The UK Grooming Gang Horrors — Elon Musk intervenes

Perhaps Keir Starmer hopes that the horrors of the grooming gangs will disappear on its own accord? That’s not how things have worked in the past and it seems even less likely now that Elon Musk has noticed.

This piece was originally published in French on 9 January 2025.

The sentencing remarks were graphic.

“You, Mohammed Karrar, prepared her for gang anal rape by using a pump to expand her anal passage. You subjected her to a gang rape by five or six men. At one point she had four men inside her. A red ball was placed in her mouth to keep her quiet.”

Judge Peter Rook

Those were the words of Judge Peter Rook as he sentenced Karrar to life in prison on 27 June 2013 for the rape of a girl under the age of 13. Karrar will serve a minimum of 20 years before he can be considered for release.

The “grooming gang” atrocities are a stain on modern Britain, and one that liberal society has found it difficult to process. Even the name glosses over the worst horrors. Make no mistake, these were rape gangs of men drawn largely from Pakistani heritage who preyed on young, vulnerable girls of white British heritage.

It’s not supposed to be like this for those who claim that “whiteness” is a privilege while those from ethnic minority backgrounds are necessarily disadvantaged. These groups of adult men were privileged, and they acted as if they thought they could do exactly as they pleased with vulnerable girls.

None of this has been a secret. Place names like Rotherham, Rochdale and Telford have become tainted by shocking and organised criminality. In 2023, the BBC reported that the men involved were often delivering takeaways or driving taxis in the “night-time economy”. That gave them access to girls who were out late, and vehicles to move their victims around.

There have also been inquiries. But has anything been learned? The 2014 Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Exploitation in Rotherham was critical of some people at a senior level in the police and children’s social care who, “continued to think that the extent of the problem, as described by youth workers, was exaggerated”. Meanwhile, at an operational level, “staff appeared to be overwhelmed by the numbers involved.”

The report also identified the elephant in the room:

“Several staff described their nervousness about identifying the ethnic origins of perpetrators for fear of being thought racist; others remembered clear direction from their managers not to do so”.

Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Exploitation in Rotherham

Perhaps unable to cope with a situation that was clearly racist, “some councillors seemed to think it was a one-off problem, which they hoped would go away”.

It was not an isolated problem. If groups of men think that their ethnic background might give them cover from authorities too cowardly to cope with accusations of racism, then of course some will act with impunity, and others will follow their example. It is a shocking indictment of British society and a catastrophic failure of what has become known as Equality, Diversity and Inclusion.

Gangs were dealt with – Karrar is one of many men to have been convicted – but the issue did not grip the news agenda. Perhaps nobody in authority knew what to do, so the multiple problems were pushed into the corner until they resolved themselves.

Until *last week, that is. Elon Musk has found out and, since New Year’s Day, he has been venting his anger on X – the platform that he owns. With over 211 million followers, his voice is loud, and those unresolved issues exploded into public consciousness.

The trigger appeared to have been the British Government’s formal rejection of a request for a government-led inquiry into historic child abuse in Oldham, a town to the north of Manchester. Safeguarding Minister Jess Phillips was left to deliver the news to Oldham Council. Musk’s response? “She deserves to be in prison”.

Meanwhile, Musk called for Tommy Robinson to be released. Robinson – described by NBC as a convicted fraudster with a violent criminal record – is currently in jail for contempt of court. Yes, he has spoken out against the so-called grooming gangs, but, in 2018, he jeopardised the trial of a Huddersfield grooming gang by what two judges described as “encouraging vigilante action”.

If the rule of law is to be respected, then Robinson cannot be part of the solution, but neither can Musk with his hectoring from across the Atlantic. Calls to jail Jess Phillips might make headlines, but to move forward, we need calm heads and clear minds. Some people in authority are culpable for avoiding the issue, but liberals across society need to wake up and realise that it is not racist to point out that gangs of men – largely of Pakistani heritage – targeted, groomed and raped underage white girls, and steps must be taken to ensure that men like them cannot act with such a sense of entitlement ever again.

A national public inquiry must be held. I don’t think anyone should be under any illusion that an inquiry will solve anything by itself, but it would bring together cases, evidence and witness testimony into one place so that lessons can begin to be learned.

Keir Starmer might still be hoping himself that this real-life horror story will go away by itself. It didn’t in the past, and it certainly won’t now that Elon Musk is on the case. *On 20 January, the trial is due to start of Axel Rudakubana for the murder of three young girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport last year. Musk had plenty to say about that at the time, dubbing Starmer as “two-tier Kier”, in reference to the claim that police were treating white protesters more harshly than minority groups.

Despite the impression that might be gleaned by scrolling through X, race relations in the UK are certainly not all bad. People from different ethnic backgrounds associate together, work together and live alongside each other. That’s my experience in the west of England. But the rape gangs are still a blight on our country. We need to be honest with the name and we need to be honest with the causes. Racism is not just a white problem.

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By Debbie Hayton

Debbie Hayton is a teacher and journalist.

Her book, Transsexual Apostate – My Journey Back to Reality is published by Forum

* This article was first published in French by Le Point on 9 January 2025: Gangs de violeurs au Royaume-Uni, au-delà des attaques d’Elon Musk.