"I've said all along that this has been about two things--money and power," she explained. "Girls like me were sacrificed because no one wanted the boat rocked because they knew it'd cost them votes if the finger of blame was pointed and because they thought we were worthless."
The votes to which Jessica refers are those of the Asian community that Britain's Labour Party needed to maintain its power base in Rotherham. "There was an echelon of people who scratched each other's backs," revealed Solicitor Dave Greenwood, who is representing 38 victims in this burgeoning scandal. "But I think there's an 'X Factor' at play here. It's quite apparent there was a feeling of the need to maintain the Asian vote to preserve Labour's majority in the town," he added.
Jihad Watch's Robert Spencer
illuminates the utter bankruptcy of Britain's political elitists. "If Britain were still a sane society, every politician, Labour and otherwise, who knew about these Muslim rape gangs and kept quiet for fear of losing Muslim votes should be barred from ever holding or seeking political office again, and a serious investigation would be undertaken to determine whether or not charges of treason were warranted," he writes. "But Britain is no longer a sane society."
One of those politicians is Ged Fitzgerald, former chief executive of the Rotherham Council. He is facing renewed interest regarding allegations he
ignored warnings that his employees were blocking investigations. Fitzgerald, currently chief executive of Liverpool council, presided over Rotherham Council from 2001-2003, part of the 16-year period when as many as 1,400 girls were exploited by men mostly of Pakistani descent.
Related:
One Million Child Victims of Muslim Rape Gangs in the U.K.?
In February 2003, Fitzgerald allegedly received a letter sent by Parents Against Child Sex Exploitation (PACE), insisting Rotherham lawyers were revisiting old ground in order to postpone the research project that had been undertaken. The letter was sent even as a Home Office researcher was in the midst of the ongoing investigation. Hilary Willmer, the chair of trustees at PACE, told Fitzgerald her organization still believes the Rotherham Borough Council "in fact obstructed significant planned research--about which there was already a written agreement."
Two months earlier, PACE had sent a letter to Fitzgerald, as well as the Home Affairs Select Committee, explaining that research into pimps getting young girls pregnant to "exploit and control them" had also been blocked. "Our fear, which I hope is unfounded, was that the nature of the work touched upon significant entrenched interests," it stated. "I am therefore asking you to carry out an investigation into exactly why the research was prevented from being completed after an initial agreement..."
A Home Office researcher assigned to look into the case, who wishes to remain anonymous, insisted she was faced with "intense hostility," the alleged removal of some of her files, and an attempt to get her fired --courtesy of a Council determined to look the other way --despite inquiries in 2002 alone indicating there were as many 270 victims of sexual exploitation.
Last September she
revealed the political machinations to which she was subjected. The researcher had met victims of the exploitation at Risky Business, a youth organization set up by the Council. "The workers in that project were the only people that those young people trusted, that they were telling the complete story to," the researcher told Alison Holt, host of
Panorama, a current-affairs program broadcast by the BBC. "And some of the stories that I heard very early on were just so graphic that I don't think I will ever forget them. I was collecting data on who the perpetrators were, what cars they were using, their grooming methods, their offending methods, and what I was also collecting, was information on professional responses."
The data revealed a politically uncomfortable truth: the chief perpetrators of the abuse were men from the British Pakistani community.
The response of the Council under Fitzgerald's watch to that reality? "They said you must never refer to that again, you must never refer to Asian men," the researcher revealed. "And [the] other response was to book me on a two-day ethnicity and diversity course to raise my awareness of ethnic issues."
It gets worse. The researcher submitted her report to the Home Office and the Rotherham Council on a Friday. On either Saturday or Sunday, someone entered the offices of Risky Business where the
backup data on her report were stored and took it. Because there was no evidence of a break-in, the researcher suspected it was an inside job. "They'd gained access to the office and taken my data, so out of the number of filing cabinets there was one drawer emptied and it was emptied of my data. It had to be an employee of the council," she contended. Adding insult to injury, the report was never published and according to Holt, "the council even tried unsuccessfully to get the researcher sacked."
Fitzgerald was questioned last November by Liverpool Mayor, Labour leader Joe Anderson, and Green Party leader Councillor John Coyne. The session took place behind closed doors and was slammed as a "charade" by the political opposition. Fitzgerald has issued a single statement about the scandal, insisting he "abhors the actions of the perpetrators of abuse." Last August when Prof. Alexis Jay's report on the scandal,
The Independent Inquiry Into Child Exploitation in Rotherham, 1997-2003 was released, Fitzgerald claimed to be "genuinely shocked and surprised," further insisting he had "no recollection of child sex exploitation being a major issue."
Another politician who so far remains
seemingly immune from the scandal's fallout is Howard Woolfenden, the Rotherham Council's former child protection boss. He has been recruited by the Birmingham City Council, despite being part of Rotherham's management team that not only ignored allegations of sexual abuse, but suddenly shut down Risky Business in 2011. Woolfenden was subsequently given the position of director of safeguarding and corporate parenting. He also oversaw the creation of the in-house council team that replaced Risky Business.
Woolfenden was interviewed as part of the second, and recently released
"Report of Inspection of Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council" written by former Victims' Commissioner Louise Casey. That report, which hammered the Rotherham Council for being "in denial" and failing to protect children because of "misplaced political correctness" led to the resignation of the Council's entire Labor Cabinet. Communities Secretary Eric Pickles will replace them with Government Commissioners until an election can be held next year.
Casey praised the work of Risky Business, but noted its staff had also been ignored or harassed for bringing up "uncomfortable truths" about the abusers. "(The Rotherham Council) was repeatedly told by its own youth service what was happening and it chose, not only to not act, but to close that service down," Casey revealed. Jayne Senior, former manager of Risky Business from 1999 to 2011, took Woolfenden to task, insisting he "was under no illusion about the extent of the CSE (child sexual exploitation) problem in Rotherham when he was there, the huge number of girls being sexually exploited, the horror stories. He spent a lot of time going through our database about the girls and the abusers," she said.
Spencer's call for a serious investigation has ostensibly been answered. UK Home Secretary Theresa May has
appointed New Zealand High Court Judge Lowell Goddard to lead a countrywide investigation that may last until 2018.
Reaching for someone outside the UK is indicative of just how deep the political rot may go. May thought it was necessary because the investigation will also include the
Westminster VIP pedophile ring, a scandal alleging that high-ranking members of Britain's establishment abused young boys in the 1970s and 1980s. That case, highlighted by the disappearance of a 1983 40-page dossier on suspected establishment pedophiles, implies a possible government cover-up has taken place. The initial inquiry into that scandal had lost its first two chairs due to questions about their possible links with those establishment figures.
Rotherham MP Sarah Champion
believes the sexual abuse of children in Britain extends far beyond the boundaries of her town, and may include up to one million victims. Willmer partly
echoed Champion's assessment. "At the same time as we were working (in Rotherham), we had referrals from parents all around the country," she told Channel 4 News. "There was places like Oxford, Lancashire--but everywhere, and it was completely not acknowledged." She too noted the derision to which investigators were subjected, revealing they were "virtually laughed at," even as authorities contended the "girls had chosen this lifestyle to feed their drug habit."
In the most recent developments regarding the sex scandals, South Yorkshire Police officer Hassan Ali, 44, who was under investigation by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) regarding allegations he had twice asked for dates from a Rotherham victim, has
died following a car crash. Furthermore, two separate police investigations have led to the
arrest of 45 alleged predators. Twenty of them were arrested following an investigation by the Northumbria Police, and an additional 25 men from Halifax, West Yorkshire were charged with sex-related offenses. Almost all of them were of Asian descent and their victims, who were allegedly subjected to rape, trafficking, voyeurism and sexual assault, are between 13 and 25 years of age.
Incredibly, politics still remains part of the equation: police in one of the cases warned the ethnicity of the attackers may be exploited by "far-right" groups to stir up "racial tension." As opposed the decade-and-half suppression of this scandal by British Labour-ites and their PC-addled abettors? Abettors for whom the sexual exploitation of children was preferable to being labeled racist or Islamo-phobic? Judge Goddard may have more of an uphill battle on her hands than she could ever imagine.
