Although the rapes took place from the 1980s to 2013 and the matter had already been independently investigated nationally, the case was reignited when Phillips refused a request from Oldham Town Council for a new investigation. The conservative opposition began to criticize the government for trying to cover up the scandal, and Musk, who has been criticizing British Prime Minister Keir Starmer for a long time, caught on.
Phillips, whom the world’s richest man described as a “defender of rape genocide”, became Musk’s target. However, three victims of Pakistani gangs from Telford stood up for the minister and said “that no one in the public space has done more to support victims and survivors and to promote their interests”, reports The Guardian.
In addition to this trio, the letter was signed by victims of domestic violence or women who lost relatives due to gender violence. The activist group Killed Women is behind the initiative. “We write as victims of extreme male violence. In addition to our common trauma, we are united by the support and kindness we have received from Jess Phillips over the years. Either personally or as activists fighting for change,” the women write in the letter.
Let’s not be racists. Britain is dealing with misconduct in the case of Pakistani gangs who raped minor girls
Europe
“We know that there are those who want to use our pain as a weapon to achieve their own goals or political gains; who speak with a newfound interest not to deal with the horrific crimes that stole so much from us, but to further their own agenda. You should hang your head in shame. As activists, we fight every day to prevent what happened to us or our loved ones from happening to someone else,” they add.
Musk has been spreading false or unsubstantiated claims about Starmer and his government on his own social network X practically since Labor came to power in Britain. This time he seized on the initiative of the Conservative Party, which criticizes Phillips’ decision to reject the request to start a new national investigation, although she made the same decision several times during her government.
The Labor government warns that the priority should be the implementation of the conclusions of the previous investigation into the scandal. According to them, across England and Wales, due to weaknesses in the system, children are exposed to sexual abuse not only by gangs. Despite the fact that the final report of the investigation was published almost three years ago, none of its recommendations have yet been implemented in practice.
The case was exposed by a British journalist
The case of Pakistani gangs was uncovered by British journalist Andrew Norfolk. He became interested in the case already in 2010, when he first identified a “pattern” of gangs of Pakistani origin, whose members abused white girls in the north of England. But when he tried to get something out of the authorities, he came across something that the British BBC called a “conspiracy of silence”.
He received more detailed information about the cases from 2011, after which he began to put pressure on Rotherham Council and South Yorkshire Police to report on the cases.
People called his subsequent investigation for The Times “racist” and “Islamophobic”.
“It was very difficult to write about because it was a story of white British girls, usually between the ages of 12 and 15, being harassed and abused by men who, as the pattern showed, were overwhelmingly of Pakistani and Muslim origin,” he said of the case. Norfolk.
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