Racist and Misogynistic Attitudes Among UK Pakistani Community Led to ‘Industrial Rape’: Experts

Don't Divide Us event told grooming and abuse has not ended

Speakers (L to R) Khadija Khan, Rakib Ehsan, and Hardeep Singh at a Don't Divide Us event in London on Sep. 1, 2022 (Chris Summers/The Epoch Times)

LONDON—Racist and misogynistic attitudes within Britain’s Pakistani community led to the “industrial rape” of more than 1,000 white girls and little has been done to tackle those beliefs, an event organised by the campaign group Don’t Divide Us was told on Thursday night.

In April, Greater Manchester Police apologised for failing to protect girls who had been abused by gangs of men, predominantly from the Pakistani community, who abused under-age girls in Rochdale.

Last month Rishi Sunak, who is bidding to become the next Conservative Party leader, described the activities of the Rochdale grooming gang as “atrocious crimes” and said he would create a new criminal offence to tackle it.

Grooming gangs also operated in Rotherham, Oxford, Huddersfield, and Telford, where a report last month said child sexual exploitation “thrived” for 30 years because of fears that exposing it would “inflame racial tensions.”

Khadija Khan, a journalist and commentator who is herself British-Pakistani, told the event: “This issue had been unfolding for years. ... Some men defended these criminals, saying ’they’re from a different culture. They don’t understand these things,' and there was a shrugging of shoulders by the authorities.”

Hardeep Singh, deputy director for the Network of Sikh Organisations, said he had been initially reticent to speak at Thursday’s event in London for fear of opening himself up to accusations of Islamophobia but he said: “There was a conspiracy of silence on the issue because of nervousness over race. That emboldened the perpetrators.”

Undated photographs of six men who were convicted of sexually abusing under-age girls in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, in November 2018. (National Crime Agency)

Singh said the word Islamophobia was used to shut down the debate and he said The Times was bombarded with complaints when, in 2011, reporter Andrew Norfolk first broke the story of men of Pakistani origin grooming and abusing girls in Rotherham.

“If it hadn’t been for Andrew Norfolk we wouldn’t have known about the industrial rape that had been going on.”

Singh read out an excerpt from a book, Please Let Me Go by Caitlin Spencer, a survivor of the grooming gangs, in which she said: “These men assumed it was okay to rape non-Muslim girls. They used to call me white [expletive] and white [expletive] and said this is what white girls are for.”

He also pointed out that another survivor, Dr. Ella Hill, had identified “anti-white racism” as a motive for the abuse she suffered in Rotherham.

Singh also read out an excerpt from Judge Gerald Clifton’s sentencing remarks (pdf) in the 2012 Rochdale grooming gang trial, when he told the perpetators: “I believe that one of the factors that led to that was that they were not of your community or religion.”

‘Non-Muslim Girls Were Called White Trash or Infidels’

Khan said: “There is truth in that. Girls who were non-Muslim were called white trash or infidels.”

But she said it was wrong to assume that these men treated Muslim women, within the Pakistani community, with respect.

“Those who obey and toe the line survive. But those who don’t are ostracised, sometimes tortured and killed to make an example of them,” Khan said, referring to so-called honour killings such as Shafilea Ahmed, who was murdered by her parents in Bradford in 2003.

Khan said: “Religious ideology plays a part. ... Women aren’t treated as equals. Sharia councils are not recognised as lawful but they are a parallel legal system. If you challenge the sharia councils you are seen as challenging the word of God.”

Rakib Ehsan, a writer and senior data analyst with the Centre for Social Justice, told the event part of the problem was that the authorities treated the Pakistani community as if it was “monolithic” and not a collection of individuals.

“This attitude of treating groups as a whole is hugely problematic. It’s the bigotry of low expectations. That you think you will offend the whole group,” he said.

Ehsan said: “A well-integrated British Pakistani family living in Guildford may have a very different view to a traditional family in somewhere like Blackburn.”

He said that, undoubtedly, some British Pakistani men saw white girls as “fair game,” and it was an attitude that persisted.

Grooming gang members Adil Khan (left) and Qari Abdul Rauf, pictured after their arrest in Rochdale, England in 2010. (Greater Manchester Police)

Singh said he believed the abuse had not stopped and was still going on in towns and cities up and down the country.

He said: “Whistleblowers like Maggie Oliver [a detective who resigned from the police to expose the Rochdale scandal] will tell you that this is still going on. Survivors know that it’s continuing. It hasn’t gone away, much as the authorities want us to believe. It’s a current issue.”

Singh said in the past the police and councils in places like Rochdale and Rotherham “made the wrong decision, to sacrifice these girls on the altar of political correctness,” because they feared it would harm “social cohesion” when it has actually played into the hands of the far-right.

“But it’s going on right now and it’s going right now in towns and cities around the country,” Singh added.

Khan said the authorities and the media wrongly assumed all British Pakistanis were Islamist zealots and she pointed out that although extremists protested outside a school in Batley, West Yorkshire, last year when a teacher showed a caricature of the Prophet Mohammed in a classroom, a group of British Pakistani mothers had written an open letter to the school asking for him to be reinstated.

Survivor: Responsibility Not Solely With Pakistani Community

Spencer told The Epoch Times, in a direct message on Twitter: “While those particular Muslim men had that view of me, they were only one group of men I was trafficked and raped by. There were also white British men and women, some Italian, at least one Indian Sikh, and people from many different backgrounds involved in my abuse and the abuse of several other girls. I do know that they are still actively abusing other girls as they have specifically told me that. I don’t believe responsibility lies solely with the Pakistani community to address the issue as it’s not strictly a Pakistani issue.”

She added: “I have received amazing support in the aftermath, including from people within the Pakistani community. So they definitely aren’t ignoring the issues around sex trafficking. I know there are certain groups out there that do like to push that agenda and only focus on Pakistani abusers but that does nothing to help the victims as our stories are often twisted and cherry picked to a point where the white abusers are completely ignored. That message could see white abusers completely overlooked, resulting in victims of trafficking by anyone but Pakistani men could go completely unnoticed.”

The Epoch Times has reached out to the Home Office but has not yet received a response.