The scale of the threat facing British women and girls has become painfully apparent in 2025 – a year in which the volume of undocumented men illegally entering the UK increased to record numbers, and the political class was finally forced to wake up to the grooming-gangs scandal.
It is always pertinent to recall that, back in January, UK prime minister Keir Starmer was still accusing those concerned about grooming gangs of ‘jumping on the bandwagon of the far right’. Five months later, following the independent audit by crossbench peer Louise Casey, he made an abrupt u-turn and announced a national statutory inquiry. His initial reluctance to pursue the scandal no doubt came from a fear of what the British public might subsequently wake up to: that for decades, organised groups of disproportionately Pakistani Muslim men had been systematically grooming, raping and torturing majority-white British girls in towns and cities across the UK.
Indeed, the findings of Casey’s audit – as well as the testimonies of brave survivors who came forward – were astonishing. The victims ranged from teens to pre-pubescent children. Many were in care or dealing with difficult family situations. Hundreds of schoolgirls were coerced into ‘relationships’ with their abusers, who bought the girls gifts and plied them with booze and drugs. Girls were raped in the backs of taxis and above kebab shops. Some were forced to go through pregnancies, others to have abortions. Some were assaulted and mutilated. One victim, who had been targeted by a local cabbie in Telford since she was 12 years old, gave birth to her abuser’s child at 14. She was pregnant with a second when he set her house on fire and killed her, along with her family, two years later.
Just as bleak as the abuse itself was the large-scale cover-up that followed. Police, social workers and local councils turned a blind eye to the suffering of these girls. They were more concerned with preserving ‘community cohesion’ and not appearing racist than they were with protecting the most vulnerable in their care. Children, some as young as 10, were branded ‘prostitutes’, ‘slags’ and even ‘Paki-shaggers’ by police and other members of the local authorities. Survivors who did seek help sometimes found themselves being raped again by predatory policemen and social workers. It is a scandal of near unimaginable proportions, involving thousands upon thousands of girls over several decades.
Yet even now, the desperate minimisation of the scandal continues. Casey’s audit concluded that Pakistani Muslim men were overrepresented among the perpetrators. But instead of facing up to the reality of what has been happening, politicians, mainstream media and the ‘progressive’ left have been trying to nip this ‘dangerous narrative’ in the bud. Downplaying what happened. Obscuring the wicked dynamics at work.
The silencing continues. Starmer’s Labour continues to develop an official definition of ‘anti-Muslim hostility’ – a definition that could make it near-impossible to discuss links between the religious identity of the perpetrators and that of their victims.
At the same time as the politicians and certain pundits have continued to downplay one scandal, women have been playing a lead role in highlighting another, through this summer’s migrant-hotel protests. After a woman and a 14-year-old school girl were sexually assaulted by Ethiopian national Hadush Kebatu, an illegal migrant who had been in the UK for just eight days, the local community in Epping, Essex rallied for the closure of the Bell Hotel for asylum seekers. Similar protests outside migrant hotels took place all over the country, and led to the emergence of the ‘Pink Ladies’ – a movement of pissed-off local mums who didn’t care if the media establishment tried to smear them as racist bigots.
The Pink Ladies’ concern for the safety of their children was entirely justified. The Telegraph assessed the records of 50 asylum hotels (about a quarter of the total) and discovered that 44 residents had been charged with sexual offences in the past year. What’s more, the Home Office has absolutely no idea what these men had been getting up to prior to their arrival in Britain.
At the same time, we have had to endure a plethora of celebs and woke feminists continuing to insist this is all a piece of manufactured, far-right fearmongering. Not content with releasing a 22-page manual on challenging ‘far-right activity’ over grooming gangs in 2023, feminist collective End Violence Against Women this year penned an open letter warning against the ‘racist weaponisation’ of sexual assault for an ‘anti-migrant’ and ‘white-supremacist agenda’. It was signed by over 100 women’s rights groups and ‘high-profile feminists’.
Among the signatories was singer Paloma Faith, who also took to Instagram to express her disgust at this summer’s migrant-hotel protests. ‘Fuck off’, she wrote. ‘We cannot scapegoat minorities for this country’s problems… In my experience all they have done is contribute to the rich, diverse culture I grew up in.’
Faith is a near-perfect emblem of celebrity feminism, where her privileged ‘experience’ is frequently mistaken for a universal truth. While she and her star-studded peers look the other way on grooming gangs and migrant sex offenders, where is the support for the voiceless girls of Rochdale, Oldham and Telford? Where is the outrage for the women assaulted in club bathrooms, in parks, in graveyards, on beaches, by men who never should have been here in the first place? Like a snake merrily digesting its own tail, Britain continues to fall prey to suicidal empathy.
We must demand better. Britain needs a police force with the gumption to protect the vulnerable; politicians able to confront uncomfortable realities; and immigration policies that do not play Russian roulette with women and girls’ safety. Time and time again, the cost of moral cowardice has proven itself to be far too high.
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