OK, this is what seems to have caused the problem for her:
Britain has a problem with British-Pakistani men raping and exploiting white girls.
“There. I said it. Does that make me a racist? Or am I just prepared to call out this horrifying problem for what it is?”
I’m not trying to be obtuse here, but her comments are fact.
Do you really think, by inference, she was suggesting that there is no other problem with rape in any other communities?
I don’t.
She went on…
"For too long we have ignored the race of these abusers and, worse, tried to cover it up. "No more. These people are predators and the common denominator is their ethnic heritage.
“We have to have grown-up conversations, however unpalatable, or in six months’ time we will be having this same scenario all over again.”
That’s pretty aggressive, and I can see an issue over the use of These People , but again I broadly support her arguement.
The problem that is unique* to the British Pakistani (more broadly Asian) community is men acting together in the organised grooming of young (and I mean young) white girls.
This issue needs to be discussed specifically for its unique characteristics, but, as others have said, also as part of a wider rape problem.
I believe that in a separate but accompanying piece Trevor Kavanagh described this as “the Muslim problem”.
I see his comments as wrong, dangerous and factually incorrect.
He should resign.
The reason I’m weighing in here is the reason the recently publicised systematic abuse went ignored for so long, wasn’t because we didn’t know not what was happening, we did, it was because we were overly sensitive to the ethnic background of the perpetrators.
That and the fact that police officers’ attitudes to young, white girls from deprived backgrounds seemed to be one of “they were probably asking for it”.
The reaction on this thread is exactly the reaction that led to the perpetrators avoiding prosecution for so long.
“You can’t say that!”
The issue was not one male abusing one female.
The issue was a group of men, who shared a common ethnic backgeound, organising the rape of young white girls.
Social workers (and I’d love to here the views of any professionals on here) struggled to tackle that issue because that is career ending if you get it wrong. Police didn’t want to touch the issue for the same reason.
So why is ethnic background important in discussing these cases and why should we not simply describe it as a male raping a female?
Because for some of those British Pakistani men, raping a Pakistani girl was abhorrent as they saw them in some confused way as pure when compared to immoral white girls.
This needs to be discussed, not shutdown.
*May be unique, may just be highly prevalent in those groups.
For the avoidance of doubt, I believe this to be a small problem (by percentage, not by impact) with some parts of some British Pakistani (and more broadly Asian) community. It has nothing to do with religion. But due to the reticence of some to tackle the issue, the problem could be enormous but undiscovered.