Latest news with #RotherhamScandal
Times
4 days ago
- Politics
- Times
MBE for man who led Muslim police boycott over grooming scandal
A man who led a Muslim community boycott of South Yorkshire police after the Rotherham grooming scandal has been awarded an MBE for 'services to integration' and 'cohesion'. Muhbeen Hussain called on Muslims to sever ties with the force and 'take all the necessary action to protect ourselves' in October 2015, the year after the force's failure to investigate thousands of allegations of abuse and rape had been exposed. His campaign group warned: 'Any Muslim groups or institutions in Rotherham that do not adhere to this policy of disengagement will also be boycotted by the Muslim community.' Asked what motivated him, he told the BBC it was 'first and foremost' the police's 'pernicious lie' that it had failed to act on grooming allegations 'because of fears of being called racist'. He argued that this amounted to an attempt to 'scapegoat' Muslims. Hussain also said police had failed to protect the community from the far right. The boycott came shortly after the racially aggravated murder of a local Muslim man. Less than a year earlier, the government had said 'institutionalised political correctness' had contributed to the scandal. Theresa May, then the home secretary, made the statement in response to an inquiry by Alexis Jay, which found that within social services, 'there was a widespread perception that messages conveyed by some senior people in the council and also the police, were to 'downplay' the ethnic dimensions of [child sexual exploitation]'. • How the child sex grooming gangs scandal unfolded over 20 years Hussain has repeatedly defended the boycott in the years since. In 2017, the leader of Rotherham council refused to meet him on the grounds of his 'divisive recklessness'. He responded by writing a public letter questioning the leader's fitness for office and claiming his position brought the local authority into disrepute. Today, he runs the all-party parliamentary group on British Muslims and holds a House of Commons pass sponsored by Naz Shah, the Bradford West MP. His MBE for 'political services to integration cohesion and to British society' was announced in the King's birthday honours list last month. Sir John Jenkins, a senior fellow at the Policy Exchange think tank who served as UK ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Syria, called for the honour to be reviewed, saying the boycott was inconsistent with the principle of community cohesion. He said: 'Mr Hussain's pending award of the MBE brings the system into discredit. 'The government should review the system of due diligence applied to those being awarded honours to understand how Mr Hussain's prior activity in boycotting the police was overlooked and to implement steps to avoid such awards in future.' It is not known who nominated Hussain for the honour. Applications can be submitted by any member of the public before being vetted by a committee supported by civil servants in the Cabinet Office. • Gangs raped 'lost' girls because no one cared Hussain has previously said he has long acknowledged the scale of the grooming scandal perpetrated by British Pakistani males, noting that British Muslim Youth, the group he co-founded, organised one of the first demonstrations against 'these criminals that were claiming to be from our community'. He has said, by dint of their criminality, those connected to Rotherham were not Muslims but that he had marched to condemn them anyway. Hussain announced his boycott more than a year after Jay's report on sexual exploitation in Rotherham found that at least 1,400 girls, some as young as 11, were abused between 1997 and 2013 in the town. Jay cited internal police reviews in 2003 and 2006 that found it was 'believed by a number of workers that one of the difficulties that prevent [child sexual abuse] being dealt with effectively is the ethnicity of the main perpetrators'. She referenced evidence which found: 'Young people in Rotherham believed at that time that the police dared not act against Asian youths for fear of allegations of racism.' In October2015, British Muslim Youth, the group Hussain led, published its statement saying the Muslim community had been 'under perpetual attack and demonisation' since the Jay report. It read: 'During this whole period the Muslim community have been made prisoners in their own homes. South Yorkshire police have piggybacked on this hostile environment towards the Muslim community by deflecting the attention of their own failures by scapegoating us. They have peddled a pernicious lie that: historically they failed to act of allegations of [child sexual exploitation], because they were afraid of being branded 'racist'.' On this basis, it said, Muslims had agreed to 'cut all lines of engagement and communication with South Yorkshire police'. It said: 'If South Yorkshire police cannot adequately protect and serve the Muslim residents of Rotherham then moving forward we will take all the necessary action to protect ourselves within the confines of the law, while maintaining a process of disengagement and non-communication with South Yorkshire police.' • How the child sex grooming gangs scandal unfolded over 20 years The boycott was rescinded in less than a week in response to a public outcry and after negotiations with Sarah Champion, the MP for Rotherham. She defused the dispute by agreeing to meet Hussain in parliament and vowing to write to May. Hussain defended his actions, telling the Rotherham Advertiser: 'It wasn't a publicity stunt, but we want people to listen. Like any trade union would call a strike, we had to have this boycott.' Hussain repeatedly claimed the police had argued it had not acted on allegations because of a fear of being 'branded racist'. This, he said, helped them to shift blame away from themselves and towards Muslims, in the process of avoiding accountability for their own incompetence, corruption and failure to believe working-class victims. Hussain also said he believed the force had failed to protect Muslims from far-right demonstrations and violence. On Saturday night he said in a statement: 'My record in countering extremism and terrorism from the age of 14, which has included speaking out unequivocally against grooming gangs including those of Pakistani origin, leading the first demonstration against such criminals and working to break barriers between intrafaith and interfaith communities, speaks for itself. 'I have a distinguished track record in building bridges for communities and I was delighted and honoured to be offered an MBE in the forthcoming King's birthday honours in recognition of this work. I look forward to continuing to work on community cohesion and interfaith understanding going forward.'
Daily Mail
21-06-2025
- Politics
- Daily Mail
ANDREW NEIL: No future UK government has a hope of making things better if it can't reform our incompetent Left-wing, WFH civil service
Former Tory Cabinet minister-turned-magazine editor, Michael Gove, this week revealed that, as Education Secretary, he had to overrule civil servants who wanted to suppress newspaper revelations about in Rotherham. The local council requested the government join it in legal action to prevent The Times from publishing details of its ground-breaking investigation into the scandal. Some senior civil servants in his department advised Gove to join in this bid to muzzle the press.
Telegraph
19-06-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
Michael Gove: Whitehall officials tried to suppress grooming gangs scandal
Lord Gove has claimed that Whitehall officials tried to suppress details of the grooming gangs scandal. The former Cabinet minister said he overruled government and council officials who were seeking to block the publication of information about a victim in Rotherham. As the then education secretary, he said he rejected the attempted legal action on the basis that it was better to tell 'the truth'. Lord Gove also warned that the proposed structure of a new national inquiry into the scandal might limit its ability to scrutinise the failings of police and government at a national level. His comments, made on GB News, come days after the publication of a report by Baroness Casey which found that police and councils avoided pursuing child sex grooming gangs for fear of being viewed as racist. Even though there was evidence that a disproportionate number of Asian men had been responsible in such cases, their role was covered up by successive governments and authorities over concerns about raising community tensions, the review concluded. Lord Gove recalled a request by Rotherham council to block an investigation by Andrew Norfolk, a reporter for The Times newspaper, into the scandal in 2011 by mounting a legal challenge against his attempt to publish details of a 'particularly tragic case'. He said he had examined the material alongside Dominic Cummings, who was working in the Department for Education at the time, and some other staff. 'We contacted Rotherham council, and we said: 'Yes, we will intervene in this case, but on behalf of The Times, because it's absolutely vital that the truth be told',' Lord Gove said. 'It was absolutely the case that there were those who thought that it was appropriate for us not to intervene. 'So the documents in question revealed some details about one particular victim, and it was argued by the council, and by some officials who were sympathetic to their case, that revealing everything about the case might mean that other potential victims, other family members, might be adversely affected. 'And there was also an argument that the council itself was making improvements, and that as a result of these improvements being made, that would be imperilled potentially if there were adverse publicity. 'I think those arguments were made in good faith, but my view, Dominic Cummings's view, was that it was far more important that we told the truth.' He said he adopted the same approach to serious case reviews into the failings of councils, which were heavily censored until he intervened to require 'the greatest possible transparency'. Lord Gove said a proposed national inquiry into the scandal should be 'much more than what it might appear to be at the moment'. 'It appears that the Government may default and make the national inquiry simply a sort of umbrella for lots of specific local inquiries,' he said. 'There are as many as 50 towns and cities across the country in which these gangs have operated or continue to operate, there are failures in policing at a national level that need to be addressed. It is also the case that decisions made within the Home Office and other government departments do need to be scrutinised.' He added: 'One of the things about this whole story, right from the very beginning, has been that there have been people who, for admittedly noble reasons, because they didn't want to see the details being exploited by the very far-Right, have tried to manage the information.'
Telegraph
19-06-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
Starmer should quit over grooming gang scandal, says survivor
Sir Keir Starmer should quit as Prime Minister over his failings around the grooming gang scandal, a campaigning survivor has said. Sammy Woodhouse, who helped expose the Rotherham abuse scandal, said she was disgusted by Sir Keir's conduct in recent months, adding that any politician who had rejected calls for a national inquiry should resign. Ms Woodhouse was just 14 years old when she was groomed and raped by 24-year-old Arshad Hussain, who was the leader of a child exploitation gang. She eventually spoke about her ordeal publicly and her testimony helped bring about Prof Jay's inquiry, which revealed that at least 1,400 children had been abused in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013. Her abuser was later jailed for 35 years and she became a leading campaigner fighting to expose the national grooming gang scandal. Speaking to the Planet Normal podcast, Ms Woodhouse told Allison Pearson of her anger at the way the Prime Minister had initially dismissed the need for a national inquiry and had accused those in support of jumping on a far-Right bandwagon. She said: 'Well, I'm not far-Right and I'm not jumping on a bandwagon. He is just a coward. At the end of the day we're talking about children being groomed, abused, raped, tortured, trafficked, murdered, impregnated, criminalised. 'We are talking about the most heinous crimes that could ever happen, and he wants to just throw these stupid comments in, that we're far-Right and racist, it's absolutely disgusting. 'I don't think he should be prime minister. People are asking me: 'Do you want an apology from him?' Well, no, I don't want an apology. I want a resignation. 'All these politicians that voted no to an inquiry should not be politicians. It's absolutely disgusting that they still are. I think they've just shown their true colours.' Ms Woodhouse said her abuser and rapist believed he was untouchable because people in authority were frightened of being perceived as racist or Islamophobic. She said: 'I was never treated as a victim. I was treated as his mistress, as his girlfriend, and as though, you know, the whole thing was consensual. 'Pretty much all the children were treated like that. If you look at my files, he was invited to medical appointments.' She said: 'In my own files it shows that an anti-racism coordinator was actually attending my meetings.' She also alleged that one of the police officers investigating her case – who was later killed – had bought drugs from her abuser. Ms Woodhouse told the podcast that the Government should ensure that any convicted rapists or child abusers who hold dual citizenship are deported once they have served their sentence. She said: 'I think we have a very weak government, and we have people – and I think it's probably worse now than what it was back in my day, as a child – that don't want to upset the Pakistani Muslim community. 'Now, I don't care what race you are, what religion you are, what gender you are, if you are raping children, you should be prosecuted. And if you're not from this country, get 'em out.'
The Independent
15-05-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
Starmer pays tribute after death of journalist who exposed grooming gang scandal
Andrew Norfolk, the former Times reporter who exposed the Rotherham grooming gang scandal, has died aged 60, the newspaper said. Sir Keir Starmer said Mr Norfolk, who died on May 8 after suffering ill health, was 'absolutely integral' in helping to change the law so more grooming gang members could be convicted. Mr Norfolk's reporting in 2011 revealed a pattern of mainly white teenage girls being groomed by gangs of adult men of a Pakistani heritage after a growing number of prosecutions around the UK. It led to an inquiry into child sexual exploitation in Rotherham, which covered the period 1997 to 2013 and made a 'conservative estimate' that around 1,400 children were sexually exploited over 16 years. The Prime Minister, who was director of public prosecutions when the scandal was revealed, told The Times: 'I am deeply sorry to hear of Andrew's death. He wasn't just an incredibly talented reporter, at The Times and elsewhere, he was driven by the desire to call our attention to injustice and protect the most vulnerable. 'I was privileged enough to meet Andrew first-hand when I was director of public prosecutions after he broke the news of the grooming gangs scandal. His passion for supporting the victims of grooming gangs shone through, and he was absolutely integral to making sure we could change the rules to increase convictions of the vile perpetrators. 'My thoughts are with Andrew's family, loved ones and friends. I hope their memories of him and the knowledge of the difference he made to people's lives are a comfort to them at this time.'
