The renewed interest in the disproportionate involvement of men of Pakistani origin in historic group child sexual abuse has led to trenchant criticism of the Police and the Crown Prosecution Service. What has been less acknowledged is the failure of the children’s sector to acknowledge the horror of what was happening. They were part of a consensus which betrayed some of the most vulnerable and innocent children in the UK.
Deeply disadvantaged children being repeatedly raped deserved better
I worked with offenders for 23 years and led the Prison Service for seven, resigning in 2005 to lead Barnardo’s. A couple of years into the job, I heard the first tentative – but invariably dismissed – suggestions that the perpetrators of the grooming and sexual abuse of children were predominantly of Pakistani origin.
I decided to see for myself. I spent time in Middlesbrough, my home-town, visiting often and going to the streets until the early hours of the morning observing potential perpetrators. Those perpetrators were overwhelmingly white.
But I continued to express doubts, drawing on emerging evidence from other northern towns, such as Rotherham. Other children’s charities cautioned me about raising the issue with ministers. They pointed out that the experts, the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, insisted that conclusions could not be drawn about the over-representation of perpetrators of Pakistani origin. The Deputy Children’s Commissioner assured me that extensive research across England, which would soon be published, would prove the Pakistani link was a myth.
But when, in January 2011, the Times published the first of Andrew Norfolk’s courageous articles exposing the truth, I called him to offer my public support as attacks on his credibility and motivation erupted. He later wrote to me: “Your words to me that afternoon came as a huge relief. At the time I was dodging missiles and accusations from all the predictable directions.”
In May of the following year, not long after retiring from Barnardo’s, I agreed to be interviewed on the BBC’s Today programme about the convictions of nine Asian men from Rochdale. I told Today that the repetitive evidence of Asian men as perpetrators could no longer be ignored. The Deputy Children’s Commissioner subsequently appeared and denied my assertions, insisting that the abusers were drawn from all ethnic and religious groups. Meanwhile, my successor at Barnardo’s appeared to me to have restored the consensus – and the silence – by telling the Evening Standard that the focus on the ethnicity of the rapists meant the child victims had been ‘forgotten’. Not for the first time those in denial did not assert what I’d said about the perpetrators was wrong, but simply implied that I should not have said it.
Extraordinarily, a magazine called Ceasefire then published an article which critiqued my Today interview and linked it with the abuse, by a prison officer called Neville Husband, of child prisoners at Portland Borstal and Medomsley Detention Centre. Ceasefire insisted that I’d been aware of Husband’s offending and that, “under Narey’s supervision, the mass rape and torture of children was allowed to continue with a level of institutional complicity that would shock even those most cynical of the prison service.”
That might not have mattered because few people read Ceasefire magazine. But the Guardian then published two letters from readers who had evidently done so. The first asserted that I had failed to apologise for Husband’s offending and, because of that, I had been unsuitable to lead Barnardo’s. The second implied that, when leading the Prison Service, I had tolerated the widespread rape of children.
The Guardian knew me. I had written for them regularly for many years. They had cooled toward me because of things I’d published in a number of government reports about the case for removing more children from family neglect. I knew that they hated my support for Andrew Norfolk. But I felt sure that simple and easily proved facts would lead to a correction. These were that, at the time of Husband’s offending at Portland Borstal, I was 13 years of age; when he abused children at Medomsley (for which he was convicted), I was still a teenager. But my protests were ignored, and my calls to the Guardian not taken. I was convinced that I was being punished for breaking the conspiracy of silence on the racial identity of grooming gangs.
Eventually, after I complained to the Press Complaints Commission, the Guardian was forced to publish my rebuttal, but not until four months after the publication of the letters. By that time, the confirmation of my appointment to a significant chair’s position in the North-East was delayed (and then withdrawn). I had to fend off Tyne Tees Television, who were keen to explore my alleged cover up of sexual abuse. And police officers who visited me at home had to be shown my birth certificate, proving my age, before they were convinced I had not been part of a conspiracy. But allegations of my involvement in a cover up, some accompanied by threats of violence, still appear on Twitter 13 years later.
I understand why so many good people wanted to deny unpalatable truths. They were right to worry about community cohesion and their words being exploited by the BNP. But deeply disadvantaged children being repeatedly raped deserved better.
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