There’s a vision of hell tucked away in the serious case review, commissioned by Maggie Blyth, independent chair of the Oxfordshire safeguarding children board. According to its reckoning some 373 girls were sexually exploited across Oxfordshire in the past 15 years. The review doesn’t quite do justice to the horrors of the ‘sexual torture’ and rape of girls as young as 13 by gangs of men who were almost all Asian and from a Pakistani and Muslim background. Girls who were, to some extent or another, ‘in care’. Never has the phrase so mocked itself. At any rate, not since the last reports on the exact same phenomenon of the sexual abuse of young girls by predominantly Asian men in Oldham and Rochdale. The girls were seen as ‘difficult’, as trouble, as wrong uns. But by the time you’ve been raped by a succession of adult men and ignored by every agency that should have protected you, you would be difficult, wouldn’t you?
As the report says, ‘The overall problem was not grasping the nature of the abuse – the grooming, the pull from home, the erosion of consent, the inability to escape and the sheer horror of what the girls were going through – but of seeing it as something done more voluntarily. Something that the girls did as opposed to something done to them.’ And interestingly it asks the obvious question, of whether the government’s approach to the age of consent had anything to do with it. The police officer who recorded that a 13-year-old having sex with an older Asian man was in an ‘age-appropriate relationship’ was, in a way, only reflecting the attitudes to underage sex taken by both schools and the health service; ditto the sergeant who described how a 14-year-old girl had ‘initiated’ sexual intercourse with two men. Initiated?
The age of consent is designed to protect young people from exploitation by people who are older, worldlier and stronger than them. Yet for both police and social services, it seemed inapplicable to ‘very difficult’ girls. Yet it’s precisely ‘difficult’ girls the law is meant to protect; anyone reading this would probably know just how to deal with middle-aged men preying on our daughters, sisters or friends. We would talk to the police and expect to be listened to; we know how to get in touch with our MP. We would know how to deal with social workers who treated sexual predation as just part of the inevitable scheme of things. Difficult girls don’t. They don’t have that expectation of being listened to, of their views counting for anything. They were very young, many in care. How should they know what to expect?Terrifyingly, police and social services sometimes ignored their parents too.
There are so many things to be angry about here; really angry; the kind of incoherent rage that comes from imagining how you’d feel if just a single episode out of the catalogue of horrors had been inflicted on your own daughter, sister or young friend. Let’s not let that go. But there are just a couple of aspects of the thing worth dwelling on.
The most obvious is that no one has been disciplined or sacked over the child protection failures. The three senior managers who were responsible for social services in Oxfordshire at the time have all moved on; one emigrated and has since returned to the UK; another has a new job in the private sector; and the third has retired on health grounds. I don’t think they should be allowed to move on. After due process has been observed and with respect to the legal protocols, they should, if appropriate, face the music. I don’t think it requires new legislation of the kind the PM envisages to exact punishment for what was on the face of it blatant dereliction of duty, the betrayal of those for whom they were responsible. The failure to protect those who had no other protection does not need a new law to label it as wrong. The girls involved were reported missing 450 times over five years, up to 2010; why wasn’t the failure to follow that up gross negligence? Even difficult girls shouldn’t just go off the radar, without anyone worrying. Are they somehow exempt from the normal standards of care we expect for children?
It’s not as though everyone was blind. The people who did see what was going on under their noses included a neighbourhood city council official who in February 2007 raised concerns with senior police officers and children’s social services manages about a 13-year-old girl who was being visited by a number of men in her flat. Council officials reprimanded him following the intervention of the head of child social care in the council. What does that tell us?
The other, minor but interesting aspect of the thing was the response by a group of Labour MPs who called for an independent inquiry to be set up into the Oxfordshire abuse to address the outstanding questions and make suggestions for helping these difficult girls. They suggested examining the culture of denial that meant such serious incidents were never even brought to the attention of senior officers. Just note the following, would you: ‘They also called for the introduction of compulsory sex education in primary schools.’ I can’t think of a single one of the problems those wretched girls had for which sex education in primary school would have been the answer. It was protection other than condoms they needed.
Seven men involved in the abuse were convicted two years ago of rape, trafficking and violence and jailed for between seven and 20 years – presumably not full tariffs, mind you. It wasn’t enough. Not enough men charged and convicted; not long enough sentences. I know what I instinctively want for the bastards and it’s not allowed, but even within the bounds of the criminal justice system we can do better than this. There are lots more difficult girls out there, you know.
Comments