Teenage rape victims failed by PC dogma

It's impossible not to be horrified by yesterday’s report into the serial failings by social workers, police and prosecutors that allowed a gang of Asian men to systematically rape and pimp vulnerable, underage white girls in the north of England.

Overwhelming evidence that the youngsters, many from broken homes, were being abused was ignored by social workers, some of whom reached the staggering conclusion that the victims were ‘making their own lifestyle choices’ – despite sex with a minor being blatantly illegal.

Almost as appalling is the fact the staff involved are still working under the aegis of Rochdale Council, whose pedantic, box-ticking chief executive Jim Taylor yesterday refused to admit the girls had been ‘betrayed’.

 

Unacceptable: The police and councils did nothing to help victims for fear of wrongly being labelled racist

But, however welcome the inquiry by Rochdale’s Safeguarding Children Board may be, it must be said the report barely scratches the surface.

None of the state workers who failed so dismally in their jobs were identified.

 

  

Nor, disturbingly, was any mention made of the insidious political correctness which, for years, was a considerable factor in stopping the authorities from investigating the girls’ complaints because the men responsible for their misery were Muslim.

Sadly, such misguided liberalism was not confined to Rochdale.

For years – while stressing that the overwhelming majority of Muslims abhor such behaviour and that all races are capable of evil – investigations by this newspaper and others uncovered a pattern of abuse of young white girls by men of Pakistani heritage.

The police and councils did nothing for fear of wrongly being labelled racist.

If, as yesterday’s report suggests, the authorities are still not prepared to learn the lessons of this madness, they will be betraying the victims a second time. That would be truly unforgivable.

Let Britain judge

Not for the first time, Lord Judge spoke for the British public yesterday when he described the interminable Abu Hamza extradition saga as ‘unacceptable’ and a source of ‘real fury to me’.

But, as the Lord Chief Justice himself indicated, it is in Strasbourg – not Britain – that ultimate responsibility for this multi-million pound fiasco lies.
The UK courts took barely a year to decide that the case for sending the murderous Hamza to face trial in the US on terrorism charges was ‘unassailable’.

The cardboard judges at the European Court of Human Rights then sat on their hands for four years – only to agree with the conclusion our own infinitely better qualified judiciary had reached way back in July 2008.

How much longer must we wait for ministers to end Strasbourg’s meddling in our affairs and put Britain’s legal system back in the hands of British judges?

Who’s in charge?

David Cameron – who, according to his Old Etonian friend Charlie Brooks, once refused to take a call from President Obama until he had finished a tennis match – spent Wednesday making a twit of himself on an American TV show with three million viewers.

 

Tell him to hold: David Cameron apparently once refused to take a call from President Obama until he had finished a tennis match

Meanwhile, Chancellor George Osborne, Education Secretary Michael Gove and the arts minister Ed Vaizey took several hours off in the middle of the day enjoying free tickets to a prestigious production of Wagner’s Ring cycle at the Royal Opera House in London’s Covent Garden.

Forgive the Mail for asking, but just who is in charge of the rattling train?