Sexual Grooming: A Degeneration of Humanity
The Rochdale grooming case is despicable, but racialising the crime is not the answer
The news that nine men have been found guilty of child sex abuse in Rochdale has created widespread revulsion. The disclosure in Liverpool Crown Court that the men plied their victims with drink and drugs so they could ‘pass them around’ and use them for sex was vile. One of the girls ‘groomed’ was as young as 13.
The case involved Asian perpetrators – and white victims. The far-right British National Party (BNP) is gloating that Nick Griffin, its leader, is now ‘vindicated’ on his past comments about ‘Muslim paedophile gangs’. Meanwhile, the head of the Rochdale-based Ramadhan Foundation, Mohammed Shafiq, has accused Pakistani community leaders of ‘burying their heads in the sand’ on the issue of street grooming. However (and confusingly for the outside observer) the police insist the grooming was not ‘racially motivated’.
Let us be clear: sex with underage minors is a crime. A crime is a crime, whether it is committed by a white, black or Asian person. It remains a crime if done by a Muslim or Christian, a Jew, Hindu, Buddhist or atheist. To every right-thinking member of society, street grooming of under-age vulnerable girls is despicable. There is no justification for it whatsoever, nor should shame from any one sector of a community be used as a cloak to allow this sort of behaviour to continue.
We must expose abuse and make sure the authorities react. But pointing fingers to certain communities without comprehensive concrete research could be a distraction. Scapegoating may even deflect the society from the main issue (sexual abuse) and send us into an over-focus on only one small part of an overall problem – leading to further social division. ‘Racialising’ crime over claims about Muslim men grooming white girls could hide legitimate worries about a system that fails victims of abuse. An entire community should not be blamed for the crimes of its individuals; in 2009, eight white men were found guilty in Scotland of a catalogue of charges relating to child abuse. We must address the issue firmly and objectively. Community and civil society groups, youth centres, religious institutions along with relevant statutory agencies, including the police, children’s services and the third sector must come on board to tackle this in a holistic way.
‘At the moment, our nationwide figures on on-street grooming are still patchy and incomplete’, according to the authors of Comment is Free (CiF) in the Guardian on 8 May 2012. They believe that white offenders make up the majority of lone street groomers; but when it comes to group on-street groomers Asian youth of Pakistani origin are disproportionately high. ‘Nonetheless, it is crucial to remember that these cases do not paint a full picture of this crime…We need a better, more efficient system of data collection and collation. What’s more, these data need to be comparable and consistent across the country and across different agencies involved’, they suggest.
Expressions like ‘conspiracy of silence’, ‘political correctness’ and ‘fear of appearing racist’ are not helpful. Some communities may have a disproportionate presence in certain crimes, but that does not necessarily give the full picture surrounding those crimes. Nor should this allow politicians and media to vilify those communities; the result could be handing over ammunitions to hate groups like the BNP and the English Defence League (EDL), who in their very black-and-white discourse blame Muslims for many awful things in our country.
Islam is the religion of some of the criminals recently convicted. However, even extra-marital sex is totally unacceptable in our faith. A story at the time of Islam’s Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) is highly relevant to understanding Islam’s position on the recent grooming saga:
A man came to the Prophet and asked his permission to have sex (outside marriage) with other women.
The Prophet asked: “Would you like it if other men commit such acts with your mother, sister, wife or daughter?”
The man said: “No”
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