It was more of a class and misogyny problem, which due to cultural reasons these groups of men were able to take advantage. There’s a story of police being called to a disturbance and found a group of older guys (mostly south Asian but there was a white guy too) with two teenage (I think about 15) drunk, working class girls. Instead of stepping back and thinking there’s something very strange going on here and seeing those girls as victims, who were vulnerable, potentially being groomed and obviously being taken advantage of, they arrested the girls for drunk and disorderly, were apologetic to the men and didn’t even record the names of those men.

Statistically in the UK, most grooming and sexual violence is some by family members or family friends, against both boys and girls, and are perpetrated by white people simply because the UK is still 83% white! If any of these people truly cared about vulnerable children, they would focus on more than just these grooming gangs but that doesn’t rile up their base, get more likes and give them more support. Yeah, these horrible men need to be arrested and put away but let’s set up systems that try to prevent these children being harmed in the first place.

This article is talking about the wider problems of children not being seen as victims, and agencies not communicating with each other. Whether it’s a black boy arrested for carrying drugs or a white girl ignored as being “promiscuous”, there are systemic issues in our system that need to be addressed.