Robert Jenrick: exploiting the victims of sexual abuse for his own political gain

“This appalling affair is the final nail in the coffin for liberals who still cling to the argument that Britain is an integration success story.” He continued, “The scandal started with the onset of mass migration. Importing hundreds of thousands of people from alien cultures, who possess medieval attitudes towards women, brought us here.”

Aside from the insanity of pandering to a weird tech billionaire and Nigel Farage, Jenrick’s statements are ludicrous and dangerous.

It is racist and dehumanising to make it seem as though migrant men or men of colour are uniquely predisposed in some way to mistreat women. The trafficking and grooming of young girls and women is done by disgusting gangs that prey on those who are vulnerable and seek to make a profit from the suffering of others. It goes across races and nationalities.

In the case of Rochdale, Greater Manchester Police were found to have failed victims by not believing the young women who reported to them. We know this because there is an ongoing inquiry ordered by Andy Burnham in 2017, and a report released last year tells us about the systematic failure to protect numerous victims, many of whom were in foster care or in vulnerable environments.

This has been a problem in numerous cases of sexual assault and abuse, where a culture of misogyny pervades across numerous police forces. Victims do not feel comfortable reporting to the police because they fear they will not be believed, or even that they will be blamed for what happened to them.

It would be so easy to make this about race – to make it seem as though the police are suddenly all afraid to be seen as racist, which would be laughable considering what we know. And perhaps some of them did not want to be seen to target one community. But if you target one community, you will miss the dangers posed by people of a different profile. Violence against women and girls happens across the races and in every community.

If we want to discuss tackling patriarchal cultures, we need to include the ones at home. We cannot paint Britain as a paradise for women while an epidemic of femicide is taking place, in which a woman is killed by a man on average every three days. There is plenty of systemic misogyny, and systemic failures in the UK over how sexual abuse is treated, by not only the police but also by other institutions that are supposed to protect the vulnerable. This problem has not been imported.

According to the 2022 National Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, led by Professor Alexis Jay, there were systemic failures that led to these gangs not being stopped sooner. Victims told police, teachers and doctors what was happening. Their claims were dismissed, or ignored. In the case of Rochdale, victim blaming was found to be one of the big reasons that the young women were failed by the police.

Suppose Jenrick really cared about ending misogyny and the dehumanising attitudes towards women and girls, then perhaps he would have done something about this when he was a government minister. But he didn’t.

But no. He ignored the issue when in power, and has jumped on it now to win himself headlines and attention.

Child sexual abuse should not be used as a political football by someone trying to raise their political profile. Drumming up a panic around gangs of British-Pakistani men grooming young white women is divisive, and does nothing to solve any of the very real problems that exist in Britain. But hey, at least Jenrick and his team get a few headlines.