13^th March 2023 – A documentary titled ‘Grooming Gangs: Britain’s Shame’ researched and narrated by journalist Charlie Peters for the GB News channel has once again opened a can of worms with its path breaking revelations regarding the menace which is known to have impacted Britain for over two decades now at least.

As per text book definition of the word ‘grooming’, it means the action by a pedophile of preparing a child for a meeting with the intention of committing a sexual offense.

Key data figures

As per the documentary, over 1,500 British girls, mostly white and in their teens, have been impacted by grooming in the past 15-20 years. These are the official figures and the actual number of victims is believed to be in tens of thousands.

The perpetrators of the crimes have been found to be mostly white males or men of Pakistani origin.

The conviction rate in such crimes has been abysmally low and there is huge funding available with the suspects or convicts to fight the case in local courts. Even when the suspects are convicted, the jail term is very low and they are usually free in a few years’ time.

Modus Operandi

The victims who were ready to share their stories on screen told the documentary makers on how they were trapped.

Mostly, in small towns such as Rotherham in the UK, the girls used to get invited to parties in the nearby Kebab factories run mostly by Pakistani men and then were subsequently drugged. Once they lose control, they were sexually molested and raped multiple times by several men in the same night.

At times, this went on for multiple nights and the girls were kept captive without any communication with their family or friends.

What went wrong?

The documentary concludes that the victims did not get justice on time because of ‘political correctness’. The law and order agencies and politicians were found to be in constant fear of being labeled as ‘racist’ or targeting only a certain section of the community.

This is the prime reason that the local police kept the narrative that most perpetrators are either white or South Asians. According to the documentary, while the police attempted to be ‘polite’ and ‘sensitive’ in their approach, they failed to note that the ‘white’ accused made a small percentage of the total white population and on the other hand, the Pakistani population in such towns was mere 3-4% but was producing such a high number of perpetrators.

Political Awareness

The situation in the UK is so grave that the British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak launched a political campaign for this in July last year while he was running for the top post.

(https://www.ready4rishi.com/sex_offenders_crackdown_press_release)

According to a report published in Daily Mail, Sunak noted that ‘political correctness’ is standing in the way of tackling child sex grooming gangs.

(https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11087031/Rishi-Sunak-blasts-political-correctness-authorities-scared-calling-groomers.html)

In a speech, British Home Secretary Suella Braverman said that “the grooming gangs scandal is what happens when political correctness becomes more important than criminal justice”

(https://twitter.com/BBCPolitics/status/1577343676056993794?s=20)

Click here to watch the full documentary.