In one English town, the scandal involving Pakistani-heritage paedophile rape gangs has just taken a turn for the worse. Five survivors of the so-called groomers now claim to have been sexually abused by serving police officers when they first came forward to report crimes committed against them.
One victim claims to have been raped from the age of 12 by a serving South Yorkshire Police officer. A new criminal investigation into police involvement in the Rotherham grooming scandal has led to the arrest of three retired officers on suspicion of sexual offences dating back 30 years. Among the allegations is that police would use the threat of being handed over to the Pakistani gangs to coerce sex from vulnerable girls.
In total, 30 written testimonies allege that Rotherham police officers were involved alongside the mostly Pakistani-heritage grooming gangs in the exploitation of young girls. Police would even pay or trade drugs for sex with captive girls, one at least as young as 11. Rapes were allegedly committed in squatted properties and even in police cars.
According to Joanna Williams of the think tank Cieo:
The shame of Britain’s grooming-gangs scandal, it seems, is not simply that political correctness was prioritised over safeguarding children, but also that corrupt police officers sought to protect their own access to sex with young girls.
Part of the national scandal of grooming gangs is that local authorities—councils, schools, social services, politicians, police—were, or at least seemed to be, complicit, because they sought to preserve “good community relations” at the expense of girls and young women. Yet the current proposals to solve these ‘cold case’ crimes with a South Yorkshire Police internal investigation are convincing no-one, not least the female witnesses to the years of abuse, who view it as police ‘marking their own homework.’ Or as solicitors for the complainants say,
Those that have suffered abuse in Rotherham have no faith that South Yorkshire Police will do a thorough job of investigating alleged abuse by their own officers.
