West Midlands Police officers are accused of telling an alleged rape gang victim, aged 12, that she was “lying” about her abuse, and told her mother she was “prostituting herself”.
“I was 12 or 13 when I went with my mum to the police to report the first rape. But a female police officer accused me of lying and that just broke me. I went off the rails after that,” said the alleged victim, given the pseudonym ‘Karen’ by BirmingahLive, who was targeted by a so-called grooming gang operating in Walsall.
Her mother told the local media outlet that she would “have to pick her up at the police station after she was found by them, sometimes at hotels” and that officers told her “we think your daughter is prostituting herself”.
“I could have dropped to my knees at that point because we were talking about a young girl,” she lamented.
The allegations echo many other findings of failure by the police, social services, and other authorities on the vexed question of so-called grooming gangs, which are comprised predominantly of Mulsim, South Asian heritage predators who target mostly white, working-class victims.
Police long feared tackling the issue, which is ongoing, due to fears of being branded racist, and refused to intervene when underage girls and young women were pimped out and raped by dozens of men on the grounds that they were making “lifestyle choices” — despite the fact that sexual relations with minors and in particular under-13s is in all circumstances very much a criminal matter.
West Midlands Police were aware of the fact that grooming gangs were operating in Walsall, however.
“Clusters of offenders have been found in Walsall and on Birmingham East which also have the highest populations of Pakistani communities in the West Midlands,” a police report admitted in 2012.
“The close proximity of suspect addresses in […] Walsall suggests offenders are collaborating in the identification, grooming and subsequent abuse of vulnerable females,” it added — with the location of the area in question being redacted, for whatever reason.
‘Karen’ was also failed by social services, she said, recalling that in 2010 “there was a request to social services for help for me but it was just left.”
“Then basically after the other incidents happened social services in 2012 said my mum and dad couldn’t safeguard me and it was basically their fault what happened to me,” she added.
She was then taken from her parents and put into care, but the abuse continued.
“[T]he men are still at it now, they’re still out there and they’re still doing the same things as they were with me, with younger girls,” Karen told BirminghamLive.
In response to the story, West Midlands Police said that “We accept that there have been failings in some historical cases in the past,” but insisted that “We always strive to put victims at the heart of all our investigations and will be led by what the victim wants” — directly contradicting the victims themselves.
Breitbart London is not aware of a single senior police officer or local government official actually being held to account through criminal charges, loss of pension, or other serious sanctions, despite multiple admissions that grooming gangs were allowed to operate with near-impunity over the years in many towns and cities.
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