Add UK to the list:
Some quotes from a Lengthy article:
The central argument of the ‘grooming gangs’ narrative is, in short, that a ‘disproportionate’ number of Asian/Muslim/Pakistani-heritage men are involved in grooming (mostly) white British girls for organised sexual abuse. These claims are often substantiated with reference to a spate of high-profile prosecutions of so-called ‘grooming gangs’ in towns and cities such as Rotherham, Rochdale, Derby, Telford, Oxford, Huddersfield and Newcastle. The offenders in question – and undoubtedly many more – have absolutely committed horrific crimes; this article is categorically not about denying their existence, belittling their harms or otherwise excusing the inexcusable
Finally, the ‘grooming gangs’ discourse should be addressed by a genuine engagement with anti-racist feminism perspectives. Racial stereotyping has undoubtedly led to fractures within anti-racist and feminist movements, which are themselves marked by attempts by Black and Asian women to organise on their own terms against sexual abuse, racism and patriarchy.201 It also affects the capacity of minority groups to discuss preventing sexual abuse without fuelling racist stereotyping and scapegoating.202 As Gopal argues, contradictions within activist communities need to be confronted too since ‘[i]t is, of course, perfectly possible to be racist in the name of feminism or misogynist while laying claim to antiracism’.203 Backlash around Sarah Champion’s outrageous article for The Sun (discussed earlier) demonstrated that some activists, politicians and the wider public are at least alert and responsive to attempts to whip up racist animosity against Muslim minorities. The processes of racialisation examined in this article obscure from view institutional failures, contemptible attitudes towards victims, many of them working-class girls and young women, and a reluctance to acknowledge that austerity-related cuts have decimated services dedicated to tackling sexual abuse and violence.204 Culturalist, essentialist explanations of why Muslim men sexually abuse children must be rejected. Reliant on multitudinous racial stereotypes, they exceptionalise sexual abuse as the preserve of particular communities rather than acknowledging it is an everyday problem across British society. As Grewal notes, ‘Muslim men are not considered sufficiently developed individuals who could actively decide on their actions. They are completely at the mercy of their culture, which is itself understood as one based upon violence against women, misogyny and lack of respect for individual autonomy.’205 Culturalist understandings thus impede genuine work to tackle sexual violence by ‘justifying’ initiatives ‘that have to do more with teaching “them” how to behave than it does any meaningful anti-violence objective’.206
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0306396819895727Child abuse revelations divide "most shameful town in Britain"ROTHERHAM England (Reuters) - Swapping cigarettes and chewing gum, the teenage girls outside Rotherham’s Centenary Indoor Market are not engrossed in the conversations students should be having on the first day of term.
Instead of timetables and summer gossip, theirs is a new school year dominated by revelations that as many as 1,400 children in this northern English town were sexually abused by gangs of predominantly Asian men over a 16-year period.
An independent report last week exposed the scale and graphic nature of the crimes and raised difficult questions about whether timidity about confronting the racial aspects of the abuse had prompted authorities to turn a blind eye.
Some of the victims, mainly white girls in social care homes, were as young as 11 and were plied with drugs and alcohol before being trafficked to cities across northern England and gang-raped by groups of men, predominately of Pakistani heritage, the report said.
Those who tried to speak out were threatened with guns and made to watch brutal gang rapes. Their abusers said they would be next if they told anyone. One girl was doused with petrol, her rapist threatening to set her alight.
https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-abuse-rotherham/child-abuse-revelations-divide-most-shameful-town-in-britain-idUKKBN0GX1DN20140902and
Freedom of Information Request
You requested the following information from the Ministry of Justice (MoJ):
For future discussions and potential programme-making we would like to investigate reports that 60% of males in prison convicted of rape are Muslims. Please can you give us the proper stats for these?
Your request has been handled under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) and I can confirm that the MoJ holds information that you have asked for and it is provided below.
Sexual offences are traumatising crimes which ruin lives. Tough new sentences are available for those who commit these dreadful crimes - and under this Government sex offenders are more likely to go to prison and for longer. We recently introduced a new mandatory life sentence for people convicted of a second very serious sexual or violent crime and introduced tough new Extended Determinate Sentence which will ensure dangerous offenders spend long periods in prison and are supervised for long periods after their release.
As at 31 March 2014, the latest point in time for which data is available for public use, the male prison population in England and Wales for all offenders serving immediate custodial sentence for rape was 5,682. Of this, there were 676 offenders who self-declared their religion as Muslim (12% of the total).
Please note that the figures given relate to offenders for whom these offences were the principal offences for which they were sentenced to immediate custody. When a defendant has been found guilty of two or more offences it is the offence for which the heaviest penalty is imposed. Where the same disposal is imposed for two or more offences, the offence selected is the offence for which the statutory maximum penalty is the most severe. As such offenders convicted of murder and rape at the same time are excluded from the figures. Also the data relates to prisoners’ current self-declared religion, not any previously declared religion on reception into prison as prisoners are under no obligation to declare their religion.
These figures have been drawn from administrative IT systems which, as with any large scale recording system, are subject to possible errors with data entry and processing.
Posted: Sun Jul 10, 2022 4:51 pm