The majority of child sexual abuse cases are taking place in areas with significant Asian populations, a new report has found. Figures revealed by Freedom of Information requests lodged with every police force in England show that London, Manchester and West Yorkshire have the highest rates of incidents. Another study claimed that White and Asian people took the number one and two slots amongst perpetrators.
The National Society for the Prevention of Child Cruelty (NSPCC) lodged the FOI requests as part of it’s fact finding exercise for it’s third annual state of the nations’s children report. The figures show that there were a total of 31,238 sexual offences against under 18 year olds recorded between 1st April 2013 and 31st March 2014, an increase of 40 percent on the previous year.
The majority of these – 11.28 percent – were recorded by the London Metropolitan police. Also high on the list were Greater Manchester Police, which recorded 5.84 percent of cases, West Yorkshire Police, which recorded 4.92 percent of cases, and West Midlands Police, recording 4.37 percent of cases.
West Yorkshire Police cover an area which includes Bradford, Leeds, and Wakefield, whilst West Midlands Police serves Birmingham, Coventry and Wolverhampton.
The total figure represents 85 cases a day including rape, sexual assault, and grooming being reported to police nationwide. The majority of cases involved children aged 12-18, although 2,895 involved children aged five or younger – including 94 babies.
Each of these areas include significant Asian, predominantly Muslim populations. The 2011 census showed that the Muslim population in London had risen to 12.4 percent of the capital’s total, and that 40 percent of England’s Muslims live within London alone.
Likewise, Birmingham City Council has found that 21.8 percent of the city’s residents are Muslim, outnumbering the proportion of people who are of no religion. In Bradford, the Muslim population is so significant that George Galloway was able to win election on a pro-Islam ticket in a 2012 by-election. He later attempted to ban Israelis from the city.
Yet despite the revelation made last year that Pakistani gangs had systematically groomed and abused 1,400 children in Rotherham alone over a 16 year period, the NSPCC makes no mention of the scourge of Pakistani sex gangs in it’s report. Although it’s website does include a section on child grooming by gangs, it makes no mention of Rotherham, instead blandly asserting that “We don’t know a great deal about who commits child sexual exploitation.”
It also cites a study by the Children’s Commissioner in order to insist: “Where ethnic group was recorded, the majority of perpetrators were White and the second largest group were Asian.”
That study, undertaken in 2012 before the Rotherham scandal was made known, draws on limited information and reveals an unwillingness to believe the victims’ testimonies as to the ethnicity of the perpetrators, saying: “Data on the ethnicity of perpetrators are considerably less reliable than that supplied on age or gender. Ethnicity and nationality were sometimes confused. Unless a perpetrator had actually been arrested, it was difficult to be sure whether or not their ethnicity had been correctly identified.
“In addition, professionals adopted a range of methods for capturing data on ethnicity, and often used broad headings such as ‘Asian’ or ‘White’ to capture individuals.”
Peter Wanless, CEO of the NSPCC, has said of his organisation’s report: “These startling figures must not be ignored. As our report shows, the challenges in keeping future generations safe are myriad and complex.”
He believes that it is the government’s duty to do more to intervene in family life, in order to prevent a tsunami of abuse: “From the leap in young people being referred to social services, to the number of sexual offences being recorded against children, it is clear that society and government needs to ‘up the ante’ and ensure tackling child abuse is a top priority,” he said.
Yet this explanation ignores the rise in government interference in family life. Earlier this month, a toddler, known as ‘AB’ was reported to have been removed from his family home and put up for adoption against the wish of his loving parents – because they were heavy smokers.
Similarly, 74 children are reported to have been taken into care between 2009 and 2014, purely because they were obese. Tam Fry, chairman of the Child Growth Foundation and spokesman for the National Obesity Forum, last year said that parents allowing their children to become obese constituted “child neglect and abuse”
And in a highly alarming case which made international news last year, Portsmouth Council applied for an emergency protection order to seize control of Ashya King, a five year old brain tumour sufferer, because his parents took him to Europe for life saving treatment against the wishes of the National Health Service (NHS).
Ashya’s parents were tracked across Europe by police to Spain, where they were arrested and held for a week until public outcry became such that the British authorities dropped their demand for extradition. Only then were the family were allowed to continue on to seek treatment for Ashya.
Meanwhile, while the NSPCC is keen to publicise the 80 percent increase in child custody cases, it makes little mention of the fact that very few of these cases result in criminal charges of cruelty or neglect.
According to the NSPCC, 570,800 children were referred to social services in 2013/14, equivalent to approximately one in every 24 children. Yet police forces across Britain recorded 9,516 cruelty and neglect offences against under 16s in the same period; meaning that just 1.7 percent of referrals were sufficiently serious to warrant police action.
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