

During most of his life, QutbÕs inner circle mainly consisted of influ


ential politicians, intellectuals, poets and literary figures, both of his age 

and of the preceding generation. By the mid-1940s, many of his writings 

were officially among the curricula of schools, colleges and universities. 

http://en:wikipedia:org/wiki/Sayyid_Qutb 

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BACKGROUND 
In a lack of awareness of philosophy, of history, and of Islam, the 
advocates of multiculturalism see their ideology as superior to Islam, 
ignorant of the fact that Islam arose in a multicultural society and 
destroyed that multicultural society. And since the 1920s, Muslims 
across the world have been involved in a return to the roots of Islam, 
the fundamentals of Islam. In the view of Muslim fundamentalists, 
non-Muslims are inferior beings.59 Jahiliyyah is not just a word for 
democracy, secularism, or multiculturalism. It applies to any values 
that are not Islamic. Thus, societies based on Christianity and 
Judaism, or Buddhism or Hinduism, and even atheistic societies like 
those of Communist countries are regarded as Jahiliyyah by Muslim 
fundamentalists: Òthe Islamic society is... the only civilised society, 
and the jahili societies, in all their various forms, are backward 
societies.Ó60 It is clear from this: the Islamic society is a totalitarian 
society, all other values are to subordinated to Islamic values. But if 
anyone in Britain dares to criticise Islam, they will be denounced and 

Whilst one might think that QutbÕs influence was confined to Egypt, we must note 
that the importance of the concept of Jahiliyyah was something which Qutb took from 
the theologian Maulana Maududi. Maududi is probably the most significant 20th century
 Muslim as far as Muslims in Britain are concerned. ÒHow Islam got political: 
Founding fathersÓ, BBC News, 10 Nov 2005, http://news:bbc:co:uk/1/hi/4424208:s 
tm. 
59Those who think that talk about the Dhimmi status of Jews and Christians under 
Islam is fanciful, need only look at works like QutbÕs Milestones, which pre-date Bat 
YeÕorÕs exposition by 20 years. Qutb openly talks about the inferior status of Dhimmis 
under Islam. See Milestones, p.53, p.55, p.63. In an Islamic society, the theory is that 
Christians and Jews have Dhimmi status, i.e. they are ÒprotectedÓ from death/slavery, 
because they pay Òprotection moneyÓ. This is rather like the Mafia demanding Òprotection
 moneyÓ from their ÒclientsÓ; if the clients do not pay, then they are subject to 
extreme violence, even death, as punishment for their insubordination. The payment 
of Òprotection moneyÓ accords Jews and Christians a third class citizenship, because 
the payment is a continued admission that they recognise their inferior status vis-a-vis 
Muslims. Non-payment is seen as a rejection of this inferiority, an assertion that Jews 
and Christians are human beings like Muslims. Those peoples who are not Jews and 
Christians, and who reject Islam when told to become Muslims are not even offered 
Dhimmi status: under Islam they are to be killed or enslaved. 
60Sayyid Qutb, Milestones, p.94. 

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7. 
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BACKGROUND 
told they live in a multicultural society, and must accept these 
totalitarian values. 

7.4 Stories from the Hadith 
Whilst the Koran is believed by Muslims to be the literal words of 
their god, Allah, spoken through an angel, and surviving during the 
time of Mohammed via oral repetition, the Hadiths are stories about 
Mohammed told by his companions, and passed down via lineages of 
varying trustworthiness. The Hadiths are less compelling guidance 
than the Koran (particularly those Hadiths which are considered less 
reliable), but even those which are considered least reliable must still 
have shaped Islamic religion and culture. The Hadiths are a major 
component of sharia law. 

As we saw with the Koran, the Hadiths also permit Muslims to 
rape women who are captured after a battle (whereupon they 
become the property of Muslims, that is, they become slaves). 
Mohammed told his men better not to perform coitus interruptus 
when raping the women they have captured and enslaved (that is, 
the Muslim men should ejaculate inside the slave woman instead): 

ÒO AllahÕs Apostle! We get female captives as our share 

of booty, and we are interested in their prices, what is 

your opinion about coitus interruptus?Ó The Prophet said, 

ÒDo you really do that? It is better for you not to do it. 

No soul that which Allah has destined to exist, but will 

surely come into existence.Ó61 

It is not that Mohammed was allowing a lower moral standard for his 
soldiers, and had a higher moral standard for himself. Mohammed 
even took sex slaves off other Muslim men: 

61Bukhari Hadith, Volume 3, Book 34, Number 432 http://www:usc:edu/org/cmje/re 
ligious-texts/hadith/bukhari/034-sbt:php. This question pertains to whether or not the 
slave will fetch a lower price at the slave market, if she has been raped. 

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CULTURAL 
BACKGROUND 
I drove them along until I brought them to Abu Bakr who 
bestowed that girl upon me as a prize. So we arrived in 
Medina. I had not yet disrobed her when the Messenger 
of Allah (may peace be upon him) met me in the street 
and said: ÕGive me that girl.Õ 62 

These two stories about the life of Mohammed, come from the 
Bukhari and the Sahih Muslim hadiths. The Bukhari and the Sahih 
Muslim Hadiths are considered the most reliable of all the Hadiths. 
As we can see, they reinforce the idea that there is nothing 
immoral or illegal about Muslim men having slaves or raping 
their slaves.63 This morality, which devout Muslims dare not 
question, would be totally alien to a devout Christian. 

7.5 The Life of Mohammed (Sira) 
The Sira (The Life of Muhammed) is a chronological story of 
MohammedÕs life, his biography written by Ibn Ishaq, a Muslim who 
lived about 100 years after Mohammed. It is of third level importance 
when considered as religious/legal instruction for Muslims. Some 
modern Muslims, appalled that non-Muslims are able to discover how 
Mohammed has been viewed by Muslims throughout history, dispute 
the accuracy of parts of the Sira. However, as one Professor of Islamic 
Studies has said: ÒNo biographical sketches of Muhammad exist that 
do not depend on Ibn Ishaq. If an analysis of Ibn IshaqÕs book 
establishes that for whatever reason it cannot be seen as an historical 
source, all knowledge we possess about Muhammad evaporates.Ó64 If 

62Sahih Muslim Hadith, Book 19, Number 4345 http://www:usc:edu/org/cmje/religi 
ous-texts/hadith/muslim/019-smt:php. 
63In case it needs to be spelled out: a man who forces his slave to have sex with 
him against her will is still raping her. See also the discussion among Muslims here: 
http://www:sunniforum:com/forum/showthread:php?36750-Sex-slaves-in-Islam. 
64Prof. Johannes Jansen, Professor of Modern Islamic Thought at the University 
of Utrecht, quoted in Fjordman, ÒUnmasking MuhammadÕs Dubious ExistenceÓ, 
Frontpage, 2 May 2012, http://frontpagemag:com/2012/fjordman/unmasking-muham 


248 



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CULTURAL 
BACKGROUND 
Muslims or their apologists wish to rule the Sira of Ibn Ishaq out of 
court, then they might as well admit that there is no evidence that 
Mohammed ever existed. If what is contained in The Life of 
Muhammed was considered blasphemous, or made Mohammed out to 
be anything other than a perfect example for Muslims to follow, Ibn 
IshaqÕs biography would not be the basis of all modern biographies of 
Mohammed. 

Even if modern day Muslims are prepared to reject the 
Mohammed as portrayed by Ibn Ishaq, the book has still been 
immensely powerful in shaping the Islamic view of the world, since 
Muslims throughout the last millennium did not reject Mohammed as 
portrayed in Ibn Ishaq: that is the Mohammed that Muslim cultures 
throughout the world have passed on by word of mouth to their 
children for generation after generation. Moreover, the current 
edition of this book was reissued in modern day Pakistan, a state 
whose full title is The Islamic Republic of Pakistan. This Islamic 
state condemns to death those convicted of defaming the Prophet 
Mohammed.65 Since 1967 Oxford University Press have been selling 
this Guillaume edition of The Life of Muhammed, which is printed in 
Pakistan. No-one from that company has been charged with 
Òdefaming the Prophet MohammedÓ, so we can take take from this 
continued publication and the lack of prosecutions, that contemporary 
Pakistani Muslims do not consider this work blasphemous. Thus we 
regard any rejection of the Sira of Ibn Ishaq by contemporary 
Muslims living in the West as either a sign of their duplicity or a sign 
of their ignorance about Islam. 

Modern liberals in the West we will find MohammedÕs behaviour 
in this book shocking, for he is not a religious leader like Jesus or 
Buddha. From The Life of Muhammed we learn that he sold women 

mads-dubious-existence/. 
65Rob Crilly and Aoun Sahi, ÒChristian woman sentenced to death in Pakistan Ôfor 
blasphemyÕÓ, The Telegraph, 9 Nov 2010, http://www:telegraph:co:uk/news/religio 
n/8120142/Christian-woman-sentenced-to-death-in-Pakistan-for-blasphemy:html. 


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BACKGROUND 
and children who had been captured and enslaved: ÒThen the apostle 
sent Sayid... and Abdul... with some of the captive women... and he 
sold them for horses and weapons.Ó66 We can see that Muslims are 
aware of these stories found in The 
Life 
of 
Muhammed, by looking 
at what Muslims were shouting in a protest outside the Danish 
embassy: Muslim men saying that they will take Danish wives as 
Òwar bootyÓ i.e. to be raped, to be sold as slaves, or to be kept as 
sex slaves.67 Mohammed married some of the women he took as 
slaves, but not all of them: after one battle Mohammed beheads the 
men and boys, and sends the women off to be sold as slaves, but 
he keeps the 15 year old Rayhanah as his sex slave. She never 
became his wife, never became a Muslim.68 And when Mohammed 
has Kinana, a Jewish man, tortured to death for his gold, Mohammed 
takes the wife of Kinana as his own sex slave.69 

We know from the fatwa on Salman Rushdie, that Muslims take 
insults to Mohammed very seriously. If the English translation of this 
book was in any way blasphemous, Alfred Guillaume, the editor and 
translator, would not have been made a Fellow of various Arabic 
professional societies (Arab Academy of Damascus and the Royal 
Academy of Baghdad), nor invited to be the first non-Muslim lecturer 
in Christian and Islamic theology at Istanbul University. Guillaume 

66Ibn Ishaq, The Life of Muhammed, 1955 (reissued Pakistan 1967), translated by 

A. Guillaume, Oxford University Press, p.466. Those Muslims who reject Ibn IshaqÕs 
account of Mohammed taking slaves, must also presumably reject the accounts in the 
Hadiths were Mohammed takes slaves. See http://quranexplorer:com/Hadith/Englis 
h/Hadith/bukhari/005:059:362:html and http://www:quranexplorer:com/Hadith/Engl 
ish/Hadith/bukhari/001:008:367:html. The Bukhari Hadiths are considered the most 
trustworthy of all Hadiths. Muslims who claim they reject the Hadiths and only follow
 the Koran cannot even know when Ramadan occurs, as this is not specified in the 
Koran. 
67http://www:youtube:com/embed/5o1FPkWWV2s. 
68Ibn Ishaq, The Life of Muhammed, 1955 (reissued Pakistan 1967), translated by 
A. Guillaume, Oxford University Press, p.466 
69Ibn Ishaq, The Life of Muhammed, 1955 (reissued Pakistan 1967), translated by 
A. Guillaume, Oxford University Press, p.511. 
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7. 
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BACKGROUND 
was Professor of Arabic at the School of Oriental and African Studies 
(University of London).70 Thus, from the core texts of Islam we have 
evidence for the Muslim attitudes towards slavery and towards sex 
with slaves. These attitudes are entirely alien to those brought up in a 
Christian or humanist tradition. 

7.6 Sharia Law: Child Marriage 
Even those Muslims who are not considered extremists, have made it 
clear that they have no intention of subjugating sharia law and 
Muslim culture to the laws of Britain or British culture. As long ago 
as 1990, an organisation in Britain calling itself The Muslim 
Parliament produced a document where they made it clear that they 
put Islamic doctrine and Muslim culture before everything else. 

Muslims living under the protection of a non-Muslim 
State must obey the laws of that State, so long as such 
obedience does not conflict with their commitment to 
Islam and the Ummah. [...] There are laws on the 
British Statute Book that are in direct conflict with the 
laws of Allah; these relate to such matters as usury, 
abortion, homosexuality, gambling, sale and consumption 
of alcohol, and the abolition of capital punishment; 

Muslims can neither agree with nor condone any part 
of a legal and social agenda which so flagrantly 
violates the laws of nature as well as of God. [..] 
Muslims make it clear to the State, and all sections of 
British society, that they do not expect to be and will not 
tolerate being insulted and abused on grounds of their 
religion, culture and traditions. Maxim: We are Muslims 
first and last.71 (emphasis added) 

70http://en:wikipedia:org/wiki/Alfred_Guillaume. 
71ÒThe Muslim Manifesto -a strategy for survivalÓ, http://www:muslimparliament:o 
rg:uk/MuslimManifesto:pdf. 


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7. 
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BACKGROUND 
That appeared in a section of the document entitled ÒRelationship 
with the British Authorities.Ó In this context, it is of fundamental 
importance that we understand what allowances and prescriptions 
obtain in sharia law and the history of Islamic states. 

All the previous Koranic injunctions and stories about Mohammed 
are brought together in a manual of sharia law called The Reliance of 
the Traveller. Even though the original Arabic version of this book 
dates from the 14th century, this book was translated into English in 
the 1990s, thus demonstrating its contemporary relevance for Muslims 
who are promoting the implementation of sharia law. If one reads 
Muslim forums to see what books on sharia law are recommended to 
English-speaking Muslims, this book is commonly recommended. 
From this book, we can see that the legal and moral values derived 
from the Koran, from the Sunnah (the behaviour of Mohammed) and 
from past judgements by Muslim jurists are very different from 
anything that a modern liberal democracy would recognise as valid. 

The Reliance of the Traveller states that if a husband wishes to 
divorce his wife, he must wait 3 months before doing so, in case she 
has become pregnant during the marriage, even if she is 
pre-pubescent. 72 Here are the relevant sections from this manual of 
sharia law: 

n9.1 There is no waiting period for a woman divorced 

before having had sexual intercourse with her husband. 

(emphasis added) 

n9.2 A waiting period is obligatory for a woman 

divorced after intercourse, whether the husband and 

wife are prepubescent, have reached puberty, or one has 

and the other has not. Intercourse means copulation (def: 

n7.7). If the husband was alone with her but did not 

copulate with her, and then divorced her, there is no 

72Ahmad Ibn Naqib Al-Misri, ÒReliance of the Traveller: a Classic Manual of Islamic 
Sacred LawÓ, Keller translation, 1991 

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7. 
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CULTURAL 
BACKGROUND 
waiting period. (emphasis added) 

n9.3 When a waiting period is obligatory (O: [sic] upon a 

woman, cause of divorce or annulment of marriage), then 

if she is pregnant, the waiting period ends when she 

gives birth... (emphasis added) 

A Muslim cannot say that these sections of this manual of sharia law 
are no longer a part of Islam. The book was only translated into 
English in 1991, and it was then certified as authentic by Al Azhar 
University (Cairo), one of the worldÕs foremost authorities on sharia 
law. Moreover, the Sheikh who translated this manual did NOT 
translate the section on the legality of slavery (section number 
K42), saying that these laws are no longer relevant.73 If the 
section on divorce/sex with prepubescent wives was no longer 
relevant, it too would have remained untranslated.74 

British Muslims and their allies might claim that such manuals of 
sharia law are relatively obscure. However, there is proof that a 
Muslim who is known to many devout British Muslims (especially 
those from Pakistan) has come to the same conclusions as those 

73See http://en:wikipedia:org/wiki/Reliance_of_the_Traveller. It is our belief that it 
is currently not politic for Muslim fundamentalists to admit that slavery is legal under
 sharia law, and so these sections on slavery have not been translated into English 
(note: the sections were not edited out of those editions of The Reliance of the Traveller
 which contain parallel English/Arabic text, which means those Muslims who are 
serious enough about their religion to learn Arabic can still read the sections on the legality
 of slavery). As the Muslim populations in the English-speaking world increase 
in size and political power, we fully expect to see this section of The Reliance of the 
Traveller be translated in future editions of the book. In the future, we expect to see 
more Muslims be consistent and admit, since they believe sharia law to be eternal and 
perfect and unchanging, that slavery is legal in Islam. As we will demonstrate below, 
in the last 60 years both a UN expert panel on slavery and Muslim jurists have said: 
slavery is legal under Islamic law. 
74 Because the regulations on slavery are missing from the English translation, we do 
not know what they would say about the legality of slavery. For that we must turn to 
a modern work by an Islamic jurist. See our discussion on Sultan TabandehÕs book 
below. 

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7. 
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CULTURAL 
BACKGROUND 
manuals of sharia law. Throughout the 20th century Maulana 
Maududi (1903-1979) has been probably the most influential 
Muslim across the world and especially on Muslims in Britain 
(the single largest group of Muslims in Britain are those of 
ÒPakistani heritageÓ). In his book The 
Meaning 
of 
the 
QurÕan, 
Maududi says of the Koran: 

making mention of the waiting-period for the girls who 
have not yet menstruated, clearly proves that it is not 
only permissible to give away the girl in marriage at 
this age but it is also permissible for the husband to 

75

consummate marriage with her. 

Maududi founded the Islamic political party Jamaat-e-Islami, whose 
followers control many of the major Muslim organisations in 
Britain.76 Thus, his political, theological and cultural influence on 
Muslims in Britain is enormous.77 Those who claim that Òsex with 
children is un-IslamicÓ are ignorant of the conclusions of Maududi, or 
are attempting to deceive non-Muslims. Multiculturalists demand we 
respect the heritage of Pakistani Muslims in Britain, but these 
multiculturalists refuse to look at what that heritage might be. 

We can see many examples of Muslims in Britain who are 
engaging in sexual activities with under-age girls. We have already 
cited the case in London, where imams were marrying-off 9 year old 
girls, who went to primary school in the day, but were functioning as 
wives in the evening. We have seen plenty of evidence that the 

75(Our emphasis) Maulana Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi, The 
Meaning 
of 
the 
QurÕan, 
footnote 13 on Section 64 on "Divorce" in Islam, http://englishtafsir:com/Quran/65/in 
dex:html. The second edition of this book was published in English in 1971. 
76 Andrew Gilligan, ÒLabour: London borough becomes ÔIslamic republicÕÓ,
 The Telegraph, 22 Oct 2010, http://blogs:telegraph:co:uk/news/andrewgil 
ligan/100060304/labour-london-borough-becomes-islamic-republic/;ÒMaulana 
Maududi: Radical IslamÕs Missing LinkÓ, http://www:pwhce:org/maududi:html. 
77ÒMaududi has written over 120 books and pamphlets and made over 1000 speeches 
and press statements of, which about 700 are available on record.Ó, The Story of Pakistan,
 http://storyofpakistan:com/maulana-abu-ala-maududi/. 

254 



7. 
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CULTURAL 
BACKGROUND 
grooming gangs are targeting primary schools, and that they have a 
preference for girls younger than 14 years of age. In a trial of a 
Muslim man (showing many of the key behaviours of the grooming 
gangs) he was convicted of keeping a brothel full of under-age girls. 
In his defence he said ÒIn my country it doesnÕt matter about age.Ó 78 
When asked to cite the Islamic texts that justify these beliefs, most 
Muslims would probably be unable to do so. Nevertheless, there is 
every reason to believe that these values are passed down to many 
Muslims conversationally. Most Muslims could not cite where the 
Koran mandates that they eat halal food, or that women should wear a 
hijab or burka, but most Muslims will still say these things are 
mandatory and are an essential part of Islam. 

7.7 Sharia Law: Legality of Slavery 
In the 1960s Sultan Tabandeh produced a Muslim ÒresponseÓ to the 
UN Declaration of Human Rights.79 The UN Declaration outlaws 
slavery, which as we would expect, would mean the UN Declaration 
is incompatible with sharia law.80 In his response, Tabandeh confirms 
that under Islam, slavery is legal: Òslavery is a genuine legal 
condition.Ó81 If Muslims regard themselves as being at war with 
non-Muslims, they will believe they can take slaves and do as they 

78Paul Sims, ÒPolice missed chances to catch takeaway owner who groomed girls 
as young as 12 for sex after victimsÕ complaints went unheardÓ, The Daily Mail, 
15 May 2012, http://www:dailymail:co:uk/news/article-2144295/Police-missed-cha 
nces-bring-paedophile-takeaway-owner-justice-complaints-girls-young-12-acted-u 
pon:html. 
79An English translation of this book was published in 1970. 
80We believe that this is the reason why in 1990 the Organisation of Islamic Conference
 adopted The Cairo Declaration on Human Rights In Islam, which makes 
sharia law pre-eminent over any secular law, such as the UN Declaration. In 
1990 the Islamic world implicitly rejected the UN Declaration of Human Rights. 
http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/instree/cairodeclaration.html. 
81Sultan Tabandeh, A Muslim Commentary on the Universal Declaration of Human
 Rights, translated by F.T.Goulding, London, 1970, p.25. 

255 



7. 
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CULTURAL 
BACKGROUND 
want with them. Some Muslims will argue that slaves can only be 
taken in jihad, and jihad can only be authorised by the ruling Muslim 
(the Caliph). However, Mohammed never envisaged a time when 
there would be no Caliph. So, individual Muslims who decide they 
are at war with us ÒkafirsÓ may well believe they are acting 
Islamically in taking non-Muslim women as their sex-slaves, with or 
without the existence of a Caliph. And as we have seen,82 there are a 
variety of Muslim organisations in Britain who are working for the 
return of the Caliphate, such organisations being able to get huge 
numbers of Muslims to attend their conferences in Britain. These 
organisations in Britain have also been associated with campaigns 
attempting to get Muslim men to seduce non-Muslim girls. 

There are other features of British society which indicate that 
Muslims do see themselves as being at war with us and our values. 
Let us ignore the more than 300 Muslims who have been convicted of 
terrorist offences since 2001,83 as they can be said to be atypical of 
the way most Muslims behave. Far more significantly, Muslims are 
5% of the UK population, but only 0.4% of the armed forces. This 
massive under-representation is indicative that most Muslims view the 
UK as the enemy. Al Qaeda state that Muslims are free to deceive 
non-Muslims in any way they like, but the limit to this is they must 
not join the army in a non-Muslim country.84 If we consider how the 
Muslim population of Britain is mostly youthful, then this 
discrepancy between the number in the total population compared 
with the number in the armed forces is far greater.85 

82See section 4.7 2001 Derby and ÒReal CaliphateÓ and section 4.11 2005 Luton 
and ÒReal CaliphateÓ. 
83https://www:mi5:gov:uk/home/the-threats/terrorism/international-terrorism/interna 
tional-terrorist-plots/arrests-and-convictions:html. 
84See Raymond Ibrahim, The Al-Qaeda Reader, 2007, p.92. 
85For example, Muslims are 21% of those in Òyoung offenderÓ institutions. ÒMuslim 
youth custody numbers riseÓ, BBC News website, 7 Dec 2012, http://www:bbc:c 
o:uk/news/uk-20630628. We assume this is not a sign that Muslims are much more 
criminal than average, but rather a sign that a higher proportion of young people are 
Muslims. If the number of young Muslims is closer to 20% than to 5% we see how 

256 



7. 
ISLAMIC 
CULTURAL 
BACKGROUND 
No doubt some will argue we are misunderstanding the idea that 
slavery is legal in Islam. However, that slavery is legal under 
Islamic law was also the expert view of the UNÕs expert panel on 
slavery.86 Muslims in Sudan and Arabia had no problem taking and 
buying slaves in the decades after 1924, when the Caliphate was 
abolished. If they had applied the rule that slavery was only 
permissible when there was a Caliph-approved jihad, then there 
would have been no need for the U.N. to press for Muslim countries 
to abolish slavery after World War 2. The abolition of the Caliphate 
would have seen the abolition of slaves in Muslim countries. But 
slavery continued even after the Caliphate was abolished in 1924. 
Even when the very Islamic Gulf states finally outlawed slavery in the 
1960s and 1970s, slavery is still going on in Muslim countries like 
Mauritania and Sudan.87 It is clear from this, that the Muslim 

much more stark is the contrast that Muslims are only 0.4% of the armed forces. 
Statistically speaking, there are no Muslims in the armed forces. 
86United Nations, Ad Hoc Committee of Experts on Slavery -Draft Report, 1951, 


p.77 

87 

Slavery in Sudan was revived in 1983, when the Arab Muslim government
 of Sudan began using slave raids as a weapon in its war to 
put down Southern rebellion against the governmentÕs imposition of 
Islamic law. The government armed Arab Muslim militia groups, 
and encouraged them to raid Southern villages, steal their property, 
and take their women and children as slaves. Tens of thousands 
of people were captured and enslaved. A peace treaty in 2005 put 
an end to the slave raids, and paved the way for the south to become
 an independent country in 2011. However, the treaty provided
 no way home for those already enslaved Ð as many as 35,000 
people. Today, CSI continues working to bring these people home. 

http://csi-usa:org/slave_liberation:html 

Normally the Left are obsessed with the issue of slavery, but it transpires their interest 
is really only an interest in slavery where white people are the masters and black 
people are the slaves. When it comes to Islamic slavery they essentially ignore it, and 
will do all the can to even avoid mentioning Islam in this context. Thus, even when 
a left-wing publication like The Guardian does make a rare reference to the on-going 
enslavement of black people by Muslim Arabs in Mauritania, the Left refer to the 

257 



7. 
ISLAMIC 
CULTURAL 
BACKGROUND 
attitudes to slavery have persisted, despite the absence of a Caliph, 
and despite the UN Declaration of Human Rights saying that slavery 
is to be illegal. 

The 1951 UN report estimated that there were 750,000 slaves 
living in Arabia.88 Even during World War 2, whenever the Royal 
Navy was preoccupied elsewhere, ships carrying slaves would arrive 
for the slave markets in Arabia.89 There is thus plenty of evidence 
that the Islamic penchant for slavery existed long after the end of 
the Caliphate. Some black historians have pointed out that Muslims 
took more black people as slaves than Europe and America ever did: 
Òeven more vast millions of slaves were taken from Africa to the 
Islamic countries of the Middle East and North Africa over the 
centuries than to the Western Hemisphere.Ó90 For Muslims, race is 
not the issue. Muslim supremacism is about contempt and 
hostility for those who are not Muslims, whatever the colour of 
their skin. So, Muslims took white people, black people and 
Asians as their slaves. Slavery in Islam involved slaves taken from 
Africa, Europe and Asia. Over a 300 year period, Muslims took over 
1 million white Europeans as slaves.91 And as we have seen with the 
Muslim grooming gangs: race is not (primarily) the issue: they 
groomed and prostituted Asian (Sikh) girls as well as white 
non-Muslim girls. 

Whilst the Atlantic slave trade was principally about using 
black slaves as labourers, in the Islamic slave trade, slaves were 

slavers as ÒMoorsÓ, with no mention of Islam or sharia law. Monica Mark, ÒSlavery 
still shackles Mauritania, 31 years after its abolitionÓ, The Guardian, 14 Aug 2012, 
http://www:theguardian:com/world/2012/aug/14/slavery-still-shackles-mauritania. 
88See United Nations, Ad Hoc Committee of Experts on Slavery -Draft Report, 
1951, p.84 
89See United Nations, Ad Hoc Committee of Experts on Slavery -Draft Report, 


90Thomas Sowell, Race and Culture, 1994, pp.208-209 
91See Giles Milton, White Gold: The Extraordinary Story of Thomas Pellow and 
North AfricaÕs One Million European Slaves, London, 2005. 

258 



7. 
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CULTURAL 
BACKGROUND 
also used as soldiers and for sexual pleasure. Some 10th century 
Muslim rulers would have harems consisting of 12,000 sex slaves, 
but even lowly tradesmen might have a couple of sex-slaves.92 

Muslims invaded Spain and occupied that land for 700 years: 

Islamic Spain became the hub of a vast new slave-trade. 
Hundreds of thousands of European slaves, both from 
Christian territories and from the lands of the pagan 
Slavs, were imported into the Caliphate, there to be used 
(if female) as concubines or to be castrated (if male) and 
made into harem guards or the personal body-guards of 
the Caliph.93 

This carried on in north Africa, where many British sailors were 
captured and enslaved. Prof. Davis has calculated that, between 1500 
and 1800, more than 1 million white Christians were enslaved by 
Muslim slaving ships in the Mediterranean and off the coast of North 
Africa.94 Slave-taking raids were not unknown on land, and in such 
land raids about 40% of those captured were females of reproductive 
age.95 Prof. Davis observes that only a minority of those enslaved at 
sea or on land would be sold back to their country of origin. However, 
this was not the case for women and girls who were enslaved, as 

92Ronald Segal, IslamÕs Black Slaves, 2001, p.39. Similar stories have emerged 
about the deposed Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi. Becky Evans, ÒInside 
GaddafiÕs harem: Shocking book reveals depraved dictatorÕs sexual abuse 
of schoolgirls he kept locked in basement below fortressÓ, Daily Mail, 25 
Aug 2013, http://www:dailymail:co:uk/news/article-2401702/Gaddafis-harem-Shock 
ing-book-reveals-dictators-sexual-abuse-schoolgirls:html . 
93Emmet Scott, Mohammed and Charlemagne Revisited, New English Review 
Press, Nashville, 2012, p.189. 
94Robert C. Davis, Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the 
Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast, Italy, 1500-1800, Palgrave MacMillan, 2004, 

p.23. 
95Robert C. Davis, Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the 
Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast, Italy, 1500-1800, Palgrave MacMillan, 2004, 
p.36. 
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BACKGROUND 
Òmany of them ended up as concubine slavesÓ, i.e. sex-slaves.96 One 
18th century sailor who escaped wrote a memoir, and noted that Òthe 
Sultan had more than 4,000 concubines...The SultanÕs harem 
contained European slave girls who had been captured at sea.Ó97 In 
the 115 years leading up to 1681, one writer calculates that more than 
3 million Hungarians were enslaved by Muslims and shipped to the 
Ottoman empire, the Caliphate.98 

Western historians are not the only people to have examined the 
various facets of 1300 years of Islamic slave-taking. The Indian 
historian K.S.Lai produced a book called The Muslim Slave System in 
Medieval India, where he noted: 

From the day India became a target of Muslim invaders 
its people began to be enslaved in droves to be sold in 
foreign lands or employed in various capacities on menial 
and not-so-menial jobs within the country. To understand 
this phenomenon it is necessary to go into the origins and 
development of the Islamic system of slavery. For, 
wherever the Muslims went, mostly as conquerors but 
also as traders, there developed a system of slavery 
peculiar to the clime, terrain and populace of the place.99 

Slavery thus pre-existed British rule in India, and was abolished in 
1843, when the East India Company became part of the British 
Empire.100 K.S.Lai notes that from the original armed invasion of 

96Robert C. Davis, Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the 
Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast, Italy, 1500-1800, Palgrave MacMillan, 2004, 

p.172. 
97See Giles Milton, White Gold: The Extraordinary Story of Thomas Pellow and 
North AfricaÕs One Million European Slaves, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 2005, 
pp.120-121. 
98Paul Fregosi, Jihad 
in 
the 
West: 
Muslim 
Conquests 
from 
the 
7th 
to 
the 
21st 
Centuries,
 Prometheus Books, New York, 1998, pg.329. 
99K.S.Lai, The Muslim Slave System in Medieval India, Aditya Prakasha, New 
Delhi, 1994. 
100http://en:wikipedia:org/wiki/Abolition_of_slavery_timeline. 
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7. 
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CULTURAL 
BACKGROUND 
India by Muslims, down to the time that Muslims in India began to 
lose power to European imperial interventions there, Muslims were 
taking women as sex slaves: Òfrom the day the Muslim invaders 
marched into India to the time when their political power declined, 
women were systematically captured and enslaved throughout the 
length and breadth of the country.Ó101 Obviously, since most of the 
Muslims in Britain trace their recent ancestry back to the area within 
the geographic bounds of the countries now known as Pakistan, 
Bangladesh and India, they have an ancestral history where women 
and girls were taken as sex-slaves for 1000 years. As K.S.Lai says, 
the Òinterest of Muslims in sex slavery was universal and 
widespread.Ó102 Thus we see that throughout the history of Islam, 
slave-taking was endemic and persistent. Moreover, slaves were 
drawn from every edge of the Islamic empire: white slaves, black 
slaves, Asian slaves. Thus many experts recognise that slave-taking 
has been a fundamental feature of Islam from the 7th century to the 
20th century. Multiculturalists will find this difficult to accept, 
because they only pay lip-service to ÒdiversityÓ, and will avoid 
contemplating what it really means for people to have fundamentally 
different values: deep down multiculturalists think that everyone in 
the world is a liberal who wants equality for all. 

In the early 19th century it was exceptional for any family in 
Mecca not to have black slaves.103 Throughout the 19th century, it 
was Britain who was determined to destroy the slave trade, and it was 
only under duress in the decades after World War 2 that many Islamic 
states begrudgingly ÒoutlawedÓ slavery. One could argue that the 

101K.S.Lai, The Muslim Slave System in Medieval India, Aditya Prakasha, New 
Delhi, 1994. http://voiceofdharma:org/books/mssmi/ch12:htm. He cites one battle in 
1761, when the Muslims beheaded all the men and took 22,000 women and children 
as slaves, clearly emulating the behaviour of Mohammed as detailed in The Life of 
Muhammed. 
102K.S.Lai, The Muslim Slave System in Medieval India, Aditya Prakasha, New 
Delhi, 1994.http://voiceofdharma:org/books/mssmi/ch12:htm. 
103Ronald Segal, IslamÕs Black Slaves, 2001, p.50. 

261 



7. 
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CULTURAL 
BACKGROUND 
working conditions of many modern day immigrant workers in those 
countries is little better than the working conditions of slaves. 

The Saudis replaced the 450,000 slaves of the 1950s with 

8.4 million guest workers. These workers are often 
treated like slaves, but they are not property and are 
therefore even more disposable than the slaves were. 
Exact numbers are hard to come by, but Nepal alone 
reported 265 worker deaths in Saudi Arabia in a single 
104

year.

In 2011, British newspapers carried a story of a female political 
activist and celebrity in Kuwait, who advocated a return to the 
legalisation of sex-slaves, and suggested that female prisoners could 
be forced to become such sex-slaves. ÒThere was no shame in it and it 
is not haram (forbidden) under Islamic Sharia law.Ó105 She doesnÕt 
suggest that Muslim women should be sex-slaves; the sex-slaves were 
to be drawn from non-Muslim women. It was reported that she had 
visited Mecca, and asked Saudi muftis if such sex-slavery was 
permitted, and they told her it was. In reports from Arabian media, 
she is quoted saying that the religious experts told her Òthe only 
solution for a decent man who has the means, who is overpowered by 
desire and who does not want to commit fornication, is to acquire 
jawariÕ [sex-slaves].Ó106 In fact, one can find discussions of slavery on 

104Daniel Greenfield, ÒSaudi Arabia: The Middle EastÕs Real Apartheid StateÓ, 
Frontpage, 24 Feb 2014, http://www:frontpagemag:com/2014/dgreenfield/saudi-a 
rabia-the-middle-easts-real-apartheid-state/. See also Jamie Glazov, ÒThe Exploitation
 of Immigrant Workers in the Middle EastÓ, Frontpage, 10 Jul 
2012, http://frontpagemag:com/2012/jamie-glazov/the-exploitation-of-immigrant-w 
orkers-in-the-middle-east/ and Human Rights Watch, ÒBad Dreams: Exploitation 
and Abuse of Migrant Workers in Saudi ArabiaÓ, 14 Jul 2004, http://www:refworl 
d:org/docid/412ef32a4:html. 
105ÒMen should be allowed sex slaves and female prisoners could do the 
job -and all this from a WOMAN politician from KuwaitÓ, Daily Mail, 7 
Jun 2011, http://www:dailymail:co:uk/news/article-2000292/Men-allowed-sex-slave 
s-female-prisoners-job--WOMAN-politician-Kuwait:html. 
106ÒMen should have sex slaves, says female KuwaitiÓ, The National, 6 

262 



7. 
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CULTURAL 
BACKGROUND 
21st century English-language websites, with devout Muslims 
expressing how much better their life would be if they had 
sex-slaves.107 Another Pakistani forum has a post from 2000, which 
says: ÒIt is permissible to have sex even with a prostitute (free of cost) 
once you take control of her by force and declare her a kafir.Ó108 We 
find it very hard to imagine devout Christians expressing such 
sentiment. But then, we are prepared to admit that not all cultures 
have the same values. Given all this history, how can anyone dismiss 
an Islamic basis to the grooming gang phenomenon? 

We are not saying that all the Muslims involved in these grooming 
gangs have set about these activities with a systematic theological 
plan to take non-Muslim girls as sex-slaves as some form of jihad 
(although, if the stories of Muslim fundamentalist organisations 
encouraging Muslims to use alcohol to seduce non-Muslims are true, 
then that may well be a reasonable interpretation). What we are doing 
is looking at Islam to see how it is that Islamic theology and the life of 
Mohammed could make Muslims consider this abuse reasonable: 
other Muslims have known about these gangs for decades, but done 
nothing to stop them, and have even attempted to pervert the course of 
justice to protect their Muslim ÒbrothersÓ who were raping 
non-Muslim schoolgirls. And we think that even this short analysis 
can show that sex-slavery is something that many Muslims are aware 
of as a perk of Islam, even if they cannot cite surah and verses which 
permit it and under what circumstances. Since references are found in 

June 2011, http://www:thenational:ae/news/world/middle-east/men-should-have-sex 
-slaves-says-female-kuwaiti-politician. 
107The following discussion even pre-dates the Kuwaiti womanÕs advocacy, thus it 
was not occurring because she had caused a stir. http://www:ummah:com/forum/s 
howthread:php?288555-Sex-with-slaves-Global-misunderstanding-or-permissible-!. 
Here is another discussion of this topic, which also occurred before Salwa 
al Mutairi acquired some global notoriety with her suggestions. http: 
//www:islamicboard:com/importance-etiquettes-seeking-knowledge/134304880-w 
hy-islam-alow-have-sex-slave-without-marry:html. 
108http://www:paklinks:com/gs/religion-and-scripture/39527-is-it-ok-to-have-sex-w 
ith-female-slaves-in-islam:html. 

263 



7. 
ISLAMIC 
CULTURAL 
BACKGROUND 
the Koran, the Hadiths and the Sira to taking slaves, selling slaves, 
raping slaves, prostituting slaves how could Muslims be entirely 
unaware of this part of Islamic doctrine? Just as children in the West 
grow up hearing stories of JesusÕ birth and death, of chivalrous 
knights, of Robin Hood and Richard the Lionheart, so too Muslim 
children must be told stories of MohammedÕs battles, of the Jews of 
Khaybar who he killed, of the powerful Muslim dynasties, of their 
slave armies, of their harems and concubines. Just because the media 
and schools in Britain have robbed the population of the popular 
knowledge of the millions of Europeans taken into the white slave 
trade, it does not mean that in the Muslim communities in Britain they 
have not been keeping this history of slave-taking alive. 

A history of legitimising slavery pervades the history of Islam, 
with Mohammed himself authorising the rape of slaves. In addition to 
accepting that slavery is moral, and that raping slaves is acceptable, 
Islam has a history of contempt for non-Muslims, with a legal system 
which regards non-Muslims as third-class citizens. Islam regards 
Muslim women as second-rate, and accordingly that women who do 
not dress appropriately deserve whatever abuse they get. Moreover, in 
sharia law there is a different attitude to childhood and sex than there 
is in English law: Mohammed had sex with Aisha, his favourite wife, 
at the age of 9, and this serves as exemplary behaviour in many 
Muslim countries to this day. These are aspects of Islam that seem to 
offer a good explanation for how these gangs in Britain (principally 
Pakistani Muslims) and in Holland (principally Turkish and 
Moroccan Muslims) could justify to themselves this systematic and 
criminal exploitation aimed at young girls. The Muslims involved in 
the gangs may not be able to cite any of the textual locations where 
these behaviours can be found in the corpus of Islamic texts. But even 
if many or most of the Muslims in the grooming gangs could not cite 
texts, this does not stop the values from being passed down through 
their culture. None of this should be taken to mean that all Muslims 
are walking round abusing schoolgirls, and hating non-Muslims. 

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ISLAMIC 
CULTURAL 
BACKGROUND 
Many Muslims are good people and do not follow all the strictures of 
Islam. We are not condemning all those people who were brought up 
as Muslims. However, it behoves us all to consider in what ways the 
very different values of Islam are going to cause conflict with the 
Christian, liberal and secular values of our society.109 

109In the last year, at least two cases have occurred (Bradford, Manchester) where 
Muslims kept young girls or young women as sex slaves. 

A police investigation revealed that she had been brought into the UK 
by Imrich Bodor and kept in the Bradford area by him and Petra Dzudzova
 before being sold to Abdul Shinwary. Shinwary then sold the 
victim to Azam Khan, who is the nephew of Nusrat Khan. She was 
then married to Azam Khan in a Nikah ceremony at a Burnley Mosque 
on October 13, 2012 at a time when he was due to be deported to 
Pakistan, after being refused leave to remain in the UK. ÒTrafficking
 gang jailed for more than 30 yearsÓ, Telegraph & Argus 10 Oct 
2013, http://www:thetelegraphandargus:co:uk/news/10731235:Traffic 
king_gang_jailed_for_more_than_30_years/ 

Note that the mosque took part in performing a fake Islamic marriage. This was 
apparently to enable a Muslim illegal immigrant to remain in the UK. A whole string 
of Muslims were involved in the rape and enslavement of this woman. We are left 
to wonder if the enslavement and fraudulent marriage were made known to the imam 
too. 
In the second case, a Pakistani husband and wife in Manchester were convicted. A 10 
year old deaf girl was trafficked into the UK, where she lived in a cellar as a domestic 
slave, being raped by the elderly husband. 

ÒThroughout these proceedings not one of you have shown any remorse.
 You are deeply unpleasant, highly manipulative and dishonest 
people.Ó At an earlier hearing, the jury at Manchester Crown Court 
heard that the girl, who is from Pakistan, and is profoundly deaf and 
cannot speak, was beaten and slapped as well as being forced to work 
for Ashar and his family and friends in virtual slavery as a domestic 
servant. [...] Ashar used his victim to satisfy his sexual desires as 
well as enlisting his wife to use the girlÕs details to steal more than 
£30,000 in benefits and set up several bank accounts in her name. 
Two female jurors wept as the guilty verdicts were delivered, and the 
judge said he was excusing the jurors of further jury service for a 
decade after hearing traumatic evidence. Adam Withnall and Cahal 
Milmo, ÒPensioner Ilyas Ashar sentenced to 13 years in jail for 
raping deaf and mute girl trafficked to UK from PakistanÓ, The 

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7. 
ISLAMIC 
CULTURAL 
BACKGROUND 
The doctrine of multiculturalism has no basis on which to 
condemn such practices. Multiculturalism asserts that all cultures are 
equal, and that we are not to judge those whose culture differs from 
our own. As Prof. Barrett pointed out, our society has been prepared 
to abandon the strictures of The ChildrenÕs Act (1989), even where 
the advice given is that the rights of the child must come before those 
of an adult. Our society has done this on the political expedient of 
maintaining the incoherent doctrine of multiculturalism. The elites 
whose lives and families are furthest removed from such cultural 
conflicts have shown a preparedness to sacrifice our laws, our culture 
and our children, rather than face up to what it means to have an alien 
culture such as Islam growing in our country. 

It is disgraceful that for more than a decade, political activists, 
journalists and child-care professionals have insisted that Islam 
could not be a factor. It is one thing to profess ignorance about 
whether or not Islam could be a factor. To insist that it could not 
have been a factor (when even non-experts can find much 
contradictory evidence), means the elite have spent 10 years 
misdirecting those who want to stop these gangs. The advocates of 
multiculturalism are the very people who should be willing and able 
to examine the differences between British culture and Islamic culture 
which could lead to Muslim men being so disproportionately 
represented among the perpetrators in these grooming gangs. Instead, 
we have had decades where those who champion difference and 
diversity have refused to countenance the possibility that those from 
other cultures and ethnicities which form a new, minority group 

Independent, 23 Oct 2013, http://www:independent:co:uk/news/uk/cr 
ime/pensioner-ilyas-ashar-sentenced-to-13-years-in-jail-for-raping-d 
eaf-and-mute-girl-trafficked-to-uk-from-pakistan-8884843:html. 

Note that Ilyas Ashar has the beard of a devout Muslim, and that members of his 
family and his friends were all making use of this enslaved deaf girl. Clearly many 
people in the community around this family knew what was going on, but did not see 
that there was anything immoral or illegal here. It is not clear if the deaf girl was a 
Muslim, a Christian or a Hindu at the time when she was trafficked into Britain. 

266 



7. 
ISLAMIC 
CULTURAL 
BACKGROUND 
within our society might have some significantly different values from 
the mainstream. 

Does Islam cause the grooming gangs? Unless one is in the 
controlled conditions of a chemistry lab, events often have more than 
one causal component. This is almost certainly the case in complex 
social phenomena with history to them. Islam is very probably a 
necessary condition for the grooming gangs in western Europe (since 
this kind of criminality is new here), but in an environment where 
Muslims are not a majority, that alone is not sufficient for these gangs 
to succeed. In a tolerant, liberal society, where women and girls have 
far more freedom than in other societies, many other factors had to 
come into play. The following are all probable contributing factors: 

. 
teachers, police officers and social workers deciding that it 
wasnÕt worth the trouble to perform some of their duties, and so 
turning a blind eye 
. 
schools and social workers being unable to warn the children in 
their care, for fear of being thought ÒracistÓ 
. 
parents being unable to warn their children because they simply 
did not know that the problem existed or didnÕt know the full 
extent of the problem 
. 
Muslims refusing to inform on their ÒbrothersÓ to the police, 
putting their allegiance to child-rapists above their allegiance to 
decent people and to children 
. 
Muslims, political activists and academics insisting that it is 
racist to point out the religious homogeneity of the perpetrators, 
and how the religious background of the perpetrators differs 
from that of the victims 
. 
local media ignoring the events happening in front of their eyes 
. 
national media ignoring the common features between events in 
different areas 
267 



7. 
ISLAMIC 
CULTURAL 
BACKGROUND 
. 
sociologists preferring a safe, non-contentious life, rather than 
using their academic freedom to say what cannot be said 
. 
Muslims, theologians, academics and journalists refusing to 
actually look into the history of Islam to see if there could be 
any parallels between the grooming gangs and that history 
. 
feminists not caring what happens to these girls, because they 
think that race comes higher than gender on some pyramid of 
victimhood 
. 
the advocacy of multiculturalism and political correctness 
demanding that people do not judge other cultures, demanding 
that certain things never be said; such advocacy leading 
Muslims to believe that their cultural values can be transported 
to the host culture 
. 
politicians preferring to brush the problem under the carpet, 
hoping that it wonÕt appear again before they are next elected 
No doubt all these things contributed to the grooming gangs evolving, 
them learning what worked, them learning what they could get away 
with. At one point in Edge of the City, one of the women who spoke 
to Anna Hall heard a Muslim man outside her home, saying to the 
womanÕs daughter: we Muslims are going to have to be careful what 
we do with you girls, as the police are starting to come down on us. 
That was 2003. But it wasnÕt until 2013 that mass arrests for 
grooming happened in that area. There is no indication yet if the 
people who have been arrested now were active in 2003. If not, then 
that means many more Muslims have got away with this grooming 
since 2003 and earlier. And we are sure that the grooming gangs are 
already evolving, in response to the upsurge in prosecutions since 
2009. 

268 



8. The Scale of the Problem 
ThereÕs a culture here of denial and cover-up and a 
refusal to accept the reality that we have men ... who 
treat young girls as objects for their sexual pleasure. 
ItÕs time to tell the truth. We must root out this evil. 

Ð Denis MacShane MP, The 
Times, 2012 
In the previous section, we briefly analysed Islamic theology and 
history, looking for those doctrines and principles which could 
explain why it is that Muslims might find this form of criminality 
more desirous and more acceptable than do people from other 
cultures. The grooming gangs were often made up of brothers or other 
related men. In other communities in Britain, men who are involved 
in such crimes do not feel free to pass their victims around within 
their community, to profit from the victimÕs pain and misery. When 
other Muslims in our towns have known what the gangs were up to, 
not only did they not try and stop them, they admitted they would 
never inform the police, because their primary allegiance was to the 
criminals as Muslims, not to the victims, not to the rule of law. When 
asked by local politicians or the mothers of victims to intercede and to 
tell the grooming gangs that they must stop, Muslim leaders refused. 
When a Muslim like Mohammed Shafiq spoke out, he received death 
threats. Furthermore, we have seen that when a prosecution is 
underway, male and female Muslims who are not on trial have gone 
out of their way to intimidate the victims from testifying or to 
intimidate them into not pressing charges. 

Every formal discussion of this type of criminality has either 
refused to admit that Muslims are disproportionately represented 

269 



8. 
THE 
SCALE 
OF 
THE 
PROBLEM 
amongst the perpetrators, or if that much is admitted, then there has 
been a refusal to contemplate that there could be something in Islamic 
doctrine or Muslim culture which leads Muslims into this form of 
criminality. We showed in the previous chapter that slavery has been a 
part of Islam from the creation of this religion, right up until the 
1960s and beyond. We showed that Sharia law, based on unchanging 
Dark Age texts, brings values from 1300 years ago into the modern 
world. We showed that Islam is supremacist, and that there is a long 
tradition of Muslim contempt for non-Muslims. Agents of the state in 
Britain have excused the criminal behaviour of Muslim men who 
raped and pimped schoolgirls; yet our politicians, media, child-care 
professionals and academics refuse to even consider the way Islam 
has shaped the behaviour of Muslim men when it comes to explaining 
the grooming gangs, despite Muslim men being overwhelmingly 
present among those convicted for this form of criminality.1 

Having completed our analysis of the historical and cultural 
aspects of this phenomenon, we must consider the future. We are 
going to extrapolate how we see the phenomenon of Muslim 

1Between 2001 and 2011, the Muslim population of Britain was between 3% to 5% of 
the total population; if the distribution of Muslim ethnicity among the perpetrators of 
this crime was random, then there should be no reason for the incidence of Muslims 
among the perpetrators to have been higher than 3% to 5%. At the lowest levels 
of estimates, Muslims are 28% of the perpetrators (see the CEOP data). However, 
Muslims are 90% of those convicted for these crimes (based on Andrew NorfolkÕs 
idea to analyse the convictions in grooming trials; see Andrew Norfolk, ÒThe 17 
cases identified by The Times which showed a pattern of exploitationÓ, The Times, 
5 Jan 2011, http://www:thetimes:co:uk/tto/news/uk/crime/article2863078:ece). Even 
taking the lowest figure of a prevalence of 28% instead of 3% to 5%, we find that 
Muslim men are massively over-represented among the perpetrators. It should be 
noted, that despite the UK government and media having a virtual blackout on the 
information concerning the number of Muslims in prison, when statistics for prisons 
do leak out, we see that Muslims are over-represented among incarcerated criminals. 
At a time when the official figures for the number of Muslims in the UK stated they 
were around 3% of the population, Muslims were 12% of the prison population. http: 
//news:bbc:co:uk/1/hi/8558590:stm. When it comes to those convicted of grooming-
related cases, we see that Muslims are more than 90%. 

270 



8. 
THE 
SCALE 
OF 
THE 
PROBLEM 
grooming gangs progressing, and how we see our society dealing with 
this progression. Evidence shows that the tendency of Muslim men to 
commit this crime is so far in excess of the tendency within the native 
British population,2 that it will be impossible to remedy this without 
some profound changes to law enforcement, criminal justice and 
legislation. There are more than 50 gangs currently being investigated 
in England.3 That is, the number of gangs currently being investigated 
is almost twice as many as the total number of gangs convicted in the 
last 16 years combined!4 And despite the 25 years in which there has 
been evidence for the operations of these gangs, it was only in 2011 
that the national police and child-care agencies issued reports on the 
phenomenon and started to complain about the lack of information 
concerning the scale of the problem. If EDL had not been loudly 
protesting about Islam since 2009 it seems highly likely that none of 
those reports by national agencies and charities would have ever 
appeared. There are good reasons to believe that the reports from 
CEOP and The ChildrenÕs Commissioner greatly underestimate the 
scale of the problem.5 

Significant changes to law enforcement practices are unlikely 
when politicians and police chiefs will not even openly state that there 

2And, indeed, above the tendency in non-Muslim ethnic minorities in Britain. 
3Justin Penrose & Vicky Smith, ÒPolice probe at least 54 more evil child sex grooming
 gangsÓ, The Daily Mirror, 19 May 2013 http://www:mirror:co:uk/news/uk-news/ 
police-probe-least-54-more-1896991. 
4See section 11. Appendix 1: Grooming Gang Convictions. 
5Those reports talk in terms of around 2,500 victims across the country, but 
with no official trace of grooming gang activity in London before 2014, the 
Metropolitan Police issued a report saying they had discovered 500 victims in 
just 6 months. Justin Davenport, ÒDetectives investigating 50 Ôvery seriousÕ
 child grooming sex cases in LondonÓ, London Evening Standard, 3 Feb 
2014, http://www:standard:co:uk/news/crime/detectives-investigating-50-very-serio 
us-child-grooming-sex-cases-in-london-9103637:html. If these grooming cases 
match the pattern found in previous convictions, then the perpetrators will be overwhelmingly
 Muslim. However, since London has a large population of immigrants 
from all over the world, it may be that the situation in London differs from the rest of 
the country. 

271 



8. 
THE 
SCALE 
OF 
THE 
PROBLEM 
is a problem. It was in 2013 when the Parliamentary inquiry finally 
accepted that Òlocalised groomingÓ existed -10 years after the 
controversy exploded in Bradford, 18 after BarnardoÕs got close to 
£700k to work with the victims of the gangs in that city. Yet even after 
all this time, Parliament has set about looking for a couple of 
individuals to scapegoat: they do not blame the national police 
agencies for their failure to gather intelligence, they do not blame 
anyone for the failure to educate schoolgirls so they could protect 
themselves, they do not blame the state-funded Muslim community 
organisations for their refusal to tackle these social problems in which 
Muslims are profoundly implicated. Parliament accepted that there 
was an Islamic connection (the only cleric to testify was a Muslim). 
They do not even state the need to examine the Islamic connection. 

There is no sign that there is any will amongst politicians or police 
chiefs to really tackle this problem. It would appear they would prefer 
not to gather the statistics, not to enforce the laws, not to educate 
potential victims. Schools are not allowed to smack children because 
it is considered cruel, yet even as the Parliamentary report was 
published, evidence was emerging that outside the school gates were 
ruthless, violent, scheming criminals, looking for an opportunity to 
lure schoolgirls into sex-slavery.6 For at least 10 years (and possibly 
25 years) there has been a conspiracy of silence by the institutions 
in this country. Even this late in the day, the public are told by the 
media, Muslim leaders and academics that it is Òonly a small 
minorityÓ of Muslims who are involved. But if we look into the 
documents provided by the national agencies we are told that the 
statistics available are woefully inadequate, the implication being 
that the prevalence of Muslim men amongst those statistics might 
be some kind of error in data-gathering. They cannot have it both 
ways: if the statistics are so woefully inadequate, then they have 

6See 14. Appendix 4: Leeds School Warning and 15. Appendix 5: Sheffield School 
Warning. These kinds of ad hoc warnings to parents seem to be the only steps taken 
by individual schools to protect their children. 

272 



8. 
THE 
SCALE 
OF 
THE 
PROBLEM 
no idea of the true scale of this epidemic amongst Muslim men in 
Britain. 

The 2008 Panorama documentary focused on Lancashire Police, 
who are considered to be the police force dealing best with this kind 
of crime.7 In that documentary, the police on the front-line stated that 
intelligence-gathering is vital to be able to implement prosecutions, 
and long-term surveillance evidence may be required to actually 
secure a conviction. Yet in that documentary the Òspecialist unitÓ 
consisted of officers working just 60 hours per week (one full-time, 
one part-time). The Home Office minister interviewed in the 
documentary was fairly complacent: the Home Office said that new 
targets would be issued and that an educational video would be shown 
in schools. We should be highly sceptical about these kinds of 
promises: there is no evidence that the video commissioned in 2008 
by SOCA has ever been shown in schools.8 In the last three to four 
years, we have seen a surge in arrests and prosecutions, but then 
arrests and prosecutions followed the controversy around Edge of the 
City, only to have the team shut down afterwards, and no more 
convictions in West Yorkshire until the grooming gangs were back on 
the national agenda after 2011. The current surge of prosecutions 
could be planned to be short-lived, a response by the authorities to 
bad public relations, which they hope will soon die down. As a 
spokeswoman for CROP (Coalition for the Removal of Pimping) 
stated in the Panorama documentary, the problems are treated as 
local, and as soon as they are ÒresolvedÓ in an area, the resources are 
removed. Until this is recognised as a national problem, dating back 
decades, and with sufficient resources to implement a national policy 
for dealing with it, we should expect this current surge in prosecutions 
to be short-lived. If we are right that Islamic doctrine is at the root of 

7Home Affairs Select Committee report ÒChild Sexual Exploitation and the Response
 to Localised GroomingÓ, 10 Jun 2013, http://www:publications:parliament:u 
k/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmhaff/68/68i:pdf p.32. 
8Andrew Norfolk, ÒAnger as educational film on grooming withheldÓ, The Times, 
21 Jan 2011, http://www:thetimes:co:uk/tto/news/uk/article2883087:ece. 


273 



8. 
THE 
SCALE 
OF 
THE 
PROBLEM 
this phenomenon, then the problem will not go away without 
addressing this doctrine. On average, the Muslim population has 
doubled every decade, and surveys show that younger Muslims are 
even more committed to Islamic values than older Muslims.9 If the 
Muslim community and Muslim clerics found these grooming gangs 
truly offensive, then the Muslim community would have helped the 
police instead of the gangs, and the majority of mosques in Britain 
would have read a sermon denouncing the grooming gangs.10 

Between 1995 and 2008, the British economy was booming. 
Since 2008 the economy has been in recession, and we are supposedly 
now in a state of austerity, which could apparently last for another 50 
years.11 Bringing the grooming gangs to justice is resource-heavy 
police work: in one case, over 140 officers carried out the arrest of a 
mere 13 suspects.12 Police struggled to allocate money and officers to 
this crime even before the recent economic downturn. Whilst 
destroying these gangs must no doubt give individual officers a great 
sense of satisfaction, police paymasters have every incentive to 
minimise the number of such rape gangs that the police unearth. As 
things stand now, five police forces say they cannot manage to make 
the cuts demanded of them by the current government.13 There are 

9ÒBritish Muslims poll: Key pointsÓ, BBC News, 29 Jan 2007, http://news:bbc:co:u 
k/1/hi/6309983:stm. 
10Ben Wilkinson, ÒNational sermon on child grooming shunned as 
a stunt by many Muslims in OxfordÓ, Oxford Mail, 29 Jun 2013, 


http://www:oxfordmail:co:uk/news/10516465:National_sermon_on_child_gro 
oming_shunned_as_a_stunt_by_many_Muslims_in_Oxford/ 


11Philip Aldrick, and Emma Rowley, ÒAgeing Britain Ôfaces up to five more decades 
of austerityÕÓ, The Telegraph, 13 Jul 2013,http://www:telegraph:co:uk/finance/econo 
mics/10178284/Ageing-Britain-faces-up-to-five-more-decades-of-austerity:html. 
12Laura Jones, ÒBullfinch Update: 13th man arrestedÓ, Oxford Mail, 
22 Mar 2012, http://www:oxfordmail:co:uk/news/9608316:BULLFINCH_UPDAT 
E__13th_man_arrested/. No doubt there were dozens of other officers involved in 
this case, but in a more administrative capacity. 
13Alan Travis, ÒPolice forces will struggle to make further cuts, says watchdogÓ, 
The Guardian, 18 Jul 2013, http://www:theguardian:com/uk-news/2013/jul/18/police 
-forces-futher-cuts-watchdog. 


274 



8. 
THE 
SCALE 
OF 
THE 
PROBLEM 
good reasons to doubt that police forces will find additional money 
for lengthy and expensive surveillance operations. As the failed 
prosecution over the death of one 13 year old victim of grooming 
gangs demonstrated, prosecutions which rely on surveillance evidence 
can easily fail if the staff are not competent or the project is 
under-resourced.14 Such failures can then be very costly in 
compensation. The cheapest route for police forces is to ignore the 
gangs as soon as the issue is off the national agenda. 

Across the country, one of the ways in which police forces are 
trying to save money, is by cutting back on police patrols and on 
community policing (expecting and hoping that the deficiencies 
incurred can be partially remedied by volunteer-run ÒNeighbourhood 
WatchÓ programmes). Yet, going off past behaviour, there is no 
indication that the Muslim community will play any part in reporting 
the grooming gangs to the police, nor will they testify against them in 
court. Thus, any such cutbacks in policing are unlikely to be offset by 
increased police cooperation from the Muslim community over the 
activities of the Muslim grooming gangs. There is an extensive 
network of mosques across the country, but over 25 years they have 
shown no interest in admonishing the grooming gangs,15 let alone 
reporting such criminals to the police. In the light of these cutbacks, 
reductions in local policing are likely to prove detrimental to pursuing 
the grooming gangs. Whilst the Muslim community will demand 
money to set up a reporting service to solicit hitherto supposedly 
unreported incidents of abuse against Muslims; we know of no 
evidence that over the past 25 years Muslims have sought money to 

14Graham Smith, ÒPolice rapped for blunders in murder case of girl Ôturned into 
kebab meatÕÓ, The Daily Mail, 16 Oct 2009, http://www:dailymail:co:uk/news/artic 
le-1220815/Police-disciplined-blunders-murder-case-girl-turned-kebabs:html. 
15Recently there was much cheering amongst the chattering classes, over the news 
that mosques were going to deliver an anti-grooming sermon across the country on 
the same day. What received less notice, was that the majority of mosques did not 
take part. There are 1500 to 2000 mosques in Britain, and only 500 read the sermon. 
http://news:bbc:co:uk/1/hi/magazine/7118503:stm. 

275 



8. 
THE 
SCALE 
OF 
THE 
PROBLEM 
fund a hotline where they could report the very real sexual abuse and 
violent abuse of schoolgirls by Muslim men. 

Even if the police had the determination, the resources and the 
evidence to bring the criminals to court, these crimes are very difficult 
to prosecute, as the experts confirm and as the gangs realise. The 
victims are often scared, they are conflicted and filled with feelings of 
guilt, shame and self-loathing. The victimÕs incentive, and possibly 
her will, to see a trial to a conclusion, is likely to be limited. This is 
probably why in all the cases reported so far, the defendants have put 
their victims through a full trial, despite their manifest guilt, with all 
the suffering aggressive cross-examination entails for the victims. 

The teenager spent 15 days in the witness box, 12 of 
them under cross-examination by a succession of defence 
lawyers... Mohammed Tayyab Khan, another defence 
barrister, went so far as to ask whether she repented her 
sins.16 

This is the kind of thing the victims have to go through, despite it 
being a legal impossibility for the under-age girls to have ever legally 
consented to these sexual acts (a fact which the Parliamentary inquiry 
felt was necessary to draw to the attention of the courts and child-care 
professionals). Even when prosecutions have been successful, apart 
from a few recent cases, the sentencing has generally been very 
light.17 

Over the last five decades, the Muslim population of the UK has 
on average doubled every 10 years.18 Assuming that nothing happens 

16Home Affairs Select Committee report ÒChild Sexual Exploitation and the Response
 to Localised GroomingÓ, 10 Jun 2013, http://www:publications:parliament:u 
k/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmhaff/68/68i:pdf p.44. 
17For example, in a case in Rochdale in 2010, involving 9 Muslim men, the highest
 sentence was 7 years, and the lowest was 8 months, with most receiving 2 years 
or less. http://www:rochdaleonline:co:uk/news-features/2/news-headlines/45322/ni 
ne-men-convicted-of-child-sexual-exploitation. 
18http://en:wikipedia:org/wiki/Islam_in_the_United_Kingdom#Demography_and_e 

276 



8. 
THE 
SCALE 
OF 
THE 
PROBLEM 
to deter Muslims from committing this form of crime (and remember, 
it is very lucrative and there is a 25 year history of most of the 
perpetrators escaping justice), then every decade we can assume that 
the number of grooming gangs will be double the number of the 
previous decade (at the very least). As the density of the Muslim 
population grows across Britain, we are likely to see Ònetwork 
effectsÓ:19 the greater prevalence of Muslims among the population 
means that Muslims are steadily moving into areas of Britain where 
there previously were no Muslims, it is easier for the gangs to make 
connections with a wider network of schoolgirls and a wider network 
of customers for their pimping operations, and as their numbers grow, 
it will be easier for the gangs to get assistance and protection from 
sympathetic Muslims. Thus, even if the number of prosecutions 
doubles decade on decade, this will probably be an indicator that the 
number of girls being groomed is also doubling each decade. The best 
hope of stopping or slowing the gangs is to educate the pool of 
potential victims. However, that is not going to happen: because 
Muslims and their allies will not permit educational programmes 
which warn schoolgirls that these grooming gangs exist and the 
perpetrators are almost always Muslims. Such an educational project 
was commissioned in 2008, but despite promise after promise, has 
never seen the light of day. Indeed, it has taken 25 years for 
Parliament to even admit that the perception that the gangs are mostly 
Muslims is accurate. 

In the last year or two, sentencing seems to have got heavier, 
perhaps as a reflection of the even greater seriousness of the crimes 

thnic_background; see also ÒUK Muslim DemographicsÓ, The Telegraph, 4 Feb 
2011, http://www:telegraph:co:uk/news/wikileaks-files/london-wikileaks/8304838/ 
UK-Muslim-DEMOGRAPHICS-C-RE8-02527:html. Some Muslim academics 
claim that changes made to questions on the 2011 Census could mean that the Muslim 
population is significantly higher than the published data based on the Census would 
lead people to believe. Leon Moosavi, ÒWhy Has the Number of Muslims in the 
UK Risen So MuchÓ, Huffington Post, 13 Dec 2012, http://www:huffingtonpost:co:u 
k/dr-leon-moosavi/why-has-the-number-of-mus_b_2279610:html. 
19http://en:wikipedia:org/wiki/Network_effect. 

277 



8. 
THE 
SCALE 
OF 
THE 
PROBLEM 
prosecuted recently, or perhaps because the sentences are intended to 
be exemplary. Even if the latter point obtains, there is no evidence 
that the heavier sentencing will be any deterrent. After all, these 
gangs have a 25 year history of getting away with these crimes; there 
could well be sons who have grown up having been instructed by their 
fathers or uncles on how to get away with these crimes. The rough 
statistics we have, suggest that there are at least 2,500 victims and 
possibly 10,000 victims;20 this means the number of men involved in 
this (at least as customers of the pimps) is probably in the thousands. 
Based on claims from the journalist Julie Bindel, and the leader of the 
Ramadhan Foundation, it is possible that each year one schoolgirl 
being prostituted brings in £300,000 or more for a gang.21 Yet, in 
total only 119 men have been convicted for grooming-related 
crimes.22 If these estimates are anywhere near accurate, then, it looks 
like some man might be able to operate as a member of a gang for a 
decade before being caught, indulging his abusive power, his sexual 
fantasies, and putting away perhaps £1 million in criminal earnings. 
Even if they are arrested, the chances of a conviction are surely less 
than 50%. There are thus many financial and sexual incentives for the 
gangs to carry on their criminal enterprise. 

In addition to the financial gain, we have to understand the 
psychological, cultural and ideological dimension of these crimes. 
For decades the Muslim community has been told that we live in a 
multicultural society, told by almost every institution in Britain that 
the host culture is fundamentally uninterested about defending the 
values of our culture. The elites have spent decades ensuring that a 
cultural clash did not occur, leading these Muslims to believe that 
their cultural values were going to be protected, and where there is a 

20This figure is attributed to a statement by the Coalition for the Removal of Pimping. 
21See our discussion in section 5.6 Serious Organised Crime Agency for some 
indications concerning how much profit the gangs make from the schoolgirls. 
22See section 11. Appendix 1: Grooming Gang Convictions. Also, see the relative 
proportions in section 2.2 Tip of the Iceberg between the men convicted, and those 
who stand trial or are arrested. 

278 



8. 
THE 
SCALE 
OF 
THE 
PROBLEM 
conflict between the values of Muslims and those of the host society, 
the Muslim values will prevail. Even if that had not been the case, we 
think our society would face problems in stamping out these 
grooming gangs. 

Let us consider the case of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). 
This crime was unknown in Britain until the arrival of Muslims from 
the 1960s onwards.23 By 1985, enough pressure had built up for FGM 
to be made an explicit crime (although it would already have been 
covered by our existing laws on violence against children, as it is not 
a medical procedure). The 1985 Prohibition of Female Circumcision 
Act was ignored by immigrants, and FGM continued to be performed 
on young girls (mostly Muslims). The excuse the public was given, 
was that the FGM was being done abroad. So a second law, the 

23Muslims and their allies among the elite have argued that FGM Òis not IslamicÓ 
because it is done by non-Muslims in some countries. However, where this is performed
 on non-Muslim girls, this is always in countries which are in north-eastern 
Africa, countries which have significant Muslim populations, and where Islam has 
been influential for 1000 years or more. Possibly the practice pre-dated the creation of 
Islam. Nevertheless, the only other parts of the world where FGM is performed is in 
places like Indonesia, 1000 miles away from that African/Arabic heartland. Clearly, 
it travelled there with Islam (as FGM is only practiced in the Islamic parts of Indonesia).
 When presented with this information, such pedants will claim that the Koran 
does not demand FGM, which is strictly true. However, sharia law and Islamic culture
 is not based just on the Koran alone, but also on the Sunnah, the behaviour of 
Mohammed. And if we examine a work of sharia law only translated into English in 
1991 (thus proving its relevance for Muslim populations in Britain), we find it states 
that for some schools of sharia law FGM is obligatory, for others it is at the very least 
desirable: 

e4.3 Circumcision is obligatory (O: for both men and women. For men 
it consists of removing the prepuce from the penis, and for women, 
removing the prepuce (Ar. Bazr) of the clitoris (n: not the clitoris 
itself, as some mistakenly assert). (A: Hanbalis hold that circumcision 
of women is not obligatory but sunna, while Hanafis consider it a mere 
courtesy to the husband.) 

Ahmad Ibn Naqib Al-Misri, ÒReliance of the Traveller: a Classic 
Manual of Islamic Sacred LawÓ, Keller translation, 1991. 

279 



8. 
THE 
SCALE 
OF 
THE 
PROBLEM 
Female Genital Mutilation Act, was passed in 2003, making it illegal 
to perform FGM abroad. Yet by 2012, not one parent had been 
convicted of FGM in Britain, and experts estimated that by now 
100,000 girls and women had had their genitals mutilated.24 If, after 
30 years of legislation explicitly outlawing this Islamic practice, 
Muslims have just continued to ignore our laws, then why should it be 
any easier to stop Muslim men from wanting to have sex with young 
non-Muslim girls and from creating a multi-million pound business 
based on prostituting these girls? At least with FGM, Muslims had 
some reason not to injure their own people, but they still continued.25 
When it comes to the rape and prostituting of young non-Muslim 
girls, why should Muslims care about them, when they are not from 
their community and when Islam denigrates such non-believers, 
saying they are all going to be damned when they die? As the men 
who spoke in the 2008 Panorama documentary said, they accepted no 
guilt, no blame for such activities.26 The example of FGM proves that 
it is very difficult to eradicate a crime that the perpetrators and their 
community do not see as a crime. The doctrine of multiculturalism 
just makes that more difficult. Why would Muslim men pay any 
attention to laws preventing sex and prostitution of under-age girls, 
when such acts can be justified based on Islamic doctrine and on the 
history of Islam?27 Why would they care if our law outlaws 

24 Ò100,000 British women mutilatedÓ, The Telegraph, 22 Apr 2012, http://www:tel 
egraph:co:uk/news/uknews/crime/9219217/100000-British-women-mutilated:html. 
This means that there are around 200,000 Muslims in Britain who have broken this 
law (at the very least, the parents of the girl and the person who does the mutilation); 
them going unpunished just reinforces the concept of multiculturalism and the 
irrelevance of what our laws say is permitted or forbidden. 
25Operation Trident, the Metropolitan police project to reduce gun crime among West 
Indians in London, enjoyed some success partly because many of the victims were 
other West Indians. West Indian organisations had every incentive to stamp out this 
crime, and rightly so. 
26See section 4.14 2008 BBC Panorama: Teenage Sex For Sale. 
27Pavan Amara, ÒIslington Girls Forced into Marriage at the Age of NineÓ, Islington
 Tribune, 27 Jan 2012, http://www:islingtontribune:com/news/2012/jan/isling 
ton-girls-forced-marriage-age-nine. 

280 



8. 
THE 
SCALE 
OF 
THE 
PROBLEM 
something when many of them regard sharia law and Islamic culture 
as superior? Why would they care about the laws of the host society, 
when the guardians of that society and culture have spent decades not 
enforcing our own laws, and permitting Muslims to live in a parallel 
culture, allowing them to prey on non-Muslim schoolgirls with virtual 
impunity? The behaviour of our society, most particularly the elite 
and their advocacy of the doctrine of multiculturalism, has been a 
significant contributory factor in the durability and extended reach of 
Muslim grooming gangs. 

Those Muslims who do speak out about the over-representation of 
Muslim men among the grooming gangs, are often motivated, at least 
in part, by the desire to reduce the blame on the rest of the Muslim 
population. Even the most prominent Muslims who have admitted the 
connections between grooming gangs and Pakistani men have refused 
to recognise that there could be any part of Islamic doctrine, the 
history of Islam, or long-established Muslim culture which could 
explain this prevalence. 

So let us try to gauge what proportion of Muslims could have been 
involved in this criminality. What follows are some shocking 
extrapolations, but they are necessary because the media, politicians 
and national agencies have ignored this problem for so long: they 
simply have no good data on which we can assess the true scale of the 
problem. The data provided by CEOP indicated that ÒAsiansÓ 
(Muslims) were roughly half of the perpetrators.28 The CEOP report 
says that in the period covered by their rapid assessment (2008 to 
2011), "2379 nominals [suspects] were reported to CEOP as being 
possible offenders in relation to street grooming and child sexual 
exploitation."29 However, this data is based on the very inadequate 
Òrapid assessmentÓ done by CEOP: for example, in the data that 

28See the table ÒEthnicity of PerpetratorsÓ on p.149. There is no reason to think that 
there would be any significant presence of non-Muslim Asians within this group. 
29Out 
of 
Mind, 
Out 
of 
Sight 
-Breaking 
Down 
the 
Barriers 
to 
Understanding 
Child 
Sexual 
Exploitation., Jun 2011, http://ceop:police:uk/Publications/, p.38. 

281 



8. 
THE 
SCALE 
OF 
THE 
PROBLEM 
CEOP have, out of almost 2400 ÒsuspectsÓ only 940 have full names: 
the victims could provide no names, only initials or only fake names 
for the majority of the perpetrators. The CEOP data is not even clear 
of the gender of the victim in almost 1:3 of the cases.30 The data 
which CEOP have would be laughably inadequate if this subject 
matter was not so serious. The data was gathered in a post-hoc 
manner (agencies had never been asked to keep the appropriate 
records between 1988 and 2011, because no agencies were admitting 
that the problem did existed). In 2011, CEOP suddenly asked police 
and childrenÕs services to start providing data which these agencies 
had never expected would be requested. A wide variety of diverse 
existing databases had to be trawled for words and values that were 
simply never deemed worthy of collecting.31 It is thus an absolute 
certainty, that data such as that gathered by CEOP massively 
understates the scale of the problem. 

Improved data collection by agencies would almost certainly 
reveal that the situation is far worse than is currently believed. In all 
likelihood, far more than 2000 schoolgirls are being sexually 
exploited in any one year by grooming gangs, and far more than 1217 
men are involved.32 In June 2013, a story appeared in the local 
newspaper in Barnsley, South Yorkshire. This story reported that 
Òthere are 15 ongoing investigations into children at risk of sexual 
exploitationÓ (the exploitation to which they refer is clearly meant to 

30Out 
of 
Mind, 
Out 
of 
Sight 
-Breaking 
Down 
the 
Barriers 
to 
Understanding 
Child 
Sexual 
Exploitation, Jun 2011, http://ceop:police:uk/Publications/, p.43. 
31ÒThe way in which intelligence is captured and stored varies across police forces, 
and does not necessarily lend itself to the straightforward identification of relevant 
cases. Local authorities faced similar difficulties in responding to the information re-
quest...the identification of records relevant to the Ôlocalised groomingÕ profile may 
necessitate a manual trawl of thousands of records.ÓOut 
of 
Mind, 
Out 
of 
Sight 
Breaking 
Down 
the 
Barriers 
to 
Understanding 
Child 
Sexual 
Exploitation, Jun 2011, 
http://ceop:police:uk/Publications/, p.8. 
32Out 
of 
Mind, 
Out 
of 
Sight 
-Breaking 
Down 
the 
Barriers 
to 
Understanding 
Child 
Sexual 
Exploitation, Jun 2011, http://ceop:police:uk/Publications/, p.43, p.41. 

282 



8. 
THE 
SCALE 
OF 
THE 
PROBLEM 
be that by grooming gangs).33 In 25 years, the town of Barnsley had 
never been mentioned in any of the reports concerning grooming 
gangs and we have been unable to find one conviction there; yet once 
this subject was on the national agenda, the local police appointed a 
full-time officer, and were dealing with 15 cases.34 

Barnsley is a town with a population of 71,000 people.35 If we 
work on the assumption that Barnsley is just a typical town in 
England, then we can extrapolate from those 15 cases in Barnsley to 
the entire population of England (53 million), we would get an 
incidence of 11,000 cases of grooming gang activity across England. 
Such an extrapolation based on the figures from Barnsley is a very 
large number, and far greater than anything we have considered.36 
The police in that report are quoted saying: 

The general view with regards to Barnsley is we do not 

have the same issue with this as other areas in South 

Yorkshire... We donÕt have a massive problem with it. 

33Whilst the report from Barnsley uses the more ambiguous term of Òchild sexual 
exploitationÓ, it seems fairly clear they are actually talking about the grooming phenomenon:
 ÒIt is a crime that ruins lives and weÕre talking about vulnerable people 
here. It is usually young girls who are vulnerable to this, who find themselves in 
situations not of their choosing.Ó Katia Harston, ÒPolice investigate child sexual exploitation
 casesÓ, Barnsley Chronicle, 22 June 2013, http://www:barnsley-chronicle :co:uk/news/article/6646/police-investigate-child-sexual-exploitation-cases. 
34Bearing in mind that 15 cases were uncovered in Barnsley in 2013, until the beginning
 of that year the town of Barnsley did not have a single police officer dealing with 
this kind of crime. See Her MajestyÕs Inspectorate of Constabulary, ÒSouth YorkshireÕs
 Response to Child Sexual ExploitationÓ, 2013, p.19 http://www:hmic:gov:u 
k/media/south-yorkshire-police-response-to-child-sexual-exploitation:pdf 

35It would be interesting to see if any cases from Barnsley were part of the CEOP 
dataset. 
36If by ÒcaseÓ the report means perpetrators or gangs, then clearly the problem is of 
a size that is way beyond anything we have considered possible in this analysis. The 
average size of the gangs in our table of convictions, is 3 to 4 members (see section 

11. Appendix 1: Grooming Gang Convictions). Thus, if the report from Barnsley 
refers to 15 gangs, then we can take it that the police may be referring to as many as 
60 perpetrators in that one town. 
283 



8. 
THE 
SCALE 
OF 
THE 
PROBLEM 
On that basis, we can take it that a town like Barnsley is typical of the 
scale of the problem in the average English town, with the problem in 
some towns being considerably worse. If these 15 cases refer to 
individual girls, then it would indicate that there would be 11,000 
victims in England in the course of 1 year. This figure of 11,000 is 
much higher than the figure given by CEOP (around 2,000) or The 
ChildrenÕs Commissioner (around 2,400), but this much larger victim 
count would tally with CROPÕs estimate of 10,000 victims which we 
mentioned earlier. But it is possible that this idea of 11,000 current 
victims is an underestimate. 

A recent Freedom of Information request by the local newspaper 
across the Pennines in Burnley revealed that: 

More than 230 men suspected of serious child sex abuse 
have been probed by detectives under Operation Freedom 
since it began in 2008. Police statistics show a third of 
men investigated in the operation, which targets 
grooming gangs and sex offenders who prey on children, 
came from Burnley... Last year alone, 70 men were 
investigated and 44 men were arrested in connection with 
child sex offences Ð 30 of whom came from Burnley.37 

The Panorama documentary ÒTeenage Sex for SaleÓ showed that 
Lancashire Police were pursuing these grooming gangs as far back as 
2008. The CEOP report (covering 2008 to 2011) only listed 1217 
suspects for the entire country,38 yet we see from this report that in 
the area of East Lancashire alone there were 230 suspects identified in 
a slightly longer timeframe. The population of England is 53 million, 
probably 250 times larger than the population covered by this report 
from Burnley (we estimate that the population of East Lancashire is 

37ÒBurnley child sex exploitation shame: shock figuresÓ, Burnley Express, 13 Aug 
2013, http://www:burnleyexpress:net/news/crime/burnley-child-sex-exploitation-sha 
me-shock-figures-1-5946816. 
38Out 
of 
Mind, 
Out 
of 
Sight 
-Breaking 
Down 
the 
Barriers 
to 
Understanding 
Child 
Sexual 
Exploitation, Jun 2011, http://ceop:police:uk/Publications/, p.39, p.41. 

284 



8. 
THE 
SCALE 
OF 
THE 
PROBLEM 
perhaps 200,000). Yet the CEOP report claims that the prevalence of 
grooming suspects for the entire country is only 5 times greater than 
the prevalence for East Lancashire alone. Either Burnley has an 
exceptional problem, or the CEOP data is exceptionally poor. If 
Burnley is not an exception (and the survey of police forces which 
showed that 2:3 police forces admitted to having on-going 
investigations into 54 gangs) then the number of perpetrators could 
easily be 10 to 50 times higher than the CEOP data would lead us to 
believe.39 If the number of perpetrators identified in any 3 years is as 
high as 6,000 to 12,000 then it stands to reason that the number of 
victims would be far higher still. 

Perhaps the data for Burnley is skewed by the greater proportion 
of Muslims living in that town, compared to a town like Barnsley.40 
Whatever the accurate statistics are for this kind of criminality, it 
seems very obvious that the data provided by national agencies such 
as CEOP must be only the tip of the iceberg. If national agencies and 
childrenÕs charities had publicised the problems when they were 
obvious as far back as 1995, then by now we could have had almost 
20 years of concerted effort from these national agencies to produce 
accurate statistics. ItÕs possible we have overstated the problem, but it 
is certain that the CEOP statistics grossly understate the problem. 
Whilst the FOI request in Burnley showed there had been 230 
suspects in that area in 3 years, our table of criminal convictions from 
1997 does not list a single conviction for Burnley.41 

But even if we restrict ourselves to the official reports (and all 

39In the recent Rochdale case, the police stated they were looking for at least 
another 40 men, in addition to the 9 who were convicted. James Tozer 
and Nazia Paveem,ÒAsian grooming gang detectives hunt for FORTY more 
men who may have had sex with underage girlsÓ, Daily Mail, 10 May 
2012, http://www:dailymail:co:uk/news/article-2141279/Rochdale-child-sex-trial-P 
olice-hunt-40-suspects-promise-arrests:html. 
40Burnley has 10 mosques; Barnsley has 1 mosque. Burnley has 4 councillors who 
are Muslims; Barnsley has no Muslim councillors. 
41See section 11. Appendix 1: Grooming Gang Convictions. 

285 



8. 
THE 
SCALE 
OF 
THE 
PROBLEM 
their failings), we need to consider the scale of the abuse done to 
those 2000 or so schoolgirls tallied in those reports. In the CEOP 
data-set, the number of victims of Òlocalised groomingÓ is 2083 
children (identified in a period of 3 years).42 If we to turn to the 
obfuscatory report from The ChildrenÕs Commissioner: this report 
found that in a 14 month period, 2409 children could be identified as 
the victims of Child Sexual Exploitation.43 Like CEOP, The 
ChildrenÕs Commissioner was emphatic in stating the difficulties they 
had in obtaining the data. Thus, both reports are likely to 
underestimate the scale of the problem by a wide margin. The lack of 
data is a problem we can lay at the door of these national agencies 
from their inception. If theyÕd been paying attention to the events in 
our chronology,44 experts would have been aware of the need to 
gather this data as early as 1995, and as late as 2003. But they took no 
steps to demand such an intelligence-gathering framework. 

In the Rochdale case in 2012, one of the victims testified that she 
would be forced to have sex with 5 men a day, almost every day of the 
week for months on end.45 If we assume this went on for 10 months, 
then she may easily have been raped 1000 times in those 10 months. 
When we take into account the statements made people like 
Mohammed Shafiq and Julie Bindel about how much money a pimp 
can make from a girl, we have to conclude that what this girl suffered 

42Out 
of 
Mind, 
Out 
of 
Sight 
-Breaking 
Down 
the 
Barriers 
to 
Understanding 
Child 
Sexual 
Exploitation, Jun 2011, http://ceop:police:uk/Publications/, p.43. 
43ChildrenÕs Commissioner report, 2012, ÒI thought I was the only one. The only 
one in the worldÓ, p.14. 
44See section 4. Chronology: Cover-up to Collapse. 
45ÒRochdale grooming gang victim: I was raped by five men a dayÓ, Rochdale 
Metro, 8 May 2012, http://metro:co:uk/2012/05/08/rochdale-grooming-gang-victim-i 
-was-raped-by-5-men-a-day-418153/. Another report about the schoolgirl victims in 
Rochdale stated that there were 50 girls controlled by one gang, and that a girl might be 
forced to have sex with 20 different men in one night: Lisa Gray, ÒRochdale grooming
 scandal: Book tells harrowing story of girlÕs abuseÓ, Manchester Evening 
News, 12 Oct 2013, http://www:manchestereveningnews:co:uk/news/local-news/roch 
dale-grooming-scandal-book-tells-6174796. 

286 



8. 
THE 
SCALE 
OF 
THE 
PROBLEM 
may be quite typical. And from this, some very disturbing 
implications follow. 

We can make some conservative assumptions: 1) a girl endures 12 
months of sexual enslavement before the girl can escape from the 
gang, and 2) that each schoolgirl suffers in the region of 1,000 rapes 
in these 12 months.46 If we half the total of 2,400 victims (as the 
CEOP report showed that Asians were about 50% of the perpetrators) 
we have 1,200 victims of Muslim grooming gangs. So we have (per 
year) 1,000 rapes for each of 1,200 schoolgirl victims per year by 
Muslim men.47 That is potentially 1.2 million incidents of child-rape 
per year. If we assume that each customer uses the services of these 
Muslim pimps on 10 occasions each year, then that is 120,000 
Muslims committing child-rape each year. Assume the Muslim 
population is 4 million; and that women, men under 20, and men over 
46 tend not to participate. That means that 1 in 6 of Muslim men in 
the UK fit the profile to be clients for these grooming gangs, i.e. about 
660,000 Muslim men are potential clients. If 120,000 Muslims were 
actual clients, then we must assume that the majority of these 660,000 
Muslim men either were kept in the dark about these offerings or 
turned down the offers by the gangs and their associates. But it is 
possible that there were 120,000 out of 660,000 Muslim men (in the 

46We can assume this based not just on the testimony of individual girls, but also based 
on what we are told about the earnings of the pimp. According to the police, a pimp 
can make £300,000 to £400,000 a year selling a 16-year-old girl. See Julie Bindel, 
ÒMothers of PreventionÓ, The Sunday Times, 30 Sep 2007 http://www:thesundayti 
mes:co:uk/sto/news/uk_news/article72310:ece. For a pimp to make £400,000 from 
one girl in one year, then if he was charging £50 per customer the girl would need 
to be raped 8,000 times per year. We believe 1000 rapes per year is a conservative 
estimate. At 1000 rapes per year, the pimp would have to charge £400 per customer. 
For that reason, we think 1000 rapes per year is on the low side. Mohammed Shafiq 
spoke about some of the Muslims in Rochdale making £600 to £1000 per day, which 
could be 10 rapes at £60 to £100 each (but if the going rate was much lower it could 
mean 20 rapes a day). http://www:mohammedshafiq:net/grooming---the-men:php. 
47There is virtually no evidence that these Muslim gangs were providing these schoolgirls
 to non-Muslim men. 

287 



8. 
THE 
SCALE 
OF 
THE 
PROBLEM 
appropriate age group) who were clients, that is: 1 in 3 Muslim men 
between the ages of 20 and 46 might well have been customers of 
these grooming gangs.48 Thus, whilst it would be true that most 
Muslim men did not take part, we can reasonably assume that most 
Muslim men in these towns did know it was going on. Remember 
what Mohammed Shafiq said about Rochdale? ÒThis [Rochdale] gang 
was the talk of the town among the [Muslim] taxi drivers.Ó Perhaps 
this is what Mohammed Shafiq meant when he said Òit was not 
widespreadÓ, i.e. that most Muslim men were not actively involved 
with the gangs as pimps or customers, but that a very large minority 
were active customers whilst the majority knew it was going on.49 

We recognise that the above is largely back-of-the-envelope 
arithmetic, and we make no absolute claim for its accuracy. However, 
when one tries to make sense of 

. 
the number of victims 
. 
the number of men enumerated as associated with the gangs 
who go to court (only a fraction of whom ever get convicted) 
. 
the amount of money that pimps make from their victims 
. 
the description by the victims of the prostitution being on an 
industrial scale 
48We hope that, over the next 5 to 10 years, as more information comes out about 
how these gangs worked we will be able to increase the reliability of these estimates. 
Countervailing evidence could show that a) the pimps made less money, or b) that 
many non-Muslims were involved. Perhaps evidence will show that fewer Muslim 
men raped these schoolgirls, but that they had sex with them far more frequently than 
10 times per year. If such countervailing evidence is not forthcoming, then we think 
these estimates will probably stand the test of time. 
49After only 9 members of the Rochdale gang were convicted, the father of one 
of the schoolgirls who was raped has stated he knows another 30 to 40 Muslim 
men in the town who were involved in raping his daughter, but who have not been 
prosecuted, and are still walking around the town. Simon Coyle, ÒSex grooming
 gang Ôstill walking streets of RochdaleÕÓ, Manchester Evening News, 12 
Dec 2013 http://www:manchestereveningnews:co:uk/news/local-news/father-rochdal 
e-sex-grooming-victim-6398146. 

288 



8. 
THE 
SCALE 
OF 
THE 
PROBLEM 
one starts to get some sense of what it means for someone like 
Mohammed Shafiq to say a Ògang was the talk of the town among the 
taxi drivers.Ó In the case of missing (presumed murdered) schoolgirl 
Charlene Downes, the media readily talk of her being abused by 100 
men or more.50 Charlene Downes was only 14 when she went 
missing, yet in that short time it is considered feasible that she had 
been raped by 100 men. The idea that she had been raped 1000 times 
in that year seems not implausible. 

Mohammed Shafiq insists that the prostituting of sex-slaves Òis a 
crime Islam forbidsÓ,51 yet he never provides any reference to the 
Koran or to texts of sharia law to show that Islam does indeed forbid 
it. We have shown that slavery has been a part of the history of Islam 
from the beginnings of the religion until after after World War 2 and 
beyond; there are very good reasons for Muslims to think that the 
prostituting of sex slaves is permitted by Islam. As many Muslims in 
21st century Britain are still insisting on wearing a burka or niqab (a 
kind of clothing that might make sense in 7th century Arabia), why 
should we believe that they have forsaken cultural practices which 
were permitted to Muslims throughout the past 1300 years? In 2011, 
Mohammed Shafiq was saying ÒI would like to see imams and 
mosques addressing these crimes in their Friday sermons, explaining 
the Islamic ruling on such evil acts and stressing that an attack on a 
white girl is as forbidden as an attack on our own daughters and 
sisters.Ó52 Yet it wasnÕt until 2013 that mosques in Britain did what 
Mohammed Shafiq wanted, and this only seemed to occur because 
Parliament agreed that the evidence showed the grooming gangs were 

50Martin Robinson and James Tozer, ÒWas Charlene, 14, sexually abused by 
up to 100 men before being murdered and chopped up for kebab meat? 
Police reopen case of missing teenager ten years on.Ó, Daily Mail, 2 Nov 
2013, http://www:dailymail:co:uk/news/article-2483351/Cherlene-Downes-missing 
-person-case-reopened-police:html. 
51http://www:mohammedshafiq:net/the-times-article---grooming:php. See also http: 
//www:mohammedshafiq:net/grooming---june-2011:php. 
52http://www:mohammedshafiq:net/the-times-article---grooming:php. 

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8. 
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SCALE 
OF 
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PROBLEM 
almost entirely made up of Muslim men.53 However, what the media 
did not dwell on, was the fact that only a minority of mosques read 
out this sermon. If, despite 10 years of cover-up, the evidence finally 
showed that Muslims were overwhelmingly the members of the 
grooming gangs, why would most mosques not read this sermon? 
Perhaps because most Imams did not agree that this Òis a crime Islam 
forbidsÓ? 

We will not attempt to set ourselves up as greater religious 
authorities than the Sheikhs, but we will briefly examine this sermon. 
The sermon does at least contain the recognition of the prevalence of 
Muslim men amongst the grooming gangs, and condemns their 
actions, and welcomes the convictions.54 Moreover, it instructs 
Muslims who see something suspicious to report it to the police.55 
However, if we pay attention to this last point, we will see that it 
corroborates our argument: Muslims believe they owe allegiance to 
other Muslims, not to non-Muslims. And this allegiance applies, no 
matter what. In the sermon it says: 

if you see something that is suspicious or you suspect that 

sexual grooming is taking place, report it to the 

authorities (social services or the police). If you need any 

motivation other than it is the right and Islamic thing do 

to just consider this Ð what if it was your daughter and 

someone you knew had not taken that step? 

Notice that devout Muslims are having to be explicitly given 

53This powerlessness of Mohammed Shafiq once more raises the question: in what 
sense is Mohammed Shafiq any kind of leader, if no-one does what he recommends? 
54ÒKhutba -Tackling Street Grooming in the UKÓ, 2013, http://www:mcb:org:uk/ 
uploads/Khutbah%20-%20Street%20Grooming%20final%20version:pdf. 
55These are both good first steps. However, we should note, that as late as 2009, 
the Muslim Council of Britain was still insisting that the claim that Muslims were 
overwhelmingly found among the perpetrators of grooming gangs was a Òracist mythÓ: 
ÒThe BNP spread racist myths about Asian men ÔgroomingÕ white girls in Keighley; 
that year, they gained four seats on Bradford Council.Ó http://www:mcb:org:uk/vote 
2009/stopfarright:html. 


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ÒmotivationÓ to co-operate with the police to prevent their ÒbrothersÓ 
from luring non-Muslim children into prostitution. Can you imagine a 
congregation of Jews or Christians having to be given ÒmotivationÓ to 
report a serious crime like child-rape to the police? 

When it comes to Islamic doctrine, the two principle sections of 
the Koran on which this sermon relies, are 24:30 and 17:32. 

Tell the believing men to lower their gaze (from looking 

at forbidden things), and protect their private parts (from 

illegal sexual acts, etc.). That is purer for them. Verily, 

All‰h is All-Aware of what they do [QurÕan 24:30] 

And come not near to unlawful sexual intercourse. Verily, 

it is a Fahishah [i.e. anything that transgresses its limits 

(a great sin)], and an evil way [QurÕan 17:32] 

At first sight, these verses seem to say that Muslims are not to look at 
forbidden things, nor to indulge in illegal sexual intercourse. 
However, we need to bear in mind, that ÒlegalÓ in this context means 
Òlegal under sharia law.Ó And we would contend that many Muslim 
men do not regard non-Muslim women (and even unveiled Muslim 
women) as being Òforbidden.Ó56 There is also the problem with 
abrogation (where later verses in the Koran countermand earlier 
verses which are in contradiction with them). Thus, the latest verse 
cited by this sermon is 24:30. However, as we have seen above, there 

56It is well-known that any woman who travels without the protection of 
a man in a Muslim country will be sexually-assaulted, many times a day, 
even in public and in broad daylight. Clearly the Muslim men in Muslim
 countries do not consider such women to be Òforbidden.Ó ÒÔPlease 
God, make it stop!Õ British female journalist, 21, describes horrific sexual
 assault in EgyptÕs Tahrir Square after election resultÓ, Daily Mail, 28 
June 2012, http://www:dailymail:co:uk/news/article-2165445/British-journalist-Nat 
asha-Smith-22-recalls-horrific-sexual-assault-Egypts-Tahrir-Square:html. There are 
many other instances of such assaults, including Muslim girls from Britain on charitable
 missions to Libya, raped by jihadis there. Esam Mohamed, ÒLibyan official: 3 
Pakistani activists rapedÓ, 29 Mar 2013, Yahoo News, http://news:yahoo:com/libya 
n-official-3-pakistani-activists-raped-130540911:html. 

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8. 
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PROBLEM 
is a later verse (24:33) which states: Òdo not compel your slave girls 
to prostitution, when they desire to keep chaste, in order to seek the 
frail good of this worldÕs life; and whoever compels them, then surely 
after their compulsion Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.Ó57 It may well be 
that the majority of mosques do not accept this sermon, because they 
know that this sermon does not deal with the verses which permit 
Muslims to rape their slaves, and to prostitute their slaves.58 Let us 
remember the Kuwaiti advocate of sex-slavery who we mentioned 
above: she was advocating these sex-slaves as a way of Muslim men 
avoiding ÒfornicationÓ (the word used by Reliance of the Traveller, 
when it refers to Koran 17:32).59 Thus, as far as some Muslims are 
concerned, the sex which occurs between an owner and his sex-slaves 
is not fornication, and Koran 17:32 (the scriptural basis for this 
sermon) does not apply to such acts. 

We contend that the failure of the majority of mosques to read this 
sermon suggests that most Muslims do not believe that it is their place 
to condemn Muslims who systematically groom non-Muslim 
schoolgirls, luring them into a life of prostitution. So the next time 
someone tells you Òprostituting sex-slaves is a crime which Islam 
forbidsÓ, demand that they tell you where this prohibition is to be 
found.60 The case of the Oxford grooming gang in 2013 brought out 
probably the worst details so far in all the prosecutions of the last 16 

57The Koran, surah 24, verse 33 http://corpus:quran:com/translation:jsp?chapter= 
24&verse=33. 
58 A Jordanian Sheikh has issued a fatwa, where he instructs Muslim men that they 
can rape the women who fall into their control during war. Khaled Abu Toameh, 
ÒRaping Women in the Name of IslamÓ, http://www:gatestoneinstitute:org/3655/is 
lam-raping-women. As we have argued above, there are indicators to suggest that far 
more Muslims in Britain consider themselves to be at war with our country, besides 
those 300 Muslims who have been convicted of terrorism offences since 2001. 
59See Reliance of the Traveller, section P.12.0. 
60We think it highly significant that the 1991 translation of Reliance of the Traveller, 
a manual of sharia law, explicitly refused to translate the Islamic laws pertaining to 
taking slaves and how slaves can be treated -legally and morally -in Islam. http: 
//en:wikipedia:org/wiki/Reliance_of_the_Traveller#Keller_translation. 


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years. Despite that, and despite the anti-grooming sermon initiative 
coming after that trial, some of the mosques in Oxford actively 
refused to read the sermon.61 We have to ask again: if this crime is 
forbidden in Islam, why would mosques in the city with one of the 
worst cases refuse to read the sermon? What will it take to get such 
Muslims to condemn these crimes? Is it even possible for them to do 
this without rejecting parts of Islamic doctrine (something which 
would make them apostates, and thus candidates for assassination by 
other Muslims)? 

Even if all the mosques in Britain did read out this sermon, we do 
not believe that, after 25 years of lucrative business, and almost no 
likelihood of being punished for these crimes, that such a sermon 
would persuade a group of criminal men to stop an activity from 
which they benefit sexually and financially, the victims of which 
activity are always drawn from a community which Islamic doctrine 
and Muslim culture holds in contempt. There is much evidence to 
show that even the most liberal, most educated, most high-profile 
Muslims in Britain will, behind closed doors, happily cite Islamic 
doctrines and texts which refer to non-Muslims in contemptuous and 
derogatory terms. Mehdi Hasan, the former politics editor of the 
left-wing New Statesman, and now political editor of the left-wing 
Huffington Post, was accidentally exposed referring to non-Muslims 
as unthinking animals and using the derogatory term ÒkafirÓ, with no 
condemnation of such derogatory terms from him or his Muslim 
audience.62 Hasan was not sacked when his speech was exposed, and 

61Ben Wilkinson, ÒNational sermon on child grooming shunned as 
a stunt by many Muslims in OxfordÓ, Oxford Mail, 29 Jun 2013, 

http://www:oxfordmail:co:uk/news/10516465:National_sermon_on_child_gro 
oming_shunned_as_a_stunt_by_many_Muslims_in_Oxford/. 
62See Douglas Murray, ÒMehdi Hasan and the EDLÓ, The Spectator, 30 Jul 2013, 
http://blogs:spectator:co:uk/douglas-murray/2013/07/mehdi-hasan-and-the-edl/, and 
ÒSo, Mehdi Hasan, can I call you an extremist (or at least a cab)?Ó, The Commentator,
 11 Jun 2011, http://www:thecommentator:com/article/223/so_mehdi_hasan 
_can_i_call_you_an_extremist_or_at_least_a_cab. See also http://www:youtube:com 
/watch?v=APAPqT3QdFU. 

293 



8. 
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SCALE 
OF 
THE 
PROBLEM 
he is still invited to appear on high-profile BBC TV programmes: if 
he had been a non-Muslim (white or Asian), and had referred to 
Muslims as ÒanimalsÓ it is unlikely that he would have escaped 
criminal investigation (and possibly he would have received a 
criminal conviction). Even if such legal action did not follow, he 
would almost certainly have been sacked and would no longer be 
broadcast by the BBC into the living rooms of millions of those about 
whom he used such offensive language. If an Anglicised, public 
school and Oxford-educated writer such as Mehdi Hasan will use 
such derogatory language behind closed doors, we can only begin to 
imagine the hatred and abuse towards non-Muslims with which many 
non-Anglicised Muslims have been indoctrinated, both in Britain and 
abroad. At the end of 2010, the BBC broadcast a documentary which 
exposed Islamic schools and clubs in Britain teaching Jew-hatred and 
homophobia: 

It claims to have found 5,000 Muslim schoolchildren 

being taught that some Jews are transformed into pigs 

and apes and that the penalty for gay sex is execution. 

Some textbooks are said to teach the correct way to chop 

off the hands and feet of thieves. A spokesman for the 

programme said the pupils, aged six to 18, attend a 

network of more than 40 weekend schools across the 

country which teach the Saudi national curriculum to 

Muslim children.63 

It goes without saying, that if Islamic schools in Britain are teaching 
Muslim children to kill gay people, and that Jews are animals, then 
we can take it for granted that within such schools and mosques, 
non-Muslims will be routinely referred to in derogatory terms. In the 
light of such casual and endemic ÒkuffarphobiaÓ, it would be no 
surprise if even the least religious Muslims in Britain should hold 

63Haroon Siddique, ÒBBCÕs Panorama claims Islamic schools teach antisemitism 
and homophobiaÓ, The Guardian, 22 Nov 2010, http://www:theguardian:com/media 
/2010/nov/22/bbc-panorama-Islamic-schools-antisemitism. 

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8. 
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SCALE 
OF 
THE 
PROBLEM 
non-Muslims in low esteem. 

From the evidence provided by CEOP and by The ChildrenÕs 
Commissioner we can assert that there are thousands of victims of the 
grooming gangs. Going off the locations where those convicted of 
grooming crimes were based, and from reports of police forces 
currently investigating more than 54 different gangs, we can assert 
that these gangs are operating in every major town or city in England. 
From the descriptions of the victims, and from the amount of money 
that commentators have said the gangs can earn from one girl, we can 
deduce that these girls are being forced to have sex maybe 1000 times 
per year. For thousands of girls to be having that much sex with 
different customers, we calculate that the number of men raping these 
schoolgirls could be as many as one in three of the Muslim men 
below the age of 46. The testimony of the victims and even statements 
from the perpetrators make it clear that the perpetrators do not think 
they are doing anything wrong. We have seen from a brief 
examination of Islamic theology and from the history of Islam that 
slave-taking, and the rape of slaves has been an enduring feature of 
Islamic culture, from the time of Mohammed onwards. If the reports 
from a small town like Barnsley are indeed typical, then the scale of 
the problem could be far larger than we have anticipated in this 
section. It seems obvious that the 119 men convicted64 so far are a 
mere fraction of those involved in these crimes. Those convicted may 
have been responsible for the grooming of fewer than 500 schoolgirls 
over 16 years, yet it seems that each year there may be anywhere from 
1,200 to 11,000 schoolgirls being groomed. The grooming gang 
phenomenon is just one of the most serious examples of the cultural 
conflicts between Islamic values and our liberal, secular values. There 
are many other examples of this conflict, all religiously-motivated. 
Suicide bombers, FGM, Jew-hatred, homophobia, Òhonour killingsÓ these
 are all examples of this conflict in values. The fundamental 
problem is that Muslims have been encouraged to put their values on 

6411. Appendix 1: Grooming Gang Convictions. 

295 



8. 
THE 
SCALE 
OF 
THE 
PROBLEM 
at least an equal-footing with the cultural values of the west. 
Multiculturalism is the problem. 

Multiculturalism is simply the refusal of the elite, the refusal of 
the opinion-shapers in our society, to face up to the consequences of 
importing millions of people committed to a world-view which is 
fundamentally incompatible with western liberal values. And this 
conflict has been concealed by removing freedom of speech, by 
persecuting those who speak out, and by sacrificing thousands of 
schoolgirls to organised prostitution. Without the ideology of 
multiculturalism and political correctness, people would have been 
free to draw attention to the problems back in the 1990s. It is not at all 
obvious that there are any solutions to the current problems facing 
Britain. 

296 



9. 
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OF 
MULTICULTURALISM 
9. Victims of Multiculturalism 
though we are living in the 21st century, some 
people have retained medieval attitudes towards 
young girls. The barbaric treatment in this case was 
depraved, almost beyond imagination and must 
never be allowed to happen again. 

Ð NSPCC, The 
Independent, 2013 
As we have seen from our brief examination of Islamic doctrine 
and history, sexual slavery was developed as a religious weapon, a 
way of furthering the dominion of Islam, and was employed 
throughout the history of Islam (slavery only being outlawed in Saudi 
Arabia in 1962). Slavery and concubinage have served the power 
interests of Islam, helping it advance, from the domination of the 
Arabian Peninsula to the conquest of the lands from Portugal to 
Afghanistan, and the lands from Central Africa to Central Europe. 
That slavery is still envisaged as part of the future of Islam, can be 
found from a clarification a Sheikh (a Muslim Bishop) gave to an 
Arabic TV channel (May 2011): 

Spoils, slaves, and prisoners are only to be taken in war 
between Muslims and infidels. Muslims in the past 
conquered, invaded, and took over countries. This is 
agreed to by all scholarsÐthere is no disagreement on this 
from any of them, from the smallest to the largest, on the 
issue of taking spoils and prisoners. The prisoners and 
spoils are distributed among the fighters, which includes 
men, women, children, wealth, and so on. 

When a slave market is erected, which is a market in 

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9. 
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OF 
MULTICULTURALISM 
which are sold slaves and sex-slaves, which are called in 
the QurÕan by the name milk al-yamin, Òthat which your 
right hands possessÓ [QurÕan 4:24]. This is a verse from 
the QurÕan which is still in force, and has not been 
abrogated. The milk al-yamin are the sex-slaves. You go 
to the market, look at the sex-slave, and buy her. She 
becomes like your wife, (but) she doesnÕt need a 
(marriage) contract or a divorce like a free woman, nor 
does she need a wali. All scholars agree on this 
pointÐthere is no disagreement from any of them. 1 

For all their blather about ÒdiversityÓ, multiculturalists do not like to 
face the consequences which follow from other cultures having 
different histories and different values from those which obtain in 
modern Western Europe. The slave-trade was but a small part of the 
history of Christian Europe (possibly acquired anew from 700 years 
of enforced Islamisation endured by the Portuguese and Spanish, 
before the Reconquista).2 Within 300 years of the start of the Atlantic 
slave trade, Christians in Europe started to bring the slave trade to an 
end (and it was, indeed, devout Christians who set about ending it). In 
the 1300 years of slave-taking in Islam, there was never an indigenous 
Islamic anti-slavery movement: it was Britain, Christianity and 
enlightenment values which brought the Islamic slave trade to some 
kind of end. Yet the multiculturalists want to pretend that they glory 
in diversity, whilst secretly believing that there is no such thing as 
truly diverse values -the unspoken assumption of multiculturalists is 
that all people, all over the world, and throughout all of history, have 
held the same beliefs as western European liberals of the last 50 years. 
They praise diversity and multiculturalism, but cannot really see 
beyond their own enlightenment ideology: they think that, ultimately, 
all the world shares their values. Multiculturalism is possibly the most 

1ÒVideo: Shaykh al-Huwayni: ÔWhen I want a sex slave, I just go to the market and 
choose the woman I like and purchase herÕÓ http://www:translatingjihad:com/2011/ 
06/video-shaykh-al-huwayni-when-i-want-sex:html. 
2Emmet Scott, The Impact of Islam, New English Review Press, 2014. 


298 



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OF 
MULTICULTURALISM 
deluded, blinkered ideology in history. The demise of multicultural 
pre-Islamic Arabia under the onslaught of violent, totalitarian Islam 
demonstrates that in a situation where the ideology of Islam is in 
conflict with multiculturalism, it is Islam which will triumph. 

Modern multiculturalism has been a short-sighted and cowardly 
doctrine, designed to suppress the conflicts in value systems of 
different cultures. It has meant that for 20 to 50 years, there has been 
mounting pressure (driven by a metropolitan elite who mostly live in 
middle-class, monocultural, Anglophone enclaves) to suppress any 
signs of the cultural conflict between the host culture and some 
antagonistic minority cultures. In the context of the suppression of 
information and inaction on the grooming gangs, thousands of 
innocent schoolgirls have had their lives ruined, ruined in ways that 
most British people thought ended in the times of Queen Victoria. 
These schoolgirls were sacrificed so that the middle-class, 
monocultural elite did not have to entertain the disturbing idea that 
some cultures think that slavery is legitimate, and that a 50 year old 
man having sex with a 9 year old girl is an act of piety. 

In October 2010, Angela Merkel, the German Prime Minister 
announced that multiculturalism was dead.3 Within 4 months, the 
British Prime Minister and the French President had joined her in 
announcing that in their countries too, it was now recognised that 
multiculturalism was a failed doctrine.4 What was the British Prime 
Minister promoting as the core set of values, which all groups in 
Britain were expected to support? 

Do they believe in universal human rights Ð including for 

3Kate Connelly, ÒAngela Merkel declares death of German multiculturalismÓ, 
The Guardian, 17 Oct 2010, http://www:theguardian:com/world/2010/oct/17/angela 
-merkel-germany-multiculturalism-failures. 
4ÒNicolas Sarkozy joins David Cameron and Angela Merkel view that multiculturalism
 has failedÓ, Daily Mail, 11 Feb 2011, http://www:dailymail:co:uk/news/art 
icle-1355961/Nicolas-Sarkozy-joins-David-Cameron-Angela-Merkel-view-multicu 
lturalism-failed:html. 

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9. 
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OF 
MULTICULTURALISM 
women and people of other faiths? Do they believe in 
equality of all before the law? Do they believe in 
democracy and the right of people to elect their own 
government? Do they encourage integration or 
separatism?5 

Fundamentally, Cameron was claiming that there were Islamic groups 
in Britain who opposed the values enshrined in the UN Declaration of 
Human Rights,6 and that these groups must no longer receive state aid 
nor must the organs of the state accord them any status as 
representatives of the beliefs of Muslims. Does Cameron not know 
that the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam, puts sharia law 
above everything?7 We sincerely doubt that any government agency is 
going to go through each item of the UN Declaration of Human 
Rights and ask each Muslim organisation to avow support for each 
Article before giving them state largesse. And if they did do this, the 
government would probably find that only a small minority of Islamic 
organisations would be eligible for government subsidies. One survey 
found that about one quarter of British Muslims would freely admit 
that those Muslims who choose another religion should be killed.8 

Cameron made a distinction between Islam and ÒIslamist 

5http://webarchive:nationalarchives:gov:uk/20130109092234/http://number10:gov:u 
k/news/pms-speech-at-munich-security-conference/. 
6http://www:un:org/en/documents/udhr/. 
7The Cairo Declartion consists of 25 articles http://www1:umn:edu/humanrts/instree/ 
cairodeclaration:html. The last 2 articles put sharia law above everything, including 
the preceding 23 articles. 


ARTICLE 24: All the rights and freedoms stipulated in this Declara


tion are subject to the Islamic ShariÕah. 
ARTICLE 25:The Islamic ShariÕah is the only source of reference for 
the explanation or clarification of any of the articles of this Declaration. 


Thus, for most Muslim organisations, there are no human rights except what is found 
in sharia law (including the legality of slavery). 
8ÒBritish Muslims poll: Key pointsÓ, BBC News, 29 Jan 2007, http://news:bbc:co:u 
k/1/hi/6309983:stm. 


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MULTICULTURALISM 
Extremism.Ó It seems he believes there are moderate Islamists, 
Òpeople who may reject violence, but who accept various parts of the 
extremist worldview.Ó9 Despite these distinctions, in Britain left-wing 
politicians and Muslim organisations took the Prime MinisterÕs 
announcement as an attack on Islam and on Muslim enclaves within 
non-Muslim countries.10 As proof of his belief in the compatibility of 
Islam with liberal democracy, Cameron told his audience to look at 
what was happening in Tunisia and Egypt. When Cameron made this 
speech, these upheavals across the Middle East were being called Òthe 
Arab SpringÓ by journalists, politicians and experts (they were thus 
implying, day after day, that the events were analogous to the Praque 
Spring, where gradual liberalisation was crushed by the Soviet 
Union). In the subsequent years, with the pro-Caliphate, 
Nazi-inspired Muslim Brotherhood coming to power in Egypt, these 
same journalists and experts have quietly dropped that phrase, with no 
acknowledgement concerning the rash stupidity with which they 
mis-characterised those events. We wonder if Cameron still believes 
that the bloodshed and subsequent coup in Egypt demonstrate the 
compatibility of Islam and liberal democracy. 

Cameron appeared to believe that multiculturalism had itself given 
birth to ÒIslamist extremismÓ: 

Under the doctrine of state multiculturalism, we have 

encouraged different cultures to live separate lives, apart 

from each other and apart from the mainstream. WeÕve 

failed to provide a vision of society to which they feel 

they want to belong. WeÕve even tolerated these 

segregated communities behaving in ways that run 

completely counter to our values... this all leaves some 

9http://webarchive:nationalarchives:gov:uk/20130109092234/http://number10:gov:u 
k/news/pms-speech-at-munich-security-conference/. 
10See ÒState multiculturalism has failed, says David CameronÓ, BBC News website,
 5 Feb 2011, http://www:bbc:co:uk/news/uk-politics-12371994. It seems that 
they do not accept his view that a distinction can be drawn between Islam and Islamism.
 

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OF 
MULTICULTURALISM 
young Muslims feeling rootless. And the search for 

something to belong to and something to believe in can 

lead them to this extremist ideology.11 

However, since violent ÒIslamistÓ organisations like the Muslim 
Brotherhood (which seeks to restore the Caliphate) have been in 
existence in Egypt since 1928, it seems unlikely that this 
anti-democratic, theocratic totalitarianism12 can be laid at the door of 
weak-minded western liberals. There was no mention of 
ÒmulticulturalismÓ in Britain until the 1980s at the earliest.13 By the 
end of that decade Muslims were marching around England, 
threatening to kill those who criticised Islam. By the end of that 
decade, Muslims and Sikhs were reproducing the Òcommunal 
violenceÓ seen in India at the start of the 20th century. It was in 
response to these un-British forms of behaviour that the metropolitan 
elite set about propounding the doctrine of multiculturalism. The 
outlawing of female genital mutilation in 1985 shows that there was 
no conception of multiculturalism then. Multiculturalism did not 
produce Islamic extremism, but once Islamic extremism manifested 
itself in Britain in the 1990s, then multiculturalism was extended to 
protect it. 

In his speech, it appears that Cameron is not opposed to Islam or 
Islamism per se, only to Islamist extremism i.e. those islamists who 
seek to use violence to destroy democracy and human rights. But 
later, he says that Òas evidence emerges about the backgrounds of 
those convicted of terrorist offences, it is clear that many of them 

11http://webarchive:nationalarchives:gov:uk/20130109092234/http://number10:gov 
:uk/news/pms-speech-at-munich-security-conference/. 
12Ishak Musa Husaini, The Moslem Brethren -the Greatest of Islamic Movements, 
Beirut, 1956. 
13From the contents of The British Library catalogue, books with the word ÒmulticulturalismÓ
 in the title did not start to appear until the 1970s, and the first 30 such books 
published all related to Canada. A search of a database archive of articles from The 
Times, dating back to 1985, did not find the occurrence of the word ÒmulticulturalismÓ 
until 1987. 


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OF 
MULTICULTURALISM 
were initially influenced by what some have called Ônon-violent 
extremistsÕ, and they then took those radical beliefs to the next level 
by embracing violence.Ó14 Cameron gave no idea of the proportion of 
Muslims in Britain who can be considered to be ÒIslamists.Ó Of 
course, not all immigrants and not all Muslim immigrants have sought 
to destroy the western democracies which had given them citizenship, 
but significant numbers of Muslim immigrants wanted to subvert the 
secular state, with around 40% of Muslims admitting to wanting 
sharia law.15 In 2003, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that 
sharia law is Òincompatible with the fundamental principles of 
democracy.Ó16 We can thus conclude that 40% of British Muslims are 
Islamists: sharia law contains instructions on how to pray, how to 
conduct divorce, that anyone who leaves Islam must be killed,17 and 
how to run a country in a discriminatory and non-democratic way.18 

In announcing the death of Òstate multiculturalismÓ, the British 
Prime Minister was really just proposing that government 
organisations stop providing money to the Muslim groups who 
advocate the destruction of democracy and human rights: Òfail these 
tests and the presumption should be not to engage with organisations 

Ð so, no public money, no sharing of platforms with ministers at 
14http://webarchive:nationalarchives:gov:uk/20130109092234/http://number10:gov :uk/news/pms-speech-at-munich-security-conference/. 
15See ÒThe latest WikiLeaks revelation: 1 in 3 British Muslim students
 back killing for Islam and 40% want Sharia lawÓ, Daily Mail, 22 
Dec 2010, http://www:dailymail:co:uk/news/article-1340599/WikiLeaks-1-3-Briti 
sh-Muslim-students-killing-Islam-40-want-Sharia-law:html and ÒBritish Muslims 
poll: Key pointsÓ, BBC News website, 29 Jan 2007 http://news:bbc:co:uk/1/hi 
/6309983:stm. 
16See p.21 of Annual Report 2003, European Court of Human Rights, http://www:e 
chr:coe:int/Documents/Annual_report_2003_ENG:pdf. 
17See section f1.3 of Reliance of the Traveller. 
18Section o25.3 of Reliance of the Traveller states that in an Islamic state a non-
Muslim cannot be the ruler. The vast majority of people in Britain would denounce any 
political party that said Òonly a white man can be the Prime Minister,Ó yet mostly the 
media in Britain are silent about the sheer number of Muslim organisations agitating 
for sharia law. 

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MULTICULTURALISM 
home.Ó19 He was not proposing any positive project that would undo 
the damage of 30 years of islamisation, the damage of 30 years of 
multiculturalism. To Cameron, the failure of multiculturalism is to be 
remedied by cutting off the funding to ÒIslamistÓ organisations who 
seek to subvert democracy, and beyond that, he has no vision: 
Òinstead of encouraging people to live apart, we need a clear sense of 
shared national identity that is open to everyone.Ó20 In the following 
years there has been no sign that his government had any positive 
project in mind. In giving examples of this Òshared national identityÓ, 
he suggested that it was important for immigrants to be able to speak 
English (yet almost all of the 332 Muslims convicted of terrorist 
offences in Britain since 200121 spoke English, and as if to prove to 
Cameron that this wasnÕt the problem, a few months after his speech a 
Muslim student who was predicted to achieve a first class degree in 
English from a top University, attempted to assassinate a British MP 
in his own office).22 

In Britain, multiculturalism was never announced as an official 
policy. There was never any national debate about what this doctrine 
meant, what problems it was intended to solve, or what would 
constitute criteria for assessing the success or failure of the project. 
No political party put it forward as an electoral pledge, it was never 
something that the people voted for, or on which we were even asked 
our opinion. Instead, it was often simply announced that Òwe live in a 
multicultural societyÓ, with the implication being that we had better 

19http://webarchive:nationalarchives:gov:uk/20130109092234/http://number10:gov :uk/news/pms-speech-at-munich-security-conference/. Incredibly, Cameron seems 
to be leaving the door ajar for the funding of a Muslim group who fails these tests, 
but can argue a case for receiving public money. 
20http://webarchive:nationalarchives:gov:uk/20130109092234/http://number10:gov :uk/news/pms-speech-at-munich-security-conference/. 
21https://www:mi5:gov:uk/home/the-threats/terrorism/international-terrorism/interna 
tional-terrorist-plots/arrests-and-convictions:html. 
22Vikram Dodd, ÒStephen Timms attacker faces sentencing for attempted murderÓ,
 The Guardian, 3 Nov 2010, http://www:theguardian:com/uk/2010/nov/03/step 
hen-timms-attack-sentencing. 

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OF 
MULTICULTURALISM 
just get on with muddling through whatever problems arose from this. 
Political leaders across Europe have still not put forward any plan to 
rectify the consequences of this failed, undemocratic experiment. The 
state might not be going to fund and advocate multiculturalism, but 
the conflicts and damage caused by the clash of values between an 
unchanging, totalitarian 7th century desert religion and a modern 
liberal democracy are not going to just disappear, they are just going 
to intensify. 

History will no doubt look back on turn-of-the-century Europe 
with incredulity: that the politicians of liberal democracies had spent 
30 years facilitating ÒIslamistÓ groups, encouraging groups of first, 
second and third generation immigrants to propound an ideology that 
sought to destroy the very countries which had given them the 
privilege of citizenship, countries which had accorded equal rights 
(and sometimes given preferential treatment) to these immigrants. 
Cameron was not proposing any comprehensive plan to reverse the 
negative effects that 30 years of dogmatic multiculturalism had on 
British society. We do not see any sign that the media, academics, 
politicians or religious leaders have any inkling of the scale of the 
problem, nor do they show any determination to remedy their lack of 
understanding, never mind resolve the incoherence of 
multiculturalism. The stupidity, incoherence and short-termism of 
multiculturalism is laid bare by 25 years in which the lives of 
thousands of schoolgirls have been ruined, vulnerable and innocent 
children left in ignorance of the dangers posed by the grooming gangs. 
Rather than risk offending the community who shielded the grooming 
gangs, schools did not even show the educational film specifically 
made to enable the schoolgirls to protect themselves. These 
schoolgirlsÕ lives were sacrificed in order to delay the time when the 
project of multiculturalism must be declared an abject failure. 

Unless schools can train schoolgirls how to avoid being lured into 
the control of the grooming gangs, the supply of victims will 
continue. That My Dangerous Loverboy has not been distributed since 

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OF 
MULTICULTURALISM 
it was commissioned in 2008 gives us little hope that there will be any 
reduction in the supply of victims brought about by educationalists or 
government agencies. At the end of 2013, following the conviction of 
three Muslim men in the north-east of England (and five years after 
My Dangerous Loverboy was left on the shelves), a BarnardoÕs 
official said: 

ÒThis is not one-off sexual abuse of a child within a 
family, weÕre talking about groups of men who abuse 
young teenage girls.Ó Ms Shepherd said one of the Ògreat 
problemsÓ is that victims do not realise what is 
happening to them until it is too late. ÒThey donÕt see the 
grooming,Ó she said. ÒThey donÕt see the huge con to get 
them to have sex with many people at the will of the man 
that has become their boyfriend. They really want to 
believe in the goodness that actually he wouldnÕt really 
treat me that way, he wouldnÕt want to harm me.Ó23 

The only way that information about the grooming gangs and their 
techniques is getting out to the potential victims is in an unstructured 
way via the media and popular opinion. A report from Bolton shows 
the deviousness of Muslim taxi-drivers in making contact with 
schoolgirls: the taxi driver asked his 13 year old passenger to phone 
his mobile phone so that he could check his phone was working. After 
doing this she thought his behaviour strange and got out of the taxi at 
the earliest opportunity, and contacted the police. She is now fearful 
of ever taking a taxi in her area, where the vast majority of taxi drivers 
are Muslims.24 This is the kind of scenario an educational film would 

23Andrew Glover, ÒMiddlesbrough grooming case: How big is the icebergÓ, BBC 
News, 5 Dec 2013 http://www:bbc:co:uk/news/uk-england-tees-25119285. 
24ÒTaxi driver who Ôtricked 13-year-old girl into giving him her 
phone numberÕ loses licence appealÓ, The Bolton News, 30 Oct 2013, 


http://www:theboltonnews:co:uk/news/10772703:Taxi_driver_who__tricked_13_y 
ear_old_girl_into_giving_him_her_phone_number__loses_licence_appeal/. It is 
disgraceful that national police agencies have prepared a documentary to warn such 
schoolgirls, but it has never been shown to them. 

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9. 
VICTIMS 
OF 
MULTICULTURALISM 
use to even up the skills of victims to match those of the grooming 
gangs. Devious adults are sharing techniques and working in teams to 
groom schoolgirls, and our society is doing nothing to help the 
potential victims become aware of what might be use to entrap them. 
But instead of training and forewarning the victims, it is the gangs 
who have been left undisturbed for decades, improving their 
techniques and ruining lives. 

For a few years after 2010, the police seem to be having a 
crackdown on grooming gang activity, but we have no idea what 
proportion of the gangs are caught up in this crackdown. Perhaps 
when CEOP and The ChildrenÕs Commissioner start to fulfil the job 
of national agencies protecting children, we will have a better 
indication of the scale of the problem, and can then ascertain whether 
or not the current spate of prosecutions is anything more than a drop 
in the ocean. That The ChildrenÕs CommissionerÕs final report on 
gangs who abuse children should have come out at the end of 2013, 
yet contains almost nothing about the Muslim grooming gangs, 
suggests that the central agencies already think that the outrage over 
these grooming gangs is dying down.25 If this is true, then we can 
expect to see the number of prosecutions fall in coming years. 

It is clear from the Parliamentary report, that the politicians have 
no real idea of the size of the problem, and that they have tried to do 
little more than scapegoat the councils of Rotherham and Rochdale 
(until a case at the end of 2013 received publicity, who knew that 
BarnardoÕs were dealing with 160 victims in the north-east of 
England?) Perhaps the only significant step to come out of the 
Parliamentary report, was the initiative to read a sermon in mosques 
denouncing this crime (and as we have seen, this initiative was mostly 

25In The ChildrenÕs Commissioner Òinterim reportÓ of 2012, by far the largest number 
of victims were victims of localised grooming. See ÒÔI thought I was the only one. 
The only one in the worldÕ: The Office of The ChildrenÕs CommissionerÕs Inquiry 
into Child Sexual Exploitation In Gangs and GroupsÓ, Nov 2012, http://www:chi 
ldrenscommissioner:gov:uk/info/csegg1 p.57, p.86, p.92, p.96 . 

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9. 
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OF 
MULTICULTURALISM 
a failure). The Muslim population will probably continue to double in 
size every decade, and the grooming gang phenomenon is just as 
likely to continue doubling in size every decade. Even if 50% of those 
involved in the grooming gangs get convicted, then we should expect 
the grooming gangs to increase by more than 100% every decade, 
quite simply because the Muslim population increases at this rate 
every decade. Announcing that government will no longer fund 
Muslim organisations which seek to use violence to destroy our 
country is just re-arranging deckchairs on a sinking ship. It beggars 
belief that a government would ever have thought that funding those 
groups was a good thing to do. 

It is reported that lawyers who were acting for victims of a 
Rochdale grooming gang have said there needs to be a Public Inquiry 
into this scandal.26 From that report it transpires that Lisa Nandy, the 
Shadow ChildrenÕs minister (and a former youth worker), said she 
would support calls for a further, in-depth review. It may well that as 
far as she is concerned, the Home Affairs Select Committee has 
satisfied her demands. We believe that the full force of the grooming 
gang scandal has not yet come to light. As we were putting the 
finishing touches to this report, we learned that one of the motivating 
factors driving the leader of the English Defence League, is that a 
member of his own family was a victim of the grooming gangs.27 If 
the grooming of a family member 20 years ago can drive one man on 
a four-year campaign risking financial ruin, public opprobrium, 
violent attacks and death threats, are the family members of the other 
10,000 victims going to let things lie? How many more of the people 
who supported the English Defence League had girls from their 

26ÒLawyer Acting for Victims of Rochdale Grooming Gang Calls for Public 
InquiryÓ, Manchester Evening News, 28 Sep 2012 http://www:manchestereveningne 
ws:co:uk/news/greater-manchester-news/lawyer-acting-for-victims-of-rochdale-gro 
oming-695946. 
27ÒWhen Tommy Met Mo: Leaving the EDLÓ, BBC, 28 Oct 2013, http://www:you 
tube:com/watch?v=KROCHe0JU_c&t=856. This video has since been removed from 
the internet. 

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9. 
VICTIMS 
OF 
MULTICULTURALISM 
family raped and turned into prostitutes by Muslim gangs who 
operated with impunity for 25 years? If this phenomenon is not 
stopped, and if justice is not seen to be done, then we can expect far 
more civil unrest in future years.28 

28After the assassination of soldier Lee Rigby on the streets of London in 2013, a 
survey appeared the results of which suggested that 59% of the British population 
expect Òthere will be a serious clash between British Muslims and white BritonsÓ 
in the future. Considering that past ÒclashesÓ have involved Òrace riotsÓ in Oldham, 
Bradford, Harrow, Tower Hamlets, etc., the assassination of soldiers and MPs, and 
the bombing of London buses and the London Underground, we must infer from this 
report that the majority of people are expecting something far more dramatic by way 
of a Òclash.Ó Matthew Goodwin, ÒLondon attack: generations divided on feelings 
about Muslims after killingÓ, The Observer, 25 May 2013, http://www:theguardian :com/uk/2013/may/26/public-attitude-muslims-complex-positive . 

309 



10. Conclusion 
Of course the majority of sex abusers are white 
because the majority of the population is white. 

Ð Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Daily 
Mail, 2012 
In 2013, the British Parliament finally acknowledged not only that 
Òlocalised groomingÓ exists, but that the available evidence shows that 
Muslims are hugely disproportionately represented among the 
perpetrators of this crime. We have seen that in 2011 and 2012, 
national governmental agencies scrambled to produce hurried reports, 
based on data which was admitted to be inadequate. The data was not 
available because government departments and the national agencies 
had been almost entirely passive since the grooming phenomenon was 
first acknowledged by the authorities (with the creation of BarnardoÕs 
Streets and Lanes project in Bradford in 1995). The story about what 
was going on in Bradford, which burst onto the national agenda in 
2003, was basically buried for a decade. Thousands of girls lost their 
childhood, thousands of families suffered, and the grooming gangs 
probably made hundreds of millions of pounds in profits. 

Whilst the Parliamentary report simplistically singled out the 
councils of Rotherham and Rochdale for criticism, we have shown 
that there is reason to believe that this is a national problem. The 
gangs can be expected to be operating in almost every major town in 
England: until 2013 the town of Barnsley had never been mentioned 
in relation to grooming gangs, but suddenly police in a town of 70,000 
people were talking about 11 cases. Given the preponderance of 
Muslim men among the perpetrators, and given the spread of the 
incidents across the country, it is likely that the only towns where the 

310 



10. 
CONCLUSION 
gangs will not be operating, will be those towns without a mosque 
(but even there, with the national network the grooming gangs have 
established, they may be shipping girls into those towns on demand). 
Some towns with a mosque will surely not have these gangs 
operating: but as far as we can ascertain, Barnsley has only one 
mosque. When it comes to police forces and social services looking 
for the activities of the grooming gangs, then given the massive 
over-representation of Muslim men among those convicted for these 
crimes, it makes sense for agencies to concentrate their resources 
gathering intelligence in towns with mosques. 

We have shown that there has been systemic failure from the 
local level (schools, councils, police) to the national level (CPS, 
courts, the SOCA agencies, The ChildrenÕs Commissioner, 
Parliament and even childrenÕs charities like BarnardoÕs). The 
failure can be attributed to political correctness, used to protect 
the incoherent doctrine of multiculturalism, which meant that 
individuals and organisations felt they would be persecuted by 
allegations of ÒracismÓ if they treated Muslim (Asian) offenders 
the same way they would treat offenders who were Caucasian. 
Even academics, who supposedly have the freedom to say what is 
otherwise taboo in society, have shown that they were reluctant to 
investigate and write about these grooming gangs. And when the 
evidence of their research supported the view that Muslim men were 
vastly over-represented amongst those involved in grooming gangs, 
the ideological blinkers of academics meant they had to reject the 
evidence. 

According to the reports of some retired police officers, the 
grooming operations have been in place since the 1970s. Based on 
these reports, and others we have discussed, we cannot think of a 
worse child-care scandal in Britain in the last 40 years. As many as 
10,000 schoolgirls may have fallen victim to these gangs. The girlsÕ 
lives, and those of their families, were wrecked by the gangs: they 
were all failed by the professional agencies who were supposed to 

311 



10. 
CONCLUSION 
take care of children. Successive child-protection laws from the 1980s 
onwards were made to play a subservient role to maintaining the 
doctrine of multiculturalism. The British Prime Minister declared a 
need to uphold universal human rights, but the legal protections of a 
generation of schoolgirls were readily abandoned. 

For a decade or more, the actions of Muslim organisations and 
left-wing activists ensured that this problem could not be spoken 
about, let alone tackled in any extensive way. The silence of 
journalists (with a few honourable exceptions), ensured that the gangs 
continued to operate unhindered. We think it likely that BarnardoÕs 
were instrumental in SOCA commissioning the educational video My 
Dangerous Loverboy in 2008, but political correctness ensured that 
this video could not serve the intended function of warning 
schoolgirls about the insidious techniques of the grooming gangs, and 
the dangers which lurked outside the school gates, at takeaway 
restaurants, in shopping malls, bus stations and taxi ranks. 

From the earliest reports in 1988 until the creation of the English 
Defence League in 2009, nothing seemed to motivate police forces to 
tackle the grooming gangs. In the 11 years to 2009 there were no 
more than 18 convictions for what can be classified as Òlocalised 
groomingÓ, but in the 4 years following 2009, there were 83 
convictions for Òlocalised grooming.Ó The rate has increased from an 
average of 1 conviction every 7 months, to an average of 13 
convictions every 7 months. The largest grooming case so far is 
currently pending trial. And more than 50 different gangs have been 
identified and are facing prosecution, which would typically mean 
another 150 of the perpetrators could be imprisoned in the next few 
years. 

We cannot say with any certainty what brought about this change: 
was it the formation of the EDL in 2009 and the scores of protests 
they undertook in the subsequent four years, or was it the 2008 
Panorama documentary? It is hard to find any other significant events 
between 2004 and 2010 which could have brought about this change. 

312 



10. 
CONCLUSION 
As we have pointed out, the Panorama documentary was largely 
allusive when it came to identifying Muslims (ÒAsiansÓ) as being 
connected to this form of criminality, and after he programme was 
broadcast it merited no more than a tangential remark in the House of 
Lords. Whilst NorfolkÕs 2011 analysis is credited by the 
Parliamentary inquiry as being pivotal, that analysis was written after 
heÕd reported on an EDL demonstration in the summer of 2010 and 
after the rate of prosecutions had already started to increase.1 We have 
no doubt that the number of prosecutions and the rate of conviction 
will continue to increase in the coming years. But if the issue falls off 
the national agenda, then these prosecutions will probably tail off. It 
will be in the interests of Muslim groups and multiculturalists to 
return to claiming that the grooming gangs are a racist myth. 

What we believe is required is a full-scale Public Inquiry. The 
country needs to know if the scale of the problem is as large as 
CROPÕs estimates suggest. This Public Inquiry must look into the 
failures of national agencies, child-care charities, and academics 
to study this problem. The Inquiry must look into what police 
forces knew and when they knew these things. Is it true that 
Lancashire Police knew about grooming gang activities in the 1970s? 
How much information did they have, and how credible was it? Why 
has the problem of the grooming of Sikh girls by these gangs been 
kept off the national agenda from 1988 to 2013? Did Islamic 
fundamentalist organisations encourage Muslim men to go out and 
deceive and groom non-Muslim women? Who is responsible for the 
educational film My Dangerous Loverboy never being shown to its 
intended audience? Did some teachersÕ union play a part in 
preventing schoolgirls from being taught about this threat, or was it 
local authorities who ruled that the schoolgirls must not be warned? 
Why would only a fraction of mosques read the sermon condemning 
grooming gangs? Which government departments knew about the 
grooming gangs but failed to do anything about this problem? We 

1See section 12. Appendix 2: Grooming Gang Chronology. 

313 



10. 
CONCLUSION 
know that the Home Office was party to many secret studies of girls 
being groomed. The Inquiry must consider the role that 
multiculturalism and political correctness have played in this, Òthe 
biggest child protection scandal of our time.Ó Were Muslims being 
misled into believing that they could practise the morality of the Dark 
Ages enshrined in the Koran and books of sharia law, on the 
assumption that they would never be punished for such values coming 
into conflict with our legal system? What role did political correctness 
perform in terrifying teachers, social workers and police officers from 
carrying out their work? The Inquiry needs to investigate how the 
guidance of The ChildrenÕs Act (1989) has been ignored. It needs to 
consider how it could be that the majority of Local Safeguarding 
Children Boards were not implementing statutory provisions, and 
nobody noticed this until the grooming gang phenomenon finally 
became impossible to ignore after 2009. Moreover, it needs to 
investigate why trial procedures recommended in the 1990s have still 
not been implemented. How is is that none of the charitable or state 
agencies dedicated to child-care have not been drawing attention to 
these failings? 

People might want to criticise this report for only focussing on the 
Muslim grooming gangs. We have no fear of such criticism.2 

2If it is true that half the offenders categorised as being part of "grooming gangs" 
are white, as the official report The ChildrenÕs Commissioner claims, why are these 
alleged white (presumably "non-Muslim") offenders not being prosecuted? Such non-
Muslims are not turning up in the data concerning convictions. Is this because of 
prejudice on the part of the CPS, or is that the evidence that half of those involved in 
grooming are white men is flimsy and insubstantial, and certainly not comparable to 
the evidence used in a court of law? Are these white men included in the data because 
of inaccuracy or bias on the part of local agencies? The principle which Andrew 
Norfolk conceived, of analysing the names of those convicted for these crimes, is 
an objective way to categorise the perpetrators. If readers know of any cases which 
should be included but which have been missed by us or by Andrew Norfolk, please 
do not hesitate to contact us (we are interested in prosecutions where those charged 
were Muslim or non-Muslim). Assuming we have not overlooked any cases, we can 
think of two explanations for the absence of such prosecutions a) the data used by The 
ChildrenÕs Commissioner construes something as ÒevidenceÓ when it would not stand 

314 



10. 
CONCLUSION 
National agencies like the Serious Organised Crime Agency, the 
Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, and the UK Human 
Trafficking Centre should have been focussing on this criminality, 
instead of just focussing on the forms of child-sexual exploitation that 
were not controversial. We have felt the need to write this report 
because of their failings in this area. We intend to update this report 
on a regular basis. We hope that in the years to come, we can applaud 
these agencies and the child-care professionals for addressing the 
problems they ignored for 25 years. We have no doubt that experts in 
this field were better suited to write this report than we are, but we 
will offset any failings of ours against their failure to even approach 
the subject. 

Despite the years in which CEOP did not pursue these Muslim 
grooming gangs, when CEOP finally produced their 2011 report, they 
admitted the data was lacking, and said that the exercise should be 
repeated in 2 to 3 years (with the implication that they would have 
more adequate data by then). However, by the start of 2014, they have 
not published an updated report. In November 2012 The ChildrenÕs 
CommissionerÕs published an ÒinterimÓ report which also emphasized 
the inadequacy of their data. The data and conclusions from that 
interim report were used by many commentators to claim that any 
disparity in ethnicity between the grooming gangs and their victims 
was Òirrelevant.Ó3 When The ChildrenÕs CommissionerÕs final report 
came out in 2013, it offered no evidence to show that the disparity of 
ethnicity between gang members and their victims was anything 
approximating the distribution of these ethnicities in Britain as a 
whole.4 Thus, the evidence from convictions of this disparity keeps 

up in a court of law, or b) the CPS is preferentially prosecuting Muslims. 
3Sunny Hundal, ÒOxford gang-rape case: were the girls exploited because they 
were white?Ó, May 14 2013, http://liberalconspiracy:org/2013/05/14/oxford-gang-r 
ape-case-were-the-girls-exploited-because-they-were-white/. 
4The ChildrenÕs Commissioner, ÒIf Only Someone Had ListenedÓ, 2013, 


http://www:childrenscommissioner:gov:uk/force_download:php?fp=%2Fclient_asset 
s%2Fcp%2Fpublication%2F743%2FIf_only_someone_had_listened_Office_of_the 


315 



10. 
CONCLUSION 
mounting, showing that the vast majority of the grooming gang 
members are Muslim;5 meanwhile, those agencies with access to paid 
staff and national data are unable to provide any evidence which 
shows this is not the case. Yet we are a long way off any national 
agency or any national newspaper acknowledging the findings in our 
analysis. 

The evidence that the gangs were predominantly Muslims can be 
traced back to the work of CROP, to the Edge of the City documentary 
(2004), to the Streets and Lanes project (1995), and even to the first 
recorded news story, where Sikhs in the West Midlands were reduced 
by police inactivity to take up violence to try and stop the Muslim 
gangs (1988). In other situations, governments and the media have 
had no problem identifying a minority group with whom a problem 
was associated: with the appearance of AIDS in the early 1980s, 
governments banned all homosexual men from donating blood, 
regardless of whether or not the man had AIDS, was HIV negative, or 
was even celibate.6 If governments had refused to note any 
association between AIDS and homosexual men in the 1980s, then 
the blood ban would never have taken place. By the 1990s all donated 
blood was being screened for the presence of HIV,7 and the ban could 
have been lifted, but the ban remained in place for another 20 years.8 
Most homosexual men were not and are not HIV positive, but that ban 

_Childrens_Commissioners_Inquiry_into_Child_Sexual_Exploitation_in_Gangs_a 
nd_Groups:pdf. 

511. Appendix 1: Grooming Gang Convictions. 
6Mike Darling, ÒBanned for life: Why gay men still canÕt donate bloodÓ, NBC 
News, 14 Jul 2013, http://www:nbcnews:com/health/mens-health/banned-life-why-g 
ay-men-still-cant-donate-blood-f6C10622947. 
7ÒTests on your blood -A guide for donorsÓ, http://www:blood:co:uk/resources/le 
aflets/tests-on-your-blood/ 
8Perhaps this ban has only been lifted now because of the high number of heterosexual 
Africans in Britain who are HIV positive. Either the same ban would need to be put 
made stopping all Africans from donating blood, or it would have to have been lifted 
for homosexual men. 

316 



10. 
CONCLUSION 
was kept in place for decades:9 most Muslim men are not members of 
the grooming gangs, but all the evidence shows that they are the 
demographic group most closely associated with this problem, yet we 
have had decades of governments taking no action to protect 
schoolgirls, and decades of national agencies and the media not even 
acknowledging the prevalence of Muslim men among grooming 
gangs. In all that time when steps were taken to protect the blood 
supply by banning all homosexual men from donating blood, 
there have been no steps taken to protect schoolgirls, for fear of 
offending Muslims by discussing (or even quietly investigating) 
the prevalence of Muslim men in the grooming gangs. If CROP 
are right, and there are around 10,000 victims of these grooming 
gangs, then there must surely be a case for negligence against 
these government agencies.10 A Òbelt and bracesÓ procedure was put 
in place to protect the blood supply: those associated with AIDS were 
banned from donating blood, and all donated blood was tested. The 
steps which are needed to protect the schoolgirls would be far less 
drastic than testing all donated blood, banning people from giving 
blood and banning them from travelling.11 But even allowing 
schoolgirls to see the film specifically made to warn and educate them 
was too much: the film did not even identify the perpetrator as a 
Muslim, but as vaguely ÒAsianÓ, yet still it was not shown.12 If in the 

9James Gallagher, ÒGay men blood donor ban to be liftedÓ, BBC News, 8 Sep 2011, 
http://www:bbc:co:uk/news/health-14824310. Even when the ban Òhas been liftedÓ, 
gay men are only allowed to donate blood if they have not had sex for 12 months. No 
such restriction applies to black people in Britain, who also have a higher than average 
incidence of HIV infection. Thus we see that government agencies and the media have 
no problem with discriminatory practices addressed to some minority populations. 
10In a report on Russia Today, Andrew Norfolk also states that there was official neglect.
 https://www:youtube:com/watch?v=RZCQ9ZWfCuQ#t=249. 
11The United States government even bans people who are HIV positive from entering 
the country: ÒThe US HIV banÓ, http://hivtravel:org/Default:aspx?PageId=158. We 
have knowledge of HIV+ academics who conceal their HIV medication and must lie 
to immigration officials in order to enter the US, even as tourists. 
12Indeed, the film is so vague in its warning, that the Sikh Awareness Society felt the 
need to add sub-titles to it to make the danger and techniques clearer: http://www:you 

317 



10. 
CONCLUSION 
last 30 years the gay community had the same power as the Muslim 
community and their allies, then there would never have been a ban 
on donating blood, there would be no travel restrictions in place, and 
the media would have refused to even discuss whether or not there 
was any association between the behaviour of homosexuals and the 
occurrence of AIDS, for fear of offending the gay community. In the 
1980s and 1990s, AIDS was being widely associated with homosexual 
men, drug addicts, and prostitutes, and there was great fear that the 
disease would spread throughout the rest of the population, which is 
why the ban against blood donation was seen as uncontroversial. 
However, the authorities and the media seemed to have no concerns 
about a generation of schoolgirls being turned into prostitutes and 
drug addicts, with all the risks of them acquiring AIDS. 

There seems to be no indication that the British public are going 
to silently tolerate the actions of the grooming gangs in the coming 
years, the way they passively accepted them before the authorities 
stepped up the prosecutions from 2009. We do not want to see 
communities feeling they have to resort to violence, the way Sikhs 
have on a number of occasions. Anna Hall reported that it was 1996 
when staff at BarnardoÕs, working on the front-line of this grooming 
phenomenon in Bradford, suggested 

making a film to warn teenagers and educate parents ... 

the girls were white and living in multi-cultural Bradford 

and the perpetrators were Asian... everybody wanted to 

pretend it wasnÕt happening. All anyone seemed 

concerned about was the risk of a race riot if we 

mentioned it.13 

Almost 20 years later, this film has been made, it sits gathering dust. 
And every year a new crop of schoolgirls find some alluring young 

tube:com/watch?v=Kjwvo8HlqyM. No satisfactory explanation has ever been given 
about why this film has never been shown in schools. 
13Anna Hall ÒHunt For BritainÕs Sex Gangs, C4Ó Broadcast 2 May 2013, http://ww 
w:broadcastnow:co:uk/in-depth/hunt-for-britains-sex-gangs-c4/5054504:article. 


318 



10. 
CONCLUSION 
Muslim man pursuing them with money and flattery, little knowing 
what his organisationÕs true plans for her are. It is within the power of 
the authorities to change this immediately, but they wonÕt do so for 
fear of Muslims rioting. It seems that violence is what controls social 
policy on Òthe biggest child protection scandal of our timeÓ.14 

14Andrew Norfolk, ÒPolice Files Reveal Vast Child Protection ScandalÓ, The 
Times, 24 Sep 2012 http://www:thetimes:co:uk/tto/news/uk/crime/article3547661:e 
ce. 

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11. Appendix 1: Grooming Gang Convictions 
This table is based on the technique used by Andrew Norfolk, in the analysis which 
demonstrated there was an obvious pattern of exploitation by muslim gangs, based on 
the names of the men convicted in "grooming trials". A grooming conviction (not yet 
a legally-defined entity) is one where a series of men who know each other are 
convicted for their systematic actions in luring a child (a schoolgirl) into sexual 
activities, often leading to a life of rape and prostitution. There are convictions listed 
where we have no evidence that the men went further than the initial stages of luring 
a schoolgirl into having sex with them (for example, the case involving Parmar and 
Chauhan, or the case involving Hindle and Wells). Nevertheless, since Norfolk 
includes those cases in his original "pattern of exploitation", we have continued with 
that (relatively wide) definition. 

Table A.1: Grooming Gang Convictions (1997-2014) 

date town first name surname age 
1 11/1997 Leeds Mohammed Rashid 21 
2 11/1997 Leeds Abid Sadique 21 
3 02/2005 Keighley Shabir Ahmed 32 
4 02/2005 Keighley Munwar Khan 30 
5 04/2006 Blackpool Puppy Parmar 31 
6 04/2006 Blackpool Sandeep Chauhan 28 
7 06/2007 Oldham Shahzad Masood 33 
8 06/2007 Oldham Mohammed Suleman 39 
9 08/2007 Blackburn Zulfqar Hussain 46 
10 08/2007 Blackburn Qaiser Naveed 32 
11 11/2007 Sheffield Ayad Mahmood 35 
12 11/2007 Sheffield Aziz Hamed 24 
13 08/2008 Oldham Shofiqul Islam 21 
14 08/2008 Oldham Shamim Ahmed 21 
15 11/2008 Manchester Mirza Baig 35 
16 11/2008 Manchester Mohammed Ditta 39 
17 11/2008 Blackburn Ian Hindle 32 
18 11/2008 Blackburn Andrew Wells 49 
19 04/2009 Blackburn Imran Pervez 27 
20 04/2009 Blackburn Zaheer Khan 24 
21 07/2009 Skipton Mohammed Zackriya 21 
22 07/2009 Skipton Mohammed Taj 37 
23 07/2009 Skipton Mohammed Shabir 36 
24 07/2009 Skipton Shafaq Hussain 21 
25 02/2010 Rochdale Ajmal Afridi 19 
26 02/2010 Rochdale Imtiaz Syed 20 
27 02/2010 Rochdale Tayub Hussain 19 

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date town first name surname age 
28 02/2010 Rochdale Mustafa Arshad 17 
29 02/2010 Rochdale Mohammed Raja 20 
30 06/2010 Nelson Azeem Shah 23 
31 06/2010 Nelson Tabassum Shah 24 
32 08/2010 Rochdale Asad Hassan 28 
33 08/2010 Rochdale Mohammed Basharat 28 
34 08/2010 Rochdale Mohammed Atif 29 
35 08/2010 Rochdale Aftab Khan 31 
36 08/2010 Rochdale Abid Khaliq 30 
37 08/2010 Rochdale Mohammed Safi 31 
38 08/2010 Rochdale Ahmed Noorzai 29 
39 08/2010 Rochdale Mohammed Khan 26 
40 08/2010 Rochdale Najibullah Safi 32 
41 09/2010 Preston Mohammed Moosa 24 
42 09/2010 Preston Faisal Ghani 25 
43 11/2010 Rotherham Razwan Razaq 30 
44 11/2010 Rotherham Umar Razaq 24 
45 11/2010 Rotherham Zafran Ramzan 21 
46 11/2010 Rotherham Mohsin Khan 21 
47 11/2010 Rotherham Adil Hussain 20 
48 11/2010 Derby Abid Siddique 27 
49 11/2010 Derby Mohammed Liaqat 28 
50 11/2010 Derby Mohamed Rehman 26 
51 11/2010 Derby Faisal Mehmood 24 
52 11/2010 Derby Akshay Kumar 38 
53 11/2010 Derby Naweed Liaqat 33 
54 11/2010 Derby Farooq Ahmed 28 
55 11/2010 Derby Graham Blackham 26 
56 11/2010 Derby Ziafat Yasin 31 
57 08/2011 Accrington Amjad Hussain 38 
58 08/2011 Accrington Shahid Hussain 34 
59 08/2011 Accrington Tanveer Butt 39 
60 03/2012 Telford Shamrez Rashid 20 
61 03/2012 Telford Amar Hussain 21 
62 03/2012 Telford Jahbar Rafiq 28 
63 03/2012 Telford Adil Saleem 20 
64 03/2012 Telford Amer Choudhrey 20 
65 05/2012 Rochdale Kabeer Hassan 25 
66 05/2012 Rochdale Abdul Aziz 41 
67 05/2012 Rochdale Abdul Rauf 43 
68 05/2012 Rochdale Mohammed Sajid 35 
69 05/2012 Rochdale Adil Khan 42 
70 05/2012 Rochdale Abdul Qayyum 43 
71 05/2012 Rochdale Mohammed Amin 45 
72 05/2012 Rochdale Hamid Safi 22 
73 05/2012 Rochdale Shabir Ahmed 59 
74 05/2012 Bradford Shabir Ahmed 39 

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date town first name surname age 
75 05/2012 Bradford Munwar Khan 42 
76 02/2013 Ipswich Surin Uddin 31 
77 02/2013 Ipswich Mohammed Sheikh 31 
78 02/2013 Ipswich Hamza Ali 38 
79 03/2013 Birmingham Raja Khan 23 
80 03/2013 Birmingham Adeeb Sultan 27 
81 03/2013 Keighley Shazad Rehman 30 
82 03/2013 Keighley Bilal Hussain 23 
83 05/2013 Oxford Kamar Jamil 27 
84 05/2013 Oxford Akhtar Dogar 32 
85 05/2013 Oxford Anjum Dogar 31 
86 05/2013 Oxford Assad Hussain 32 
87 05/2013 Oxford Mohammed Karrar 38 
88 05/2013 Oxford Bassam Karrar 34 
89 05/2013 Oxford Zeeshan Ahmed 28 
90 07/2013 Barking Naeem Ahmed 25 
91 07/2013 Barking Nabeel Ahmed 24 
92 07/2013 Barking Hassan Raza 24 
93 07/2013 Manchester Shamin Uddin 26 
94 07/2013 Manchester Giash Uddin 27 
95 07/2013 Manchester Robert Jackson 23 
96 08/2013 Leicester Aabidali Ali 39 
97 08/2013 Leicester Rakib Iacub 20 
98 08/2013 Leicester Wajid Usman 21 
99 08/2013 Leicester Hamza Imtiaz Ali 28 
100 08/2013 Leicester Bharat Modhwadia 25 
101 08/2013 Leicester Chandresh Mistry 37 
102 10/2013 London Mohammad Shabbir 34 
103 10/2013 London Muhammad Shabbir 25 
104 11/2013 Rochdale Mohammed Abubaker 32 
105 11/2013 Rochdale Freddie Kendakumana 27 
106 11/2013 Rochdale Roheez Khan 27 
107 11/2013 Rochdale Chola Chansa 33 
108 11/2013 Rochdale Abdul Huk 37 
109 12/2013 Middlesbrough Ateeq Latif 17 
110 12/2013 Middlesbrough Shakil Munir 32 
111 12/2013 Middlesbrough Sakib Ahmed 19 
112 01/2014 Peterborough Hassan Abdulla 33 
113 01/2014 Peterborough Zdeno Mirga 18 
114 01/2014 Peterborough Jan Kandrac 17 
115 01/2014 Peterborough Renato Balog 18 
116 01/2014 Peterborough anon ? 14 
117 01/2014 Leeds Mohammed Hussain 28 
118 01/2014 Leeds Shah Miah 28 
119 01/2014 Leeds Harris Uddin 30 

322 



12. Appendix 2: Grooming Gang Chronology 
323 



13. Appendix 3: Name Distribution of Convicts 
Figure 1: Name Distribution of Convicts 


324 



14. Appendix 4: Leeds School Warning 
Figure 2: Warning to Parents of Children Under 11 (Leeds, June 2013) 


325 



15. Appendix 5: Sheffield School Warning 
Figure 3: Warning to Parents of Children Under 11 (Sheffield, June 
2013) 

326 



16. Appendix 6: Real Khilafah -Letter to Moslem 
Youth 
Figure 4: Letter Attributed to Muslim Fundamentalists (2001) 


327 



17. Appendix 7: Luton Article on Real Khilafah 
Figure 5: Muslims Encouraged to Seduce Sikh Girls (Luton 2005) 


328 



18. Appendix 8: ChildrenÕs Commissioner 
Charts 
Figure 6: Interim Report (2012): Victims 



329

Figure 7: Interim Report (2012) : Perpetrators 


19. Appendix 9: Victims to Perpetrators 
Figure 8: ChildrenÕs Commissioner data 2012: meaningful 
comparison 

This chart consolidates the relevant data from The ChildrenÕs 
Commissioner (2012) interim report. We have excluded data 
concerning other races than white and Asian, and excluded data 
concerning street gangs. We have included the percentage of the UK 
population who are Asian or white, so that meaningful comparisons 
can be made concerning the proportion of victims or perpetrators who 
are Asian or white. 

For those who would deny that there is any significant disparity 
between the ethnicity of the perpetrators and the ethnicity of the 
victims, this chart is a visualisation of the best evidence for there 
being no disparity. 

330 



17. Appendix 10: Police Report on EDL 
Figure 9: Police Extremism Experts: ÒEDL not far-rightÓ 


331 



20. Appendix 11: Transcription Real Khilafa 
Letter 
A Message to Moslem Youth 
Real Khilafa -A Political Reality From Dr. K M Farukh. 
For Private Circulation 

We are each and every weekend having stalls where we give out 
literature about Islam. We have these stalls in may [sic] areas 
especially in areas where there are a lot of kafirs (Sikh Hindu Jews 
AND OTHER NONBELIEVERS) We would like to extend our 
activities further. 

We are in many ways surprised that so many Moslems have come to 
buy our books and provide funds for relieving the distressed Moslems 
of the world especially in places such as Kossovo and Kashmir. The 
government and local authority is not interested in our cause as they 
would rather fund Gurdawaras and Gays and Homos. 

We have many interesting books about Islam showing why Islam is 
the only human way of life and other so called religions are 
animalistic. The teaching of the great Prophet Mohammed must be 
passed on until the whole world is Islam. The world will only thus be 
saved. 

We call upon our fellow youth to come and join us in our mission universal 
and global Islam. 

The job is big but nothing is impossible. 

If the Kafir non believer does not accept by gentle persuasion or 
reasoning then other methods which are allowed for in the holy Quran 
must be used such as -going to war with the kafir or converting them 
by manipulation. We need to send out our boys to bring the Sikh girls 
into the umma or community of Islam. 

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This task is getting easier by the day as the Sikh and hindu [?] girls 
are not taught (as is done in Islam) much about their religion at all. 
They have a westernized upbringing and the school college and 
university campus is the ideal place for our youth to carry out their 
duties easily in this way. 

It is easy to take the Sikh girls out on a date as they generally like a 
good drink and from these gradually they can be brought into Islam. 
This is not a hard job at all as the Kafir women they like Moslems. 
Hardly surprising as we are attractive and intelligent compared with 
Kafirs. This is common sense and everybody knows. Otherwise why 
would Indian films have so many Moslem actors. There is not a single 
Hindu or Sikh actor in Pakistani films. We need more funds 
desperately to carry on our job and we need volunteers from amongst 
the youth specially. Come and join us this weekend and every 
weekend -we will be in an area near you. 

We need your help at this crucial time when our moslem brothers and 
sisters are being killed in countries all over the world. 

THE REAL KHILAFAH MOVEMENT -THE EYES THE EARS 
THE VOICE OF Islam 

WATCH THIS SPACE 

333