The following is an excerpt from an NBC news article:
"Investigating Britain's 'sex gangs'
By Tazeen Ahmad, NBC News correspondent
NBC News correspondent Tazeen Ahmad is also a reporter for Dispatches, an award-winning investigative news program on Britain’s Channel 4. She wrote the following piece for msnbc.com after she and a team of journalists spent a year researching and producing “Britain’s Sex Gangs,” a program broadcast in the U.K.
LONDON - Abby sat in the back of the car twisting her fingers nervously. She pushed her bangs out of her eyes but her hands quickly returned to her lap, clasped tightly together. Her chipped pink nail polish served as a reminder that these are the hands of a schoolgirl – a schoolgirl living a nightmare.
For the last two years, Abby had been repeatedly raped by men far older than she is. She was 13 years old the first time it happened.
“It went on from 7 o'clock, when it started getting dark, to roughly 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning,” she said.
Abby smiled, but the smile never reached her pretty hazel eyes. On this drizzly Friday afternoon, she showed us the places in the northern English city of Leeds her rapists had taken her: fast-food restaurants, hotels, alleyways.
We pulled up outside a children’s playground. Abby was brought here by someone she thought was her friend and then was raped by 20 different men. It was the same park she played in with her sisters. She said being here again made her feel sick.
Abby isn’t alone. The British government estimates that as many as 10,000 children in the U.K. may be victims of sexual exploitation by gangs, and fears the number could be much higher.
'Gang-grooming'
The crime has been dubbed “on-street grooming” or “gang-grooming” and refers to actions taken by men to befriend young girls, sometimes as young as 11, using a combination of charm, coercion and blackmail to gain their trust and lower their inhibitions before they sexually exploit them. After the target is “groomed,” the girls are passed on to other men to be raped and gang-raped.
Over the past four years, 14 gang-grooming cases have come to court across the country and 46 men have been convicted.
The problem is feared to be so widespread that Sue Berelowitz, Britain’s Deputy Children’s Commissioner, announced the start of a two-year inquiry into the problem in October of this year.
The newly formed Child Sexual Exploitation – Gangs and Groups Inquiry will investigate the scope and scale of the issue so that police and local law enforcement have accurate data – beyond just anecdotal evidence – to help protect future victims.
One aspect of the issue that has gotten a lot of media attention in the U.K. is the race of the victims and perpetrators. There have been high-profile arrests of men of Pakistani descent who abused white girls.
But Berelowitz emphasized that unfortunately this is a widespread problem. "It would also be wrong for anyone to conclude or assert that this is an issue for one particular ethnic community," Berelowitz told the BBC."
End quote
There are many more horrid details in the rest of the article.
The only thing that surprises me at this point is that the mainstream media actually even touched on this subject. The realities are that this has been going on for quite some time and that the overwhelming majority of assailants are from the Muslim community. For them, British white, probably Christian girls are simply fair game. In a religion that seems to be obsessed with sex, these men, like their women, have an air of superiority when it comes to non-Muslims, especially for their (non-Muslim) females. Islamic culture sees these girls and young women as spoils of war to be used for their pleasure and no doubt to humiliate the enemy, who have basically welcomed them into their country. A typical explanation from Muslims to mitigate the guilt of the assailants is that while Muslim women hold their purity sacred, non-Muslims do not; indeed these girls have probably engaged in sexual activity already so it doesn't matter what happens to them after that.
The British government's actions in response to this plague are sickeningly weak . This is not going to stop until Britain and other European governments, which have similar problems, begin to address the real issue.
When are parents going to stop believing the lie that one cannot control his or her own children? We've come to accept the this falsehood and consequently cut our children loose do do almost anything. Parents/guardians have to put limits on those with whom a child (including teens - they are not free yet) hangs out and limits on the amount and length of those times away from the house.
NBC News correspondent Tazeen Ahmad is also a reporter for Dispatches, an award-winning investigative news program on Britain’s Channel 4. She wrote the following piece for msnbc.com after she and a team of journalists spent a year researching and producing “Britain’s Sex Gangs,” a program broadcast in the U.K.
LONDON - Abby sat in the back of the car twisting her fingers nervously. She pushed her bangs out of her eyes but her hands quickly returned to her lap, clasped tightly together. Her chipped pink nail polish served as a reminder that these are the hands of a schoolgirl – a schoolgirl living a nightmare.
For the last two years, Abby had been repeatedly raped by men far older than she is. She was 13 years old the first time it happened.
“It went on from 7 o'clock, when it started getting dark, to roughly 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning,” she said.
Abby smiled, but the smile never reached her pretty hazel eyes. On this drizzly Friday afternoon, she showed us the places in the northern English city of Leeds her rapists had taken her: fast-food restaurants, hotels, alleyways.
We pulled up outside a children’s playground. Abby was brought here by someone she thought was her friend and then was raped by 20 different men. It was the same park she played in with her sisters. She said being here again made her feel sick.
Abby isn’t alone. The British government estimates that as many as 10,000 children in the U.K. may be victims of sexual exploitation by gangs, and fears the number could be much higher.
'Gang-grooming'
The crime has been dubbed “on-street grooming” or “gang-grooming” and refers to actions taken by men to befriend young girls, sometimes as young as 11, using a combination of charm, coercion and blackmail to gain their trust and lower their inhibitions before they sexually exploit them. After the target is “groomed,” the girls are passed on to other men to be raped and gang-raped.
Over the past four years, 14 gang-grooming cases have come to court across the country and 46 men have been convicted.
The problem is feared to be so widespread that Sue Berelowitz, Britain’s Deputy Children’s Commissioner, announced the start of a two-year inquiry into the problem in October of this year.
The newly formed Child Sexual Exploitation – Gangs and Groups Inquiry will investigate the scope and scale of the issue so that police and local law enforcement have accurate data – beyond just anecdotal evidence – to help protect future victims.
One aspect of the issue that has gotten a lot of media attention in the U.K. is the race of the victims and perpetrators. There have been high-profile arrests of men of Pakistani descent who abused white girls.
But Berelowitz emphasized that unfortunately this is a widespread problem. "It would also be wrong for anyone to conclude or assert that this is an issue for one particular ethnic community," Berelowitz told the BBC."
End quote
There are many more horrid details in the rest of the article.
The only thing that surprises me at this point is that the mainstream media actually even touched on this subject. The realities are that this has been going on for quite some time and that the overwhelming majority of assailants are from the Muslim community. For them, British white, probably Christian girls are simply fair game. In a religion that seems to be obsessed with sex, these men, like their women, have an air of superiority when it comes to non-Muslims, especially for their (non-Muslim) females. Islamic culture sees these girls and young women as spoils of war to be used for their pleasure and no doubt to humiliate the enemy, who have basically welcomed them into their country. A typical explanation from Muslims to mitigate the guilt of the assailants is that while Muslim women hold their purity sacred, non-Muslims do not; indeed these girls have probably engaged in sexual activity already so it doesn't matter what happens to them after that.
The British government's actions in response to this plague are sickeningly weak . This is not going to stop until Britain and other European governments, which have similar problems, begin to address the real issue.
When are parents going to stop believing the lie that one cannot control his or her own children? We've come to accept the this falsehood and consequently cut our children loose do do almost anything. Parents/guardians have to put limits on those with whom a child (including teens - they are not free yet) hangs out and limits on the amount and length of those times away from the house.
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