Not suprised.
A recent report commissioned by the Greater Manchester Police and Crime Commissioner gives little cause for optimism.
The number of child sexual exploitation offences (‘grooming’) in Greater Manchester increased fivefold from 146 in 2013 to 714 in 2016, the study revealed.
Some 1,732 youngsters are currently identified as victims of exploitation or at risk of grooming — almost treble the figure from 2015.
But those figures don’t tell the whole story. Despite the rise in offences, the report acknowledges, grooming remains under-reported.
Even these latest sickening statistics could actually represent the ‘tip of the iceberg’.
Meanwhile, no details of ethnic backgrounds of offenders are given. The topic of race, in fact, is largely avoided, dismissed in a few sentences.
‘A small minority of British Pakistani men are criminal sex offenders as in other communities,’ the study concludes.
The statement is accurate but highly misleading in this context.
White men, acting alone, are responsible for most sex offences in the country.
But, judging by recent trials, street grooming gangs are disproportionately made up of a sub-section of British Pakistani society.
There have been at least 14 major trials, such as the ones in Rochdale and Rotherham; in Oxford, Derby, Leeds, Aylesbury, Telford, Banbury, Middlesbrough, Dewsbury, Carlisle, Burnley and Blackpool.
The prosecutions resulted in the conviction of 66 men, many from a Pakistani background.
But even this figure does not reflect the true scale of a problem that liberal commentators are still shamefully reluctant to confront.
