On October 25, British MP and leader of the Conservative party Rishi Sunak was appointed the country’s Prime Minister by Prince Charles III. With him becoming the PM, a statement on grooming gangs he gave in August 2022 has gone viral. PM Sunak, during an exclusive interview with GB News, had said that people in the UK were scared of calling out grooming gangs because of political correctness.
During the interview, PM Sunak outlined how he would tackle the problem of grooming gangs in the UK. Notably, several reports of vulnerable minor girls being sexually exploited have continued to surface in towns like Rotherham, Telford and Oldham in the last few years. Investigations revealed that police and councils did not act appropriately in time and failed to protect the children from the grooming gangs.
PM Sunak called it a ‘horrific crime’ and vowed to tackle the problem as a priority if he was made Prime Minister.
In the interview with Esther McVey and Philip Davies, when he was asked if he had something planned to tackle the problem of grooming gangs just like the policy he had talked about tackling extremism, PM Sunak said the authorities had not been focused on the issue.
He said, “I have two young girls who are nine and eleven. I think for too long, we just haven’t focused on this issue. It’s a horrific crime. A horrific crime affecting not just girls in a few places, it’s far more pervasive across the country than we all realise. We all know the reason that people don’t focus on it is because of political correctness. They are scared of calling out the fact that there is a particular group of people who are perpetuating these crimes. I think that’s wrong, and I want to change it.”
He added that if he becomes the Prime Minister, he will form a new task force at the National Crime Agency that would focus on the problem of grooming gangs. He added, “We will have a requirement for police forces everywhere to prioritise this. I want to make sure that all police forces record the ethnicity of those involved, which currently is not done because people don’t want to do that. I want to create a brand new life sentence for those involved in grooming, with very limited options for parole.”
He said, “A Conservative government should not be letting political correctness stand in the way of keeping people safe.”
The problem of grooming gangs in the UK
In recent years, there have been several reports of vulnerable young girls, especially minors, being exploited by grooming gangs across the country. In October this year, it was reported that Omar, Khalid, Jameel and 21 others were charged with raping a minor girl for four years in Bradford. These grooming gangs typically consist of Pakistani Muslim men, the reason why the mainstream media and even the authorities try to keep them hushed up.
The sexual offences against the minor continued for four years, between 2007 and 2011. The accused in the crime were identified as Omat Taj (35), Pasquale Massimo (40), Khazer Hussain (41), Syed Shabir (39), Abbas Hussain (41), Mussadaq Hussain (37), Amjad Hussain )36), Syed Hassan Basharat (33), Hannan Miah (37), Burhan Uddin Ali (36), Abdul Basith (40), Asif Budhia (39), Shazad Khadam (38), Ibrahim Ali (35), Ashfaq Ahmed (34), Aftab Ahmed (33), Yousaf Bhatti (36), Anwar Aziz (32), Shahinul Haq (35), Jameel Ahmed (32), Brian Davis (53), Khalid Parvez (63), Mohammed Nadeem Ali (38) and Muhammad Yasir (36).
Besides the child sex abuse, the case also pertains to Grooming Jihad, a global issue which has become particularly stark in the UK, where Islamists prey on young girls and women, exploit their vulnerability and use rape as an instrument to inflict punishment.
In 2020, the police charged 32 men for over 150 sexual offences against eight underage teenage girls in West Yorkshire, United Kingdom.
The crimes were committed between 1999 and 2012 against the victims, who were aged between 13-16 years in the Kirklees, Bradford and Wakefield areas. Reportedly, several such victims were subjected to heinous crimes even after they turned adults.
A majority of the accused hail from the Batley and Dewsbury areas in the United Kingdom. They have been charged with serious sexual offences, including rape, indecent assault, sexual activity with a child, trafficking, abetment of rape, conspiracy to rape, making indecent photos of children, and possession of extreme porn.
Nearly 19,000 children were sexually abused in England in 2018-2019
According to the official figures, it is estimated that nearly 19,000 minors in England were sexually groomed in England in the last year, reported Dailymail. The local authorities in England identified around 18,700 suspected victims in 2018-19, up from 3,300 five years ago. The latest figures showed a sharp increase in the number of child grooming victims over the last five years.
The highest rates of child grooming victims in Britain were reported in areas including Birmingham, Lancashire and Bradford.
