cross-posted from: https://exploding-heads.com/post/55417
In a town of 140,000 or so people, some 1,000 young girls were systematically raped and sexually abused by gangs of men over a number of years — and this figure has been described as ‘tame’ by a witness to a recent inquiry.
The perpetrators were mostly Pakistani men, the victims were overwhelmingly poor, white and English. The girls, as young as 11 or 12, were given drink and drugs, gang raped and passed around, and threatened if they told the police. Countless such testimonies were confirmed by the authorities, and investigations here reported quite extreme and unprintable forms of sexual abuse. In this town seven men went to jail, although five were given relatively short sentences and are most likely out again.
The strangest thing about this story is that this was happening in dozens of cities across England over the course of two decades before it became a national story. As many as 10,000 girls were raped in this way, and countless people in positions of authority, in children’s services and police, knew about it.