Rotherham and Its Aftermath

Systemic Evil and Complicit Authorities

Some things are so bizarre and systemically evil that they appear incredible at first glance.  Far more strange than fiction.  Some of the worst exigencies occur when people believe they are going good as they perpetrate great wickedness.

There is a belief in the secular West that it represents the good, the kind, the generous and the loving.  It believes itself to be so morally superior that it is licensed to do evil, that good may result.  The asserted goodness of the secular, atheistic ideals justifies any collateral damage as inconsequential--a minor, justified price for the greater good.  Never has such moral degeneracy been on such proud display as in the United Kingdom recently--a once Christian nation.  We still shake our heads, as more and more of the truth emerges.

The Guardian has published a piece on Alexis Jay, who was responsible for exposing the Rotherham industrial rape and sexual abuse matrix which continued to flourish under the wilful blind eye of authorities--both government and police.

Almost a year on from the televised press conference at Rotherham football club that made her name, Jay still can’t believe the rumpus her report caused. Taking her place in front of a cluster of microphones last August with a leopard-print iPad, she read out a statement to the assembled press corps revealing that, by her conservative estimate, 1,400 children had been sexually exploited in Rotherham over a 16-year period.

“By victims we are not talking about children who were at risk of sexual exploitation, who were friendly with victims or who moved in the same circle,” she told the journalists. “The 1,400 victims are those who had actually experienced sexual exploitation.” Determined that no one could bat away her findings, she had produced a 153-page report that spelled out in plain language the appalling abuse suffered by children aged 10-16 in the South Yorkshire town between 1997 and 2013.

Jay has now been appointed to the panel charged with conducting an inquiry into the sexual abuse of minors:

The independent inquiry into child sex abuse (IICSA) is expected to take five years investigating claims of abuse in faith and religious organisations, the criminal justice system, local authorities and national institutions such as the BBC, NHS and Ministry of Defence.

Reflecting on the responses to the exposure of the Rotherham evils, The Guardian reports:

The reverberations from her inquiry were far-reaching: in February a team of independent commissioners was brought in by the then communities secretary, Eric Pickles, to run the council, after it was deemed “unfit for purpose”. Jay was only minutes into her press conference when a note was passed to her to say that Roger Stone, the all-powerful Labour leader of the council since 2003, had resigned. He then quit the party and made a somewhat belligerent appearance in front of the home affairs select committee, in which he attacked Jay for making accusations, that were “mostly vague and unsubstantiated”.

Jay laughs in despair at Stone’s apparently wilful blindness. “I am at a loss to know what other evidence people need,” she says. “If that’s how he sees it, so be it. I’m not getting into an argument with him about it. For goodness sake. Would he like to look at every single one of the 937 cases we were given by his council and the police to examine? It might be enlightening.”

"Wilful blindness" is close to the truth.  But here is the thing.  Jay herself does not believe in moral absolutes.  She has bought into cultural relativism--the very kind of relativism which produces the wilful blindness she professes to abhor.  Read carefully her description of how the evils in Rotherham came about:

When she wrote the report, the chapter that gave her the most sleepless nights was about the ethnicity of the perpetrators. Almost all of them were from Rotherham’s Pakistani-heritage community, which makes up just 3.1% of the local population. She cringes slightly when I ask her to explain the overrepresentation. “It’s a very complex issue and I am not an expert,” she begins. I say that she is surely more of an expert than almost anyone else. There’s a long pause. “I understood that the community in Rotherham were described as coming from possibly three villages in Kashmir, and that this identification was very important to them. Their traditions and relationships, these were not sophisticated, they were very traditional. I was told by many people that previous generations had a different view about women’s place in their culture and their society that certainly wouldn’t accord with any sense that we have.”

The view of social ethics in three villages in Kashmir is different from "any sense that we have".  But the Kashmiri view is not wrong.  It is not morally evil in itself.  There is no absolute moral standard that measures both the Kashmiri villages and the United Kingdom.  It's just the Kashimir behaviour is different, and  that it happens to be inappropriate for a modern Western secular nation. That's not to say another decade or so would see the UK not just tolerating such depravity, but actively encouraging it.  If one is seeking for an explanation of why the UK has drifted into such extreme moral relativism it lies right here.  It has become a profoundly amoral nation, such that right and wrong are merely what is habitual and cultural versus what is not.

Secularism and evolutionism remove all foundations for ethics and morality.  There is only power.  Power to enforce one set of rules and beliefs upon another.  But such force is "morally wrong" in itself--or at best uncomfortable.  So, better to let the Kashmiri degenerates free to organise and perpetrate the rapes and sexual abuse of over 1400 under-age girls in Rotherham.  That's what led the council and the police and other authorities to turn a blind eye.  "It's their way.  It's their culture.  Who are we to stand in judgment upon them?  Who are we to continue our colonial overlordship of their culture?"  It's just that the culture of the Kashmiri villages whence these sexual predators come does not "accord with any sense that we have."  So, let's be tolerant here.  Let's cut them some slack.

Jay, however, believes that the "blind eye" of authorities is less connected with philosophical beliefs than with closer-to-home self interest.  (Here she demonstrates again her own relativistic messy pottage.)  She argues that it helps a lot in turning the blind eye if the respective authorities believe that the perpetrators represent a culture which will continue to provide votes in elections.

Much of the reporting around the Jay report said she had accused Rotherham council and police of failing to tackle sexual exploitation because of a misplaced political correctness. Yet Jay, quite deliberately, never used that term. “I have an aversion to phrases like that,” she says. Instead, she believes the Labour-dominated council turned a blind eye to the problem because of “their desire to accommodate a community that would be expected to vote Labour, to not rock the boat, to keep a lid on it, to hope it would go away.

But, damning as her explanation is, it does not explain why Police prosecutors are still making lame excuses for the evils of the perpetrators:

Nazir Afzal, chief crown prosecutor for the north-west and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) lead on child sexual exploitation, explained the overrepresentation of Pakistani men in on-street grooming crimes by pointing to the fact they are more likely to work in the night-time economy in Rotherham. “I’m sceptical about that, not for a principled reason because I haven’t done the research, but from my gut,” says Jay. “I think it presents an opportunity but it doesn’t present a motive. There are many people involved in the night-time economy who don’t abuse.”

Let's blame shift work, shall we.  Or the fact that these poor Pakistani men are forced to work in menial, low-paying jobs at night.  They get exposed to temptation and decide that entrepreneurial opportunities are thereby beckoning. They can turn their lust into a business--the systematic rape and serial abuse of young, vulnerable girls on an industrial scale.  Meanwhile,

Into the room the authorities come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

Jay is sceptical about whether those guilty--the most serious perpetrators--will ever be brought to justice.

And what of the victims? Does she have faith that their abusers will be brought to justice? She pauses. “Oh, I don’t know. I do hope so. How would I know? I’m not a criminal investigator.” She has been helping the National Crime Agency, which is conducting a special investigation into Rotherham. Meanwhile some women are still living in fear on the same streets as their perpetrators, I say. She looks sad and gives an honest but depressing answer. “I know, it’s awful. Awful. Let’s see what the NCA can do with it. I would say my confidence is middling. I could not say with absolute confidence that some of the worst perpetrators would be brought to justice.”

Why would you be confident of the wheels of justice grinding finely?  In the end, it's simply a conflict between Kashmiri village culture and our own cultural sensibilities.  And that, dear friends, is all that's at stake here.  In the meantime, let's all play nicely in the sandbox. You can build your sandcastle, and I can mine. Let's respect one another's exertions.