When you hear the term ‘grooming gang’, what comes to mind? ‘Grooming’, as I have long said, is a euphemism for targeting, raping, and pimping. Gang members routinely and sadistically sexually assaulted victims for their own twisted pleasure but ultimately the girls were used for profit: the gangs were running a business, and the girls were the merchandise.
All of the gang-based child sexual abuse scandals used the same modus operandi: the girls were broken in and broken down by the criminals before being driven around the UK to be sold to punters for cash in straightforward prostitution transactions.
Despite this, many children’s charities refuse to use the word pimping. Indeed, back in 2004, when I was investigating the issue and called for a quote, one very well-respected charity told me ‘We don’t like to use the word pimping, because it’s stigmatised.’
Yes, and for very good reason, I suggested. This person went on to tell me the word had ‘racist connotations’, to which I replied, ‘So does drug dealing – should we call it “making narcotics available”?’
They stuck to their guns and continued referring to the paid-for rape of children, as ‘sexual exploitation’ – a term that allows people to look away from the specifics.
One international organisation supposedly tackles what it refers to as ‘child sexual exploitation’ – an extremely wide-ranging term that can cover almost anything, including abusing children and photographing and filming them for porn sites, transporting children across continents to sell them into brothels, and girls being prostituted on street by older ‘boyfriends’. When I asked the CEO whether the organisation supported the criminalisation of men who pay for sex (a law that has been adopted by a number of countries since 1999) I was told, ‘When it comes to juvenile sex workers, I’m not sure that would work.’ I was so shocked at her use of those words to describe prostituted children that I ended the conversation.
In November 2014, 13 men were convicted of the sexual abuse of girls as young as 13 in Bristol. Many of these girls were in local authority care at the time. Children were pimped out in private homes, parks and hotels. One local authority housed care-leaver, Angie* (a girl described as having the emotional development of a three-year-old) was moved to a flat in a very deprived neighbourhood near Bristol. As soon as she moved in, drug dealers spotted her and forced her into prostitution. Angie told care workers what was happening, but nothing was done.
Staff at hotels in all of the so-called grooming gang hotspots (including Rotherham, Rochdale, Telford, and Oldham) would have known that girls were being prostituted in their rooms, yet I believe not one report from staff ever came into the police. It was almost as if these girls were seen as so worthless that it didn’t matter if they were selling themselves.
I recently interviewed Sally* – a victim of a Rotherham pimping gang. She told me that when she was in their clutches, she was made to occupy a room in a flat owned by one gang member. ‘There was nothing but a single bed on the floor, and lubrication and condoms next to it,’ she told me, ‘and the punters would queue outside the door, sometimes knocking and shouting “hurry up” to whoever was raping me if he was taking too long.’
Sally saw money change hands between punters and gang members, and one time the landlord came and changed the lightbulb in the hall outside the bedroom. He could hear what was going on inside the room – and didn’t say a word.
Prostitution is so normalised, and paying for sex so often justified, that the punter is the invisible man. Throughout this entire shameful scandal, to my knowledge there has not been a single conviction of one of these sex buyers – even though they are all child rapists.
Why do we look away from men willing to pay to rape a child? They knew that these girls were below the age of consent, and that none of them had any choice. And here is a big part of the problem: we sanitise the reality of prostitution on the grounds that a tiny minority of women say they ‘love their work’.
Every time these pimping gang members are caught, police should be tracking the punters. Allowing them to roam free means no justice for the victims, and an amnesty on child rape.
*Names have been changed
Damian Thompson discussed the grooming gangs scandal with Muslim cleric Dr Musharraf Hussain on the latest Holy Smoke podcast:
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