Tagged with Child Abuse

Woolf’s enforced resignation exposes Establishment & Home Office stitch-up

WoolfIt’s not often I disagree with my colleague Tom Watson MP, but on the issue of Fiona Woolf being forced out of the chairmanship of the child sex abuse inquiry after a string of damning revelations I think he’s got it wrong. “Labour should not go after May”, he’s reported as saying.

Of course he’s right that what matters now is to find a positive replacement. It has to be someone who (i) has knowledge and experience of child abuse issues, which Woolf did not, (ii) has the forensic skills of a High Court judge, which Woolf also lacked, (iii) is manifestly without any Establishment and Home Office connections, which Woolf manifestly did have, and (iv) commands the confidence of the survivors and victims groups, which again Woolf clearly didn’t. But to ignore the Home Office’s deep and dishonourable collusion in trying to fix the chairmanship of this inquiry in order to cover up the charge of organised abuse by prominent politicians and officials, and to suggest we simply move on, would be a serious mistake.
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Avoiding charge of racism is a cover for patriarchy and misogyny in Rotherham

reut-miso-e1350497963883The child sex abuse scandal in Rotherham is a toxic mix of race, class and misogyny. And this was not a handful of girls hidden in a cellar by a particular gang. This was hundreds of young women (and some young men), year on year, being victimised in plain sight. Anybody who took a cab late at night, bought a kebab or knew the families of either the victims or the perpetrators would have had an inkling as to what was going on. But something made them blind to it.

There are people who had no excuse not to know. Attention has centered on South Yorkshire’s police and crime commissioner, Shaun Wright, who was cabinet member for children and young people’s services at Rotherham council from 2005 to 2010, received three reports about widespread abuse but did nothing. Continue reading →

How not to write about Rotherham

Rotherham Magistrates CourtSexual violence against women and girls comes in all skin colours, all languages, all forms of religious belief. One would hope its tacit acceptance by institutions laying claim to the protection of the most vulnerable lies in the distant past. But the report into the institutional silence, if not silencing of the victims of a Pakistani-descent paedophile gang shows this appalling abuse is not part of our uncomfortable yesterdays. It’s contemporary, it’s here, and lives are still being broken by sexual predators who rape children with seeming impunity. Continue reading →