"... had been sexually abused in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013 by predominantly British-Pakistani men. ... The failure to address the abuse was attributed to a combination of factors revolving around race, class and gender—contemptuous and sexist attitudes toward the mostly working-class victims; fear that the perpetrators' ethnicity would trigger allegations of racism and damage community relations; the Labour council's reluctance to challenge a Labour-voting ethnic minority; lack of a child-centred focus;"
So the council didn't take any action to avoid "allegations of racism and damage community relations". This makes no sense. What did the council think will happen when the news breaks out. Won't it increase racial bias by leaps and bounds. And to just avoid the allegations of racism, the council was willing to let this continue? How do such people sleep at night.
It's a very sad and horribly managed situation in the name of supposedly good intentions. However, the facts and details have been drummed up over the years by Murdoch-owned media, and the statistics used to "prove" the extent of the abuse, and its attribution to "Asian men" has been criticized as not only unscientific but pseudoscientific. There's a good overview of the history of the case, its media attention, and journalistic standards, by Cockbain and Tufail, two academic criminologists, here[0]. Not only that, but some of the victims themselves have spoken out about being used as playing chips for right-wing rhetoric in Rotherham (as noted in the paper).
>Javid’s response to Champion was scooped by The Times’ aforementioned Andrew Norfolk and reported as the home secretary having ‘ordered research into why men convicted of grooming-gang sex crimes are disproportionately of Pakistani origin’.44 Although this angle misrepresented Javid’s actual letter, it was repeated across numerous news outlets – and neither Javid nor Champion apparently cared to correct it.45 Consequently, the impression stood that ethnic disproportionality in ‘grooming gangs’ was an accepted fact and legitimate focus for government-commissioned research.
And rather importantly:
>Although criminal justice data on ethnicity should always be treated cautiously (and data on religion are simply not collected as standard), Asians were notably not overrepresented among the approximately 172,000 men and 27,000 women convicted of sexual offences in England and Wales in 2016.
"... had been sexually abused in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013 by predominantly British-Pakistani men. ... The failure to address the abuse was attributed to a combination of factors revolving around race, class and gender—contemptuous and sexist attitudes toward the mostly working-class victims; fear that the perpetrators' ethnicity would trigger allegations of racism and damage community relations; the Labour council's reluctance to challenge a Labour-voting ethnic minority; lack of a child-centred focus;"
So the council didn't take any action to avoid "allegations of racism and damage community relations". This makes no sense. What did the council think will happen when the news breaks out. Won't it increase racial bias by leaps and bounds. And to just avoid the allegations of racism, the council was willing to let this continue? How do such people sleep at night.