I don't agree. This is dangerous territory. Muslims were responsible for
9/11 and 7/7 and there was a danger that all Muslims would be regarded
as potential terrorists or (as many in Usenet kept saying) that their
agenda was to conquer the world, destroy our churches and build mosques
everywhere.
And now we have several Muslim gangs who have perpetrated very serious
child abuse, and a danger that this will be seen as typical of *all*
Muslims. People are always tempted to generalise and it is dangerous for
society if they do. The Muslim communities are as angry about these
villains as anyone else.
If the police have held back because of phoney concerns about protecting
Muslims from discrimination, the police need to be punished. It may also
have been laziness or an assumption that young girls in local authority
care are slags and that there is no need to protect them from abuse.
That is a more worthwhile area of investigation than throwing insults at
Asian men in general.
A victim's account is at
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/may/14/oxford-abuse-ring-social-services
A victim of a gang of men who enslaved young girls for sex on the
backstreets of Oxford has told how she and her mother repeatedly begged
social services staff to rescue her from their clutches.
Speaking exclusively to the Guardian, the woman known in court as Girl C
accused Oxfordshire county council of continuing to lie about the
support it has offered to the victims of the gang.
She described how the gang began to abuse her when she was 13, plied her
with crack cocaine and threatened to cut off the head of her baby if she
ever tried to escape them.
Shortly after she was trafficked from Oxford to London for the first
time, Girl C said, she had tried to talk to staff at the care home but
was told the conversation was "inappropriate".
Victims turned to the police at least six times � four times in one year
� but investigations were begun and then halted when the vulnerable
girls withdrew complaints. One girl was threatened by the police that
she would be charged with wasting police time over her repeated absences
from a childrens' home.
Girl C remains unhappy with the council, criticising the single offer of
help she says she received. She said: "The council put out a press
release claiming they had offered wraparound care to all the girls and
their families, but the first we heard from them in five years was a
letter on 13 April from Jim Leivers [director for children, education
and families at the council], where he says he's been 'closely involved
in providing support' to me.
"That's a complete lie. My family have had no support or offers of help
at all from Oxfordshire. Nothing. Not at any point. Not even a phone
call. The last contact we had with the council was five whole years ago,
when my mum was begging them to help her stop me go off the rails. They
ignored her then and they've ignored us since."