"it's laughable that outrage levels are maxed out now when they weren't when the Tories took exactly the same decision."I think that they scent blood. Starmer became DPP for a small part of this period of vile crime and is a name, unlike all the councillors, police, Home Office civil servants, social workers etc. of that period. Starmer is very unpopular in the country now and his only support is centre and right Labour. And they are mostly pretty flaccid. It must be hard. I'd really like to be able to sympathise with him.--------------------------------"Sir Keir Starmer was forced to admit that a generation of vulnerable girls had been let down by the justice system while in charge of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).Speaking in 2012 after the Rochdale grooming scandal, the then director of public prosecutions (DPP) said perpetrators had escaped justice for decades because of the failure of the authorities to take the abuse seriously.He also conceded that the ethnicity of the suspects had been an issue and said prosecutors had failed to understand the nature of the abuse.His comments came after it was revealed that the CPS, under his leadership, had dropped a case against a rape gang despite overwhelming evidence of their guilt.Following the CPS’s decision to abandon the case, Greater Manchester Police (GMP) dropped its wider investigation into Asian grooming gangs in the area, and the abuse continued.‘Victim would not come across as reliable’The investigation involved allegations of grooming and sexual abuse made by a child in August 2008 following a disturbance at the Balti House takeaway in Heywood, near Rochdale. GMP officers had arrived at the scene to find a teenage girl screaming and shouting and allegedly smashing up the counter of the shop. The youngster was arrested on suspicion of criminal damage and taken into custody. But when she was questioned by officers, she revealed that the reason she had been angry was that she had been repeatedly raped by a group of Asian men linked to the takeaway.The victim even provided police with her underwear, which carried traces of one of her attacker’s DNA.Two men were arrested on suspicion of rape, and several months later the police sent a file of evidence to the CPS. But in July 2009, after reviewing the case, a CPS lawyer concluded that the victim would not come across as reliable or credible and the case was dropped.Ignored by police and social servicesThis was nine months after Sir Keir had been appointed DPP and illustrated the depth of the problem victims of child sexual exploitation faced in their fight to get justice.Not only were they routinely ignored by the police and social services, but when their complaints were taken seriously prosecutors often concluded that there was not a realistic prospect of conviction. Police also claimed that one of the reasons they did not pursue cases was because they did not believe prosecutors would take it seriously.It would be another two years before the CPS reviewed its original decision and the suspects were charged with rape. Eventually, in May 2012 nine men, from mainly Pakistani backgrounds, were found guilty of grooming gang offences.Liverpool crown court was told they had plied their victims, who were as young as 13, with drink and drugs so they could “pass them around” and use them for sex.Multiple failingsNazir Afzal, who was chief crown prosecutor for north-west England at the time, and whose decision it was to eventually prosecute two men, conceded there had been multiple failings in dealing with the case. He said the lawyer who made the original decision had been removed from all sex offence cases, and a wider review was ordered.Sir Keir chaired a review into the CPS’s handling of the Rochdale case and also ordered a national analysis of all child sexual exploitation cases across the country.Speaking in 2012, he said: “In a number of cases presented to us, particularly in cases involving groups, there’s clearly an issue of ethnicity that has to be understood and addressed.“As prosecutors, we shouldn’t shy away from that. But if we’re honest, it’s the approach to the victims, the credibility issue, that caused these cases not to be prosecuted in the past. There was a lack of understanding.”Sir Keir’s acceptance that the ethnicity of the offenders had been an issue was backed up by various inquiries, which accused public officials of turning a blind eye to child sexual abuse for fear of being labelled racist.In Telford, Shropshire, where more than 1,000 girls were sexually abused by gangs of Asian men over three decades, police were described as dropping cases like a “hot potato” to avoid inflaming racial tensions.One witness told an inquiry how West Mercia Police had appeared “frightened to question or challenge because they didn’t want to have the finger pointed at them, saying they were being racist”.In Prof Alexis Jay’s report into the Rotherham grooming scandal, she warned that some staff in children’s social care had been advised by their managers to be cautious about referring to the ethnicity of the perpetrators in reports.Baroness Louise Casey’s follow-up inquiry into the council’s handling of the scandal also found officials were worried about being seen as racist or upsetting community cohesion.She said this had been exploited by far-Right extremists, writing: “By failing to take action against the Pakistani heritage male perpetrators of CSE in the borough, the council has inadvertently fuelled the far-Right and allowed racial tensions to grow. It has done a great disservice to the Pakistani heritage community and the good people of Rotherham as a result.”In October 2013, in the wake of the scandal, Sir Keir published revised CPS guidance on how prosecutors should deal with child sexual exploitation cases.A list of stereotypical behaviours, previously thought to undermine the credibility of young victims, was included to dispel the associated myths when bringing a prosecution.These included issues such as suggestions the victim had invited sex by the way they dressed or acted; they did not complain immediately, so it could not have been a sexual assault; children can consent to their own sexual exploitation; and the victim is in a relationship with the alleged offender and is therefore a willing partner.But more than a year later, in October 2014, a report by Ofsted into Oldham council’s approach to sexual exploitation warned of a “slowness of prosecutions and lack of local engagement by the CPS”.On Thursday Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, said a statutory public inquiry was needed to examine all aspects of the justice system’s failings.He added: “I think looking into the conduct of the Crown Prosecution Service, including during the time when Keir Starmer was the director of public prosecutions, would be one of the things that this inquiry should certainly be looking at.”"Telegraph 2/1/2025
David Ainsworth ● 128d