Child grooming is NOT about race!

The child grooming issue that is dominating UK today is NOT about ethnicity. So let’s stop making racial profiling a scapegoat to refrain from addressing the real issue.

Barnardo's launched a chilling ad to warn teenagers about the dangers of child grooming

But first let’s understand what child grooming is to gauge its seriousness. Wikipedia describes child grooming as actions deliberately undertaken with the aim of befriending and establishing an emotional connection with a child, in order to lower the child's inhibitions in preparation for sexual activity with the child, or exploitation. Child grooming may be used to lure minors into illicit businesses such as child prostitution or the production of child pornography.

A fifteen year old girl went shopping with her friend in Derby. A group of men befriended her and took her to an empty house. She says she went because they knew her friend. There they raped her and then dumped her on a street corner near her house.  This most recent case led to the opening of a Pandora’s Box and the conviction of nine men in November on sexual offence charges. Of the 27 victims identified, 22 were white. Those convicted were predominantly British Pakistanis. The judge, however stressed, that there was no racial element to that particular case.

However what sparked the racial controversy was a research done on a small sample of such cases in a defined area that was blown out of context and taken as a generalization. Helen Brayley and Ella Cockbain, from UCL's Jill Dando Institute of Security and Crime Science carried out the first independent research on “on street grooming” but geographically confined it to just two police operations in the north and the Midlands.

According to their research based on 17 court cases in 13 urban areas in the north and the Midlands since 1997, 56 men were convicted of which 53 were Asians predominantly from the British Pakistani community.  This soon led to the media, politicians and then people at large saying that only Asian men were involved child grooming.

The authors too expressed surprise at how this research was misused to represent the problem in the entire UK. However charities working for children agree that this is not the problem in the north or the Midlands alone but in all of the UK. Yet the unavailability of data or research from the other parts has led to the UCL’s research dominate all perceptions.

Without making it into a racial issue, the fact is a large number of British Pakistani men were arrested in the Midlands and it is a serious issue there for the British Pakistani community to ponder over and find solutions too. 

Yet, it was politically unwise for Former Home secretary Jack Straw to say that white girls are ‘easy meat’ for gangs -often made up of Pakistani men – who trawl the streets looking for sex.  I’m sure if you pick up cases from another geographical location with a different set of ethic communities living there, the research will come up with different results thus diluting any particular race involved.

Take for example a case that took place not very long ago. In August last year, a taxi drivercalled Paul Smith of Heaton, Newcastle was convicted of meeting a child after sexual grooming, making indecent images of children and possessing and distributing extreme pornography. One of his victims was a 10 year old girl from Gateshed, who was his family friend. She later told her parents that he was a 'pervert' following which the police were informed. When they seized his computer, they found several  images of  “extreme pornography" of  another teenager.

Just this morning, one Jonathan Dowds, 29, appeared in a court in Londonderry on charges of sexual grooming and abduction. He befriended a 14 year old  over a six week period. When he met her on Friday, he allegedly told her he wanted to have sex with her, marry her and make babies but she should not tell anyone until she was 16.

There are several cases like this involving men of varied ethnicity. Hence I’m glad that a nationwide investigation in to child grooming will soon be carried out by the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP).

In the 2008-2009 Strategic Overview, grooming was identified as a key trend in reports submitted to CEOP. It was the 'single largest issue that the public reported and, as an offending behaviour, was the most prevalent kind of abuse'. According to the CEOP, in 2009, the victims were mainly "white British in their mid and late teens" but also Bangladeshi and Afro-Caribbean. CEOP also “identified networks of white British, British Asians and Kurds” as internal traffickers, with ethnic and national background varied between groups and geography.

Today, it’s a catch 22 situation for all. People need to stop raking up ethnicity as clearly there needs to be more work required in that field.  But with the available data, it is also important for people of that community to openly talk about it and find solutions.

The only way child grooming will stop is when people can talk about it without being afraid of firing up another racial controversy.