UK minister Suella Braverman says British Pakistani men behind grooming gangs

On Monday, the Rishi Sunak government in the UK announced a task force to tackle the growing problem of grooming gangs in the country. Sunak said that "political correctness" should not result in sexual offenders evading arrest, while his Home Secretary Suella Braverman singled out British-Pakistani men for the organised crime. 

UK's Home Secretary Suella Braverman took the UK by storm in her usual racism-fuelled commenting style. She told Sky News:

The UK Home Office clarified that she was talking about the three most notorious grooming gangs from Rochdale, Rotherham, and Telford.

Braverman's comment came despite the fact that a 2020 official Home Office report concluded that most child sexual abuse gangs are made up of white men under the age of 30. And that there is not enough data to suggest perpetrators are majorly non-white. 

What are grooming gangs?

• Grooming gangs are organised crime rings run by men who prey on young children using the "lover-boy" scheme. If you remember Andrew Tate's case, the Romanian authorities accused the Tate brothers of using the "lover-boy" scheme to lure women and force them to make porn. 

[READ MORE: How Andrew Tate allegedly lured women and forced them into porn]

• They often target vulnerable children, who may be orphans, drug addicts, neglected, or suffering domestic violence. 
• The perpetrators then befriend them, make them believe that the man loves them or cares for them, and are then trapped into a cycle of sexual abuse and blackmail. 
• The method of targeting and grooming children has changed with technological advances. Grooming can also happen online. 
• In the context of the UK, grooming gangs have been operating for decades. 

So, why the bias against British-Pakistani or Asian men?

• An independent review of the Rotherham case published in 2014 concluded that "known perpetrators were of Pakistani heritage" including five who were convicted in 2010.
• In the Rochdale abuse case from 2012, convicted men were identified as British Pakistani. 
• An independent review of Telford abusers found that perpetrators were of "southern Asian heritage". 
• The reviews also mention concerns about pursuing minority community offenders among police and social services teams for fear that they may be accused of racism.

The ethnicity issue was highlighted by Rishi Sunak in an interview with Sky News when asked about Braverman's British-Pakistani comment:

• However, with regards to the Rotherham case and the 2010 conviction of British-Pakistani men, another round of convictions of a group of white men and a woman for abusing 20 children went by without much attention. 

• The Sunak government will now record various potentially indicating factors of paedophiles, including their ethnicity. 

UK's child sexual exploitation beyond political correctness

Suella Braverman is busy trying to stereotype a community with comments (Sky News) such as British-Pakistani men are "totally at odds" with British values, viewed women in a "demeaning and illegitimate way" and behaved in "outdated and frankly heinous" way.

However, there are deep institutional problems with the UK criminal justice system. 

• The police and social workers have been accused of failing to focus on the victims by labelling minor victims as leading "risky lifestyle" of drugs and alcohol, out and about at night, "girls had chosen to go with 'bad boys", lacking credibility, etc. 

• Critics pointed out that Sunak's announcement doesn't cover the wide range of areas where child sexual exploitation is rampant - from religious institutions, schools, the care system, and online.