There is a dialogue of Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean Hindi dubbed movie which says “badnaam honge toh kya naam na hoga” which translates to – Even when our name is tarnished, we are just becoming a bigger name. If that saying of Jack Sparrow was true and if your name was being made bigger even when you are doing something bad, then today would have been a big day for Pakistani grooming gangs. (sarcastically speaking)
In today’s United Kingdom, Pakistani grooming gangs have become so infamous for gang rapes, grooming, and exploitation of small girls that a special task force has been deployed to particularly stop them. This task force will save little girls from these Pakistani grooming gangs and catch these gang members and put them in jail. The UK’s Home Secretary Suella Braverman said that because of political correctness, no one was saying these things freely earlier because they were afraid of being labelled as racist. This fear was even stopping police officers to go after these Pakistani grooming gangs because they didn’t want anyone to call them racist.
Introduction – Grooming gangs numbers
In the UK, there are basically two big political parties, which are Labour Party (Left wing) and Conservative Party, which is Right-wing. During the recent leadership crisis within the Conservative Party, many candidates wanted to grab the attention of the party in order to lead it and become the Prime Minister of the UK. Rishi Sunak was one such candidate who promised to take strict actions against Grooming gangs if he becomes the Prime minister of the UK, which he did. Even before Rishi Sunak, it has been one of the main objectives of the Conservative Party to save the girls of the UK from these grooming gangs.
There were almost 19,000 cases of child abuse and assault during the years 2018-19. Whereas, till 5 years before that, this figure was found to be only around 3,300. In these statistics, a huge increase was also found in the number of girls who are victims of particularly grooming gangs.
What is grooming, and what is a grooming gang?
In the case of grooming gangs, grooming means targeting small girls, whose age may be as low as 11-12 years, in order to trap them and exploit them mentally and physically. In extreme cases, these young girls are raped and killed as well after they are exploited completely. Sometimes these girls are thrown back on the streets with threats of harm if they are thinking about going to the police. Even in the cases when these girls do survive the grooming, their life is still changed for the worse as they have to live with the trauma forever.
In the UK, these grooming gang cases are mostly found in Birmingham, Lancashire, and Bradford. One of the most painful cases is that of Charlene Downes. She was abducted 20 years ago when she was only 14 years old. Police arrested Ilyad Albattik and Muhammad Reveshi as suspects in this case. Police also informed that around 60 more girls like this girl have been groomed in the same area.
What happened to that 14-year-old girl is even more horrifying, as it is said that her body was cut into small pieces. Then, in a Takeaway restaurant, those body pieces were mixed with Kebabs and fed to the customers. The two accused who were arrested in this case were also released due to lack of evidence. This was the time when UK’s eyes were still getting opened regarding this problem.
There were many reports giving full, detailed accounts of these grooming gangs and their activities. According to one such report of Telford town within the UK, thousands of girls were drugged in that area alone. They were raped, sold, and killed by these grooming gangs. These grooming gangs are mostly made up of Pakistani Muslims. Most of these victims were young white girls as young as 11 years. These girls were given assurances and trapped mostly by middle-aged Pakistani men in the name of love and other incentives. These men raped and impregnated these young girls and then threatened or kill them. But this was not an isolated case of just one town.
Such grooming gangs also operate in places like Rochdale and Rotherham. These reports also show that police were afraid to take action against them for fear of being labelled as anti-Muslim and racist. Apart from the white young girls, Hindu and Sikh girls have also been a target of these grooming gangs. An organization named Sikh Mediation and Rehabilitation Team Charity has published a report in which they have claimed that these Pakistani grooming gangs have been targeting young Sikh girls for the last 50 years. These are Sikh girls of mostly Indian origins who are targeted by these gangs. Their early cases go back to the early 70s when these Pakistani grooming gangs started targeting these young Indian Sikh girls.
This report also explains exactly how these Pakistani gang members target these girls. They wear fashionable clothes and drive around in flashy vehicles in order to attract these little girls who go to school in these Sikh-majority areas of the UK. Grooming gang members would roam around in front of their schools driving these shiny cars in order to lure Sikh girls. They would show themselves as modern so that those little Sikh girls would initially feel safe and comfortable around them. But later, these grooming gang members not only rape these girls, but they also share these girls with their family members like an object.
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