It is true, and an undeniable fact, that men of a Pakistani background are disproportionately (as a percentage of their demographic) involved in grooming cases, even though the vast majority of sexual abuse, predation, sexual exploitation, paedophillia, rape and sexual crimes are committed and perpetrated mainly by a white male population.

The question then turns to why this is the case? The lazy assumption is that there must be something in their culture or religion that makes them behave this way. What is never mentioned (as a factor) is what their professions are. I’ve not done any kind of study on this, but most of the people found guilty are people involved in the nighttime economy such as take-aways, restaurants, taxis etc. These businesses are disproportionately operated and run by the same demographic as the groomers.

The issue here is one of opportunity and access to vulnerable people who have been let down by their families, society, social services and police. This has always been the case even when these businesses were owned and operated by the white British population. This point was made to me by a recently retired white British policeman who had been an officer since the 70s. He told me that this sort of stuff was very common back then but accepted as part of the territory. You only have to see popular British culture of the 60/70/80s such as the Carry On series, Benny Hill and other TV shows and movies like James Bond to see white British men’s attitudes towards sexual conduct and treatment of women. Carry On films, On the Buses and similar programmes all fed into this typically British lubricious cultural attitude.

So if anything, those who’ve assimilated into these traditional British businesses have also inherited the British attitudes that went with them. Clearly society has moved on, but I would argue that these cases are persistent remnants of a British sub-culture that existed prior to any Asian grooming gangs. One thing I will concede is that men who have migrated from Pakistan to Britain bring with them a very problematic attitude towards white women. White women are seen as promiscuous and always “up for it”. So when a nice white lady is being friendly within the normal parameters of British custom, this is often misconstrued as something more and taken as a green light. The other thing is how we as a conservative (small “c”) community deal with such issues? Things like this are spoken about in hushed tones or swept under the carpet out of a misplaced sense of “honour” and “reputation”. Whilst we are no more responsible for someone who is from the same ethnic or religious background as us than our white counterparts are responsible for the likes of Jimmy Saville, we can at least emphasise in our community the heinousness of such things which our religion and culture is very strict against.

So, placing blame on a specific “other” community, culture or religion is very wide of the mark and is used for political expediency and pushing certain agendas and does not deal with root causes and factors. Issues like this are used to validate people’s racism and racist attitudes. No one cares about the victims. It’s almost as if people like Tommy Robinson rub their hands with glee when cases like this happen.

With the Whitehall sex abuse scandal and subsequent coverups, the BBC’s own sex scandals and complicity in the crimes of some of their own high profile celebs, The Church scandals, the charity sector scandals and all the other scandals, is it really appropriate to highlight the race, religion and culture of the perpetrators when they are not white British and they are not factors in the crimes?

A bit rambling on my part, but I’ve been mulling this over for a while now and wanted to put this out there.