Pride and Predators-

Content warning: This blog discusses the topic of  grooming gangs that may be triggering to those who read it-

On Musk (wanting others to pander to his ego), I once again find it incredibly frustrating that both the Reform, and Conservative party are now proposing a new inquiry into child sexual abuse, despite a major investigation already taking place and coming to completion in 2022. 

The cases focused on the most by Musk centre around the grooming gangs that targeted, and assaulted teenage girls in Rochdale and Rotherham, which led to forty-two men of mostly British Pakistani ancestry being convicted. The young victims that were preyed upon were mainly of British Caucasian descent, which ultimately resulted in the UK media making allegations that these crimes were swept under the carpet by local authorities (due to reports going back to 2010) in fear of being accused of racial prejudice.

Although part of a local investigation, these cases were also included in the IICSA national inquiry into child abuse in the UK. As a result of this investigation (commissioned by then Conservative Home Secretary Theresa May) in 2014, the Labour party who came into power last year have decided to now produce a set of new laws ("Keeping children safe and helping families thrive", as well as the "Children’s wellbeing and schools" bill) based on the 20 recommendations listed by Professor Alexis Jay (who had conducted the enquiry two years earlier), and were subsequently brought forward to parliament as an amendment to the "Care Standards Act of 2000", plus "Education Act of 2002". The first read happened on the 17th December 2024, but needs to have a successful second read in the House of Commons (in early January 2025) if there is a fighting chance of these changes becoming law.

However, this will not come to fruition if Elon Musk (who went on a tirade against Keir Starmer about this on twitter) uses his influence to try and shame Keir over these past crimes happening, when none of this occurred during a Labour government. The Conservatives had been running the country for the past fourteen years up until the election last year, so I do not understand what his grounds are for doing this other than to stir division and discord, while not thinking of the trauma of those who were brave enough to come forward and give evidence against their abusers.

Yes, Keir was appointed Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) from 2008 until 2013, but it was not until 2011 that the DPP was given veto power over arrest warrants in the UK. It is also true that the DPP decides which charges to bring against a suspect based on the evidence available, however like the Attorney General they are not in charge of the police or their investigations. The DPP is appointed by the Attorney General and discharges his functions under his superintendence, as it is the Attorney General who is accountable to Parliament for the work of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). Advising the government, individual government departments, and individual government ministers on legal matters. The Attorney General answers questions in Parliament around CPS matters, bringing "unduly lenient" sentences (requests made to review of Crown Court sentences that are deemed lenient) and points of law to the Court of Appeal in England and Wales. With that I would also like to point out that at this time, it was Dominic Grieve (a Conservative) that held the position of Attorney General, yet no fingers were pointed in his direction about these gangs. Dominic Grieve has openly spoken up in Starmer’s defence too regarding to similar allegations made against him by Boris Johnson about Jimmy Savile, when trying to draw attention away from his own "Partygate" scandal. Not remembering that when Jimmy Savile's sexual abuse crimes were exposed in 2012, Starmer said amid the subsequent scandal that "It was like a dam had bust and people rightfully wanted to know why he had been allowed to get away with it for so long, causing Starmer (in 2013) to announce changes around how sexual abuse investigations handled amid Operation Yewtree.

Like the events of last summer, I truly find it absolutely sickening that the victims of such heinous acts are being used once again by these parties to rage bait and incite racial hatred and tension in the UK. People have also been questioning Starmer’s knighthood (received in 2014) for services to criminal justice, yet have forgotten that Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher lobbied for the knighthood of the UK’s most notorious sex offender Jimmy Savile (which he received in 1990, just before her retirement), despite warnings from members of her cabinet a decade earlier about his unsavoury behaviour towards women.

Disturbingly, (and unfortunately) there has been a long history of such cases in the UK, with one part of the child sex abuse investigation looking into the Durham detention centre for male adolescents, where an organised paedophile ring came to light 25 years after operating in the 1970s and 80s (impacting the lives of more than 500 potential victims), which is a massive oversight and abuse of power regarding the ringleader who was finally sentenced in 2003. Not part of the recent investigation, you also have the Norwich sex ring (investigations began in 2012 after initial reports in 2010), where both of these rings were orchestrated by a groups of British Caucasian sex offenders (with the leader of the Norwich ring being a woman), showing that immigration does not equate to more sex crimes against children in the UK. All of these atrocities were wrong regardless of the ethnicity of the perpetrators, and my heart bleeds for those who have survived the horrific ordeals inflicted upon them by these monsters. Many of them having to endure living with the injustices made against them for so long, where there has been evidence regarding those abused not being taken seriously when the whistles were blown. This in my opinion highlights a much deeper societal issue around victim blaming/shaming when it comes to sexual assault.