'Raped by a dog': Westminster debate on grooming-gang survivor testimonies

TOI correspondent from London: British MPs assembled at Westminster Hall heard this Monday graphic testimonies of grooming-gang survivors describing trafficking, rape and torture at the hands of mostly Pakistani-origin men, forcing parliament to revisit a sordid saga mothballed by decades of institutional failure.

A survivor recounted in her recorded testimony, read out by Restore Britain MP Rupert Lowe, how a gang of rapists once filled a room with dogs, "making bets on whether the dogs could actually rape me or not".

"And yes, I was raped by a dog," she said.

Another survivor who had been raped said, "I would wear my cross because it was something really, really special to me. They said, 'Where is your God now? Why has your God forsaken you?'"

A fellow survivor said the offenders targeted "almost exclusively white girls".

Particularly distressing was the testimony of a girl who said she had been raped by "600 or 700 men over three years", her ordeal starting when she was 13. Another described how, at the age of 12, the horror of rape was compounded by her assailants sticking a liquor bottle into her genital area and breaking the glass.

A survivor recounted being "raped by multiple police officers in different parts of the country". Yet another said white girls were trafficked through children's homes, the very institutions set up to look after them.

"Things would escalate around Eid and holidays. Parties got bigger, got worse, got more violent. More people involved, more girls involved."

MP Lowe had initiated the debate with a petition that garnered 2.6 lakh signatures, calling for a statutory requirement on councils, police, the Crown Prosecution Service and other institutions to ascertain and record the nationality, ethnicity, immigration status and religion of sexual offenders targeting children.

"In the case of Rotherham, the gangs that were grooming and abusing young children in my constituency were predominantly of Pakistani heritage. That mattered because, had we recognised it early on, we might have been able to disrupt and prevent some of the abuse," fellow MP Sarah Champion said.

Lowe read out testimonies from grooming-gang victims given at the independent inquiry he himself set up as he felt the official inquiries were moving too slowly.

"Comments were constantly made suggesting that white girls and Christian girls were viewed as having fewer morals or lower value, whereas Muslim girls were described by some of the men as having dignity and higher moral standing. These comparisons were used to justify the way I was treated and to humiliate and control me," one survivor testified.

MP Joy Morrissey said no less shocking was the fact that "people did not want to listen to them" and would call them "white trash".

Her parliamentary colleague Esther McVey said the scandal had been ignored "because we have been drowning in a sea of political correctness".

Natalie Fleet, minister for safeguarding, said in her response to the debate that the independent inquiry into grooming gangs set up by the govt earlier this year would have a laser focus on the role that ethnicity, religion and culture played in these crimes.


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