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London: The British Asian community is in "denial"
about the issue of Pakistani-origin men grooming white girls for
sex, a former British official has said.
Former Home Secretary Jack Straw was quoted by the Telegraph as
saying that a scandal, exposed by the trial of nine Asian men,
jailed for grooming and sexual abuse of white girls, raised a
problem which had to be "faced and addressed" within some
communities.
Another lawyer said he was preparing a case involving alleged
abuse of one girl in seven separate cities.
The alleged abuse follows a similar pattern -- involving grooming
rings dominated by men from Pakistani backgrounds, who are often
taxi drivers, and who pick up girls and take them to flats for sex
with several men.
Straw, whose Blackburn and Darwen constituency in Lancashire has a
large Asian population, has angered some sections of the Muslim
community in the past by calling for women to remove veils which
cover their faces.
Last year, he also warned that white girls are sometimes treated
as "easy meat" for some young Asian men who are "fizzing and
popping with testosterone" but had no "outlet" within their own
community, the Telegraph said.
"There is an issue of ethnicity here which can't be ignored," he
told BBC Radio 4.
"It is true to say that overall if you go into the sex offenders
wings of prisons, there are proportionally more white offenders
than Asian offenders or black and we have got to deal with that
separately."
"But it is also correct that in terms of group grooming there is
an ethnic dimension which typically is of Asian men on white
girls," he said.
"And that is an issue which has to be faced and addressed within
the Asian community about what's going on there. That kind of
leads to a sense of denial by them that all this is going on.
These are small communities, so people will have a rough idea that
people are abusing white girls in this way," Straw was quoted as
saying.
A spokesman for the Network of Sikh Organisations said it was not
accurate to describe the grooming rings as an "Asian" problem.
"It is something that the leaders of the Muslim community, the
Pakistani community, need to address," he said.
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