Saturday 27 November 2010

The Department Of 20/20 Hindsight And Elephant-In-The-Room Avoidance…

As a gang of men were convicted of offences against vulnerable girls, an independent inquiry said agencies "missed opportunities" to help girls involved in the case.
Oh, really? Not that that's a surprise, mind you. It's just a little odd that the attention should focus on the victims, and not on how the perpetrators evaded capture for so long, isn't it?
After the abuse emerged in Operation Retriever, a serious case review was carried out by the Derby Safeguarding Children Board into two of the victims who were in local authority care.

Multi-agency reviews were also carried out into the 25 other girls involved, incorporated into the review.
Who, presumably, weren't in local authority care. What's the percentage there?
The review's executive summary, published on Thursday, said there were "missed opportunities" to help all of the women.

It said although it was difficult to know whether the sexual exploitation could have been predicted for the two girls in care, their background meant it was predictable they would become vulnerable adolescents at risk of abuse.
Wow! Talk about giving a dog a bad name! What predicted this for the other 25 then?
"Had there been earlier, concerted intervention in their lives to address their unmet needs, it is likely that they would have been less vulnerable as adolescents and therefore less likely to be abused," it said.
I can't decide if this is a desperate attempt to focus on something else to draw attention away from the multicultural elephant in the room, or a thinly-veiled threat of what will happen if more resources are not forthcoming.

Or both...
"These conclusions are mirrored in the findings from the multi-agency reviews. There were missed opportunities to assess significant concerns in relation to the other young women and comprehensive assessments were not completed.
Our world class welfare state, ladies and gentlemen...
"When they were completed, the quality of assessments was frequently poor, with little involvement of the young person and their family, and all the relevant agencies."
All we're missing from this is the 'lessons to be learnt' mantra.

Yet I can't help feeling the real lesson to be learnt is being scrupulously avoided at all cost. And that's starting to dawn on others too:
Mohammed Shafiq, director of the Lancashire-based Ramadhan Foundation, a charity working for peaceful harmony between different communities, has said: ‘I think the police are overcautious because they are afraid of being branded racist. These men are criminals and should be treated as criminals — whatever their race.’

In Derby this week, Shokat Lal, chairman of the city’s Pakistani Community Centre in the Normanton area — where many of the girls were taken to seedy flats and then sexually attacked by the gang – spoke out, too: ‘It is important that political correctness or fear of offending any particular group of people does not get in the way of protecting those who are vulnerable.
Can't wait to see how the progressives handle this. Their usual cries of 'racist!' and 'It's not a big problem!' aren't really going to wash, are they?
As Detective Superintendent Debbie Platt of Derbyshire Police said yesterday: ‘We were really shocked with the scale and extent of what we’d uncovered, but this is a very hidden crime.’
Well, yes. Everything's 'hidden' if you studiously look the other way, isn't it?

9 comments:

Nick2 said...

A gang of five Asian men was jailed earlier this month for a total of 32 years for a string of sexual offences against girls aged between 12 and 16 in Rotherham, South ­Yorkshire

Five men, 32 years, average 6.4 years. I'm not one of the hangin' 'n' floggin' brigade, but that seems too low to me.

Foxy Brown said...

Sex miseducation and its related policy of dishing out the Morning-After Pill and condoms - something which purports to empower young females, and which is enthusiastically promoted by social services agencies - has an awful lot to answer for.

These animals, and that is what these criminals are, saw their victims as fair game. And yes these acts are racially-motivated. Take note, Jo "you can't be racist towards white people" Brand, the chickens are coming home to roost.

See no evil said...

"‘It is important that political correctness or fear of offending any particular group of people does not get in the way of protecting those who are vulnerable."

Brave words, but I am afraid it does very much get in the way. The Religion of Peaceniks (to name one self-interst group with no intention of integrating in any hurry) are given a free pass too often to do what they want.

'Look but don't see' ought to be our social services motto.

Greencoat said...

We import savage parasites to prey on our children.

Another day in our collective, state-sponsored, national suicide.

Anonymous said...

PC George Dixon says "There's no particular appearance to see here. Move along now. We've swept it all under the carpet. Nothing to worry about."

Woman on a Raft said...

This from 2008 which is Derby failing to admit - even when told by ethnic group representatives - that they had a problem of child abuse in the form of forced marriage of children not even of marrying age in Britain.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article3295487.ece

banned said...

It must be very gratifying for the multi-culti crowd that Derby schoolgirls have been so taken by ethnic diversity, community cohesion and inclusivity that they did not reject being given a good time ('ice cream and nice meals') by lads from the Asian community.

Imagine the horror if one had declared "Piss off P*ki pervert!"

Anonymous said...

Once again Julia, the right questions begin to emerge. I'm sure now that we get nearly all this woman and child protection stuff wrong. I worked when it really all was swept under the carpet - there's a big mis-match between the abilities of people dealing with this stuff and the complexity of the situations and evidence. Cops and town hall people are generally incompetent and have far too high a self-regard, making it impossible to get them to recognise what is front of their eyes, unless you have personal and rank leveraqe. They are missing all sorts of abuse, mostly on purpose because they don't know how to deal with it, but do know how to hide it. Given the CPS are no better, I guess 'IQ' is not the problem.

JuliaM said...

" I'm not one of the hangin' 'n' floggin' brigade, but that seems too low to me."

Particularly when you consider NO-ONE ever seems to serve what they are given...

" And yes these acts are racially-motivated."

It seems to be an inescapable conclusion.

"This from 2008 which is Derby failing to admit - even when told by ethnic group representatives - that they had a problem of child abuse..."

That seems to kill any false hope I might have had that they'd take notice of the likes of Mohammed Shafiq and Shokat Lal then!

"I'm sure now that we get nearly all this woman and child protection stuff wrong."

I'd like to think that we only get to hear about the horror stories, the ones that go wrong.

But I'm forced to wonder...