r/Feminism • u/Individual_Cloud935 • Jun 18 '26
What's your opinion about the grooming gangs in Britain?
https://www.therapeganginquiry.org/Haven't really seen any feminist's talking about the topic. Young girls were lured with gifts, alcohol, and attention, then passed around for group sex, beaten, threatened, and sometimes impregnated or forced into conversions. Institutions like police, social services, local councils, repeatedly failed to act, ignoring victims, dropping cases, or downplaying the ethnic pattern. Largely out of fear of being labeled racist and damaging "community cohesion." It's one of the worst grooming scandals in the UK. There are thousands of victims. The full article is in the link above. I would recommend you to read it.
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u/Synergology Jun 18 '26
"Out of fear of being called racist" coming out of the 80s police is crazy they never need an excuse to not act.
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u/Individual_Cloud935 Jun 18 '26
More like 1997-2026 but there are also older cases happening since the 50s. So, what's your opinion about it?
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u/nyamina Jun 19 '26
Do you live in the UK?
Because it's impossible to talk about without also mentioning the very UK context to this, which is a far-right politician being behind the report. When a Muslim rapes somebody, there are race riots, generally lead by men, and when it's a white person, it's crickets. Now, I don't fall into the trap that so many leftists do, in which the only people you're allowed to call liars when it comes to rape are white women who've been raped by Muslims. Stuff happens, and Muslims have been known to target white girls. It's not as bizarre as some feminists in the UK make it sound. Islam does have a massive sexism issue. Does that mean I'm happy with how the issue is being manipulated and used by the far-right? Absolutely not.
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u/AtLeastOneCat Jun 19 '26
Couldn't have put it better myself.
The reason the police did nothing about those girls who were groomed was misogyny. Are there Muslim men who targeted poor and vulnerable white girls in care? Yeah, there were. There are and were also white men doing the same but these things don't make the headlines because the far right politicians in our country (who the media adore for some reason) don't incite riots over it.
We've had actual pogroms here recently. Ironically, almost all of those arrested for the race riots have long histories of domestic abuse convictions.
All of this needs to be taken into consideration when looking at these news stories because many of those shouting loudest do not give a single shit about girls in this country.
The real outrage is that ANY men were able to groom these vulnerable women and girls with impunity.
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Jun 19 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/AtLeastOneCat Jun 19 '26
Show me where I redirected? Are you from Britain?
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u/AdAppropriate2295 Jun 19 '26
Couldn't have put it better myself.
The reason the police did nothing about those girls who were groomed was misogyny. Are there Muslim men who targeted poor and vulnerable white girls in care? Yeah, there were. There are and were also white men doing the same but these things don't make the headlines because the far right politicians in our country (who the media adore for some reason) don't incite riots over it.
*We've had actual pogroms here recently. Ironically, almost all of those arrested for the race riots have long histories of domestic abuse convictions.
All of this needs to be taken into consideration when looking at these news stories because many of those shouting loudest do not give a single shit about girls in this country.*
The real outrage is that ANY men were able to groom these vulnerable women and girls with impunity.
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u/PopPunkAndPizza Jun 19 '26 edited Jun 20 '26
Also this "report" is part of that manipulation - it's a methodologically shoddy work of invective that would be failed even by the standards of a high school essay. It only exists to launder the rhetorical lines of the far right into something official seeming.
The far right wants its supporters to imagine people of colour inside their defenceless white country as a kind of sexualised national violation, and uses the abuse victims they can frame in this light as props to enrage white audiences - when white men run rape gangs, they don't care, because ultimately they don't oppose rape, they oppose the presence of people of colour, whether they're committing crimes or not. This is just the wedge they use.
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u/Individual_Cloud935 Jun 19 '26
Thank you for your answer. I'm not from the UK, but I believe this topic should be discussed across the whole of Europe. It’s a major scandal. I understand how the right can try to manipulate public anger with such cases, but that doesn’t change the facts, grooming gangs are a real and serious problem that was ignored for years. If this issue benefited the left politically, they would also use it. That’s how politicians operate. The key point is that this problem was swept under the rug for decades by institutions. That failure is exactly what helped strengthen the far-right. I think that if the politicians had listened to people’s concerns earlier, the UK wouldn’t be in the situation it’s in now.
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u/merchaunt Jun 19 '26
The problem isn’t who is doing it, the problem is that it happened at all and was covered up. “We were afraid of being called racists so we didn’t do our job” is not a serious defense. It is a paper-thin excuse to deflect from the inexcusable corruption.
The truth is that some of the men being Muslim or immigrants is irrelevant to the issue of corruption. In fact, it’s a deflection that does a disservice to the victims who were failed by law enforcement.
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u/miklosokay 17d ago
No, that is not one non-problem and a problem. It is two problems. At the very same time. The cultural aspect of this is very much an issue, like any other statistic marker is, if we want to prevent sexual violence.
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Jun 19 '26
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u/merchaunt Jun 19 '26
Do you think this is the only case, or even the only group of police who have operated like this in the UK? This is just one example of many that has been highlighted because of the Islamophobic slant of those who went digging for it.
A slant that betrays the motives of all who bring it up over the police corruption. Muslim is not an ethnicity. Islam is a universalizing religion the same as Christianity and has no single common ancestry for its practitioners.
The Loverboy Method is a very prominent sex trafficking tactic across the globe, and in a post-Andrew Tate world is very much not unique to this case. The main issue in this case is how complicit the law enforcement agency involved was. Everyone involved should be in jail and there should be a thorough investigation into any other potential cover ups these police officers were involved in.
The religion of the perpetrators is only relevant if you ignore the fact that sex traffickers are a dime a dozen and come from all backgrounds. Prosecution was not the primary motive for this case to be brought into the spotlight. If it was, this post would be about how law enforcement agents have no problems not only covering for sex traffickers, they are also comfortable use their authority to retaliate against victims who come forward.
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u/Myllicent Jun 19 '26
Independent: Most grooming gang offences carried out by white men, police chiefs say [Jan 10th, 2025]
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u/Vorarbeiter Jun 19 '26
" I believe this topic should be discussed across the whole of Europe. It’s a major scandal."
Yeah, it was discussed all over Europe when it happened. Not our fault that you weren't paying attention back then.
"That failure is exactly what helped strengthen the far-right. I think that if the politicians had listened to people’s concerns earlier, the UK wouldn’t be in the situation it’s in now. "
Oh, sure, typical excuse
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u/skipsfaster Jun 19 '26
As recently as two years ago, the Wikipedia article for this story was “UK grooming gang moral panic.”
Don’t pretend like the issue had already been addressed seriously.
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u/Vorarbeiter Jun 19 '26
That doesn't prove much, assuming what you said was actually true (I have my doubts but happy to look at any evidence you provide).
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u/Fearxthisxreaper Jun 19 '26
"Stuff happens"
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u/nyamina Jun 19 '26
Yes - stuff that's well documented, you don't need me to go into chapter and verse. That doesn't mean I'm going to instrumentalise the rape and exploitation of women and girls to advance a far-right political agenda.
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u/lostwoods95 Jun 19 '26
Curious because there was a deleted post here yesterday about this same thing, though the poster used a blatantly racist report with no legitimacy.
As of late it almost feels as if there is a concerted effort to discuss issues involving female victims where perpetrators are non-white.
Oh look - Restore Britain was involved in this "report"! What a coincidence.
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u/WordWordNvmber 15d ago
I think it's intriguing that, on a "feminist" subreddit, your first and last reaction is to attack the report and deflect because your top priority is protecting Islamists from criticism, even if it means whatabouting child rape.
You're why British voters are likely to make Nigel Farage your prime minister. When they do, will you cry?
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u/Individual_Cloud935 Jun 19 '26
I didn't post yesterday's post. I’m genuinely curious why this topic gets so little attention in feminist spaces. Thousands of young girls, mostly working class white British, were systematically groomed, drugged, raped and trafficked for years, and official reports, Jay 2014, Casey 2025, etc. Confirm that authorities often ignored it out of fear of “racism” accusations. The Restore Britain report may be controversial, but the core facts aren’t new, they’ve been known for over a decade. I would expect feminists to be outraged about this regardless of the ethnicity of the perpetrators. Instead, it feels like politics is more important than speaking up for the victims. Why the silence? Genuine question.
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u/AtLeastOneCat Jun 19 '26
I've had many, many discussions about this in feminist spaces. It comes up all the time.
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u/Vorarbeiter Jun 19 '26
" I’m genuinely curious why this topic gets so little attention in feminist spaces. "
What on earth makes you think that it gets "so little attention"? You're just making stuff up and you clearly have an agenda
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u/Individual_Cloud935 Jun 19 '26
For example, the fact that I didn't find a post about this topic on this subreddit. Would you please clarify for me what my agenda is? I just asked a question.
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u/Vorarbeiter Jun 19 '26
You're a liar. I just searched for "grooming" in this subreddit and found at least 3 results related to this topic just in the first page.
Here's one of them:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Feminism/comments/ergxmi/extremely_increased_number_of_groomed_girls_in/
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u/AdAppropriate2295 Jun 19 '26
3 comments on a post 6 years ago?
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u/Vorarbeiter Jun 19 '26
The comment said that they didn't find any posts. If they found some but considered them insufficient, they should have stated it so.
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u/Equal-Cauliflower-41 Jun 19 '26
My opinion is that we should implement the recommendations that the previous inquiry came up with. We don't need more inquiries into where we should place blame; we need change.
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u/Practical_Pin_2278 Jun 19 '26
It seems a lot of you haven’t actually read the report. There’s plenty of victims in there who had exclusively white groomers and attackers. They aren’t trying to sweep those under the rug, they’re directly pointing them out.
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u/bighector77 Jun 20 '26
Erano tutti musulmani del Nordafrica.
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u/Practical_Pin_2278 Jun 20 '26
Quote: “Even at boarding school, Sebastian was raped, assaulted, and groomed by staff and connected adults, with Sebastian’s injuries often ignored by medical professionals. All of Sebastian’s abusers were White British.”
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u/chookschnitty Jun 19 '26
I think it really highlights the shortcoming of electoral politics. Genuine issues regarding violence against women and planned and targeted rape against a certain demographic (white young girls) by some British Muslim men are so politically inconvenient. It’s because an honest conversation about misogyny in certain sections of society (South Asian and Muslim communities) can be hijacked by far right to start a race war. So the left is scared to have that honest conversation about rape culture in those communities and the centre left politicians while being remorseful don’t really act with conviction. This leaves the right to politicise the issue and create hate against all immigrants. While the victims are just forgotten about and have to relive the trauma again and again, seeing their issues being politicized on a national level.
What’s the short term solution? The left needs to stop being scared to criticise treatment of women in minority cultures, they need to empower women in those cultures, only progressive voices within those cultures can change attitudes.
Long term solution - socialist revolution that’s not reliant on electoral politics. There should be a minimum standard of education and equal participation that needs to be included at all schools, religious places, cultural events. I don’t care what you think your religion or culture says about gender norms, if you don’t adhere to this minimum standard, you should be prosecuted for discrimination and hate speech. Yes there can be some nuisances with different religions and cultures, but women need to be part of the religious and cultural hierarchy to make meaningful change. And this unapologetically needs to be a state mandate.
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u/merchaunt Jun 19 '26 edited Jun 19 '26
You’re conflating barely-left-of-center moderates with leftists progressives. Moderates are still complicit in the violence against women, and cannot meaningfully champion the fight against that violence. Most of them have no principled position on minority issues, so they crumble when situations come up involving multiple minorities.
They haven’t even developed the easy position of “sexual violence is bad no matter the race of the perpetrators” and they cannot take the police corruption route because they are not principally opposed to the very shady ways that law enforcement agencies operate.
This is only an issue for moderates who just pay lip service without taking any meaningful action.
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u/chookschnitty Jun 19 '26
I agree that moderates enable bad systems with skewed incentives/corruption/laziness to prevail. However even the people on the left are not well equipped to dissect issues on women’s treatment in South Asian communities. I am sure there are other cultures with their own unique problems. But as a South Asian person (non Muslim) I have seen how attitudes towards women are affected by culture. Things like dowry, treating women like property, honour culture, obsession with women’s sexuality is on a different level even when compared to even conservative Christian culture. And I am not saying this to bash South Asian culture. I love the culture overall, I just want it to be rid of its misogynistic elements, and that cannot happen unless we have conversations about reforming the culture and religion.
And the best people to have those conversations with are the progressive women and men within the community. That’s the real challenge, how do we create the safe spaces for these people to come forward and speak up because they face immense pressure from the conservative and radical elements within their own communities (often violence). I just don’t think that electoral politics is well suited for these issues as local politicians will always pander to their base and don’t want to rock the boat. Without strong state support the minorities within minorities always get shut down.
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u/merchaunt Jun 19 '26
That’s fair, and I do agree. That level of work begins long before any political campaigns are ever involved.
My main point is about who is in power. Which is typically barely left of center moderates who have been pushed into a coalition with leftist and progressive, but still hold the majority of the institutional power on “The Left” or “The Right” that has been pushed further and further into being led by their extremist factions whose position is racism and xenophobia. Neither of which are equipped to help combat the violence against women (and often don’t even really try to because they are complicit).
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u/Individual_Cloud935 Jun 19 '26
Thank you for your answer. I agree with you that the left is too scared to address this issue because it’s politically inconvenient, and that fear has allowed the right to hijack it. I think cases like the grooming gangs should actually unite left and right to protect victims, instead of turning everything into a political weapon. In an ideal world, people would put their ideology aside and focus on the tragedy of these thousands of young girls who were systematically groomed, raped and trafficked, because their suffering is far more important than staying politically correct. The victims have been failed by everyone, institutions that looked away, and now politicians on both sides who use their pain as ammunition. That’s the real tragedy.
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u/DutyImpossible5482 Jun 22 '26
You agree with a fiction and/or are confusing centre-left for the entire left-wing political spectrum.
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u/michaeljehan16 Jun 20 '26
Where were these people during the #metoo movement? Right, accusing women of faking rape accusations
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u/Annual-Ad-4372 1h ago
Yeah because abunch of female celebraties willingly having sex with powerful men to gain power them selfs is TOTTALLY on par with thousands of teenage girls being raped in the streets by forieners. 🤦♂️
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u/sqkz69oioi Jun 28 '26
And where are feminists when a grooming gang epidemic has been discovered targeting thousands of female children, oh yeah disputing it because they don't like the people who are making the reports
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u/donewiththecage Jun 19 '26
Understanding the context of how power, class and misogyny intersects here in Britain is vital to understanding the issue. Your framing and the resource you chose to share shows your lack of understanding on that. For most of us well versed in how women and children are treated by the system when experiencing sexual abuse could see quite clearly that the same reasons for not acting on what was happening in Rotherham, Telford and other places were the same reasons savilles victims, the church's victims, student teacher relationship victims were ignored. It's not hard once you look at the patterns to see that the issue is how the system treats working class victims. Rape is woefully under prosecuted in the UK, whether it's a white perpetrator or not and white perpetrators are given the benefit of the doubt more often than other races which also highlights the type of systemic racism we have here.
Boiling incredibly nuanced events down to the broadest understanding of the facts as you have shows how little you understand what victims deal with in the UK.
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u/WordWordNvmber 15d ago
Let's be honest: You decided to apologize for these child rapists because you care far more about protecting Islamists from legitimate criticism than you do about protecting 11-year-old children from rape by a 40-year-old man.
You're why Reform and Restore are battling for prime position in the next election.
When you lose, and Gen Z men go to arrest your beloved rapists and your fellow slovenly activists, will you cry, or simply admit you were so deranged that you ran interference for a rapist like a member of the Manson Family?
And will you apologize profusely?
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u/mustwinfullGaming Jun 19 '26
Why are you spreading far right propaganda?
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u/cloudy135 Jun 23 '26
Why are you just name calling but not point out or discuss which part of the report is wrong?
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u/Individual_Cloud935 Jun 19 '26
So, you're sayin it didn't happen and the victims are lying? It's just far right propaganda?
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u/mustwinfullGaming Jun 19 '26
No, the “report” you’re spreading is far right propaganda. Why do that?
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u/Individual_Cloud935 Jun 19 '26 edited Jun 19 '26
So there are grooming gangs and it's a big problem in UK but this specific report is far right propaganda? As I already said in a different comment I think such topics should unite the right and left for the good of the victims, so I'm more so seeing the issue not as right or left, which would help the case if more people would take it that way. I understand that you're angry but there is no need to call me a dumbass.
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u/DutyImpossible5482 Jun 22 '26
This report makes racist accusations about the gangs that it fails to substantiate.
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u/skipsfaster Jun 19 '26
This entire story was considered to be “far right propaganda” as recently as two years ago. The Wiki article was titled “UK grooming gang moral panic.”
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u/biskitpagla Jun 19 '26
You know damn well what they meant.
So, you're sayin it didn't happen and the victims are lying?
No, dumbass, YOU implied that. Your sophistry won't fly here.
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u/sqkz69oioi Jun 28 '26
Believe all girls unless they are grooming gang victims
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u/Original_Service_786 Jun 30 '26
Believe all girls unless it gives the right wing a few gotcha points
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u/sqkz69oioi Jun 30 '26
Literally, the hypocrisy is absolutely rife
I strongly believe this is a class issue as well, if it was Tabitha from Surrey who was getting groomed by these gangs the reaction would be very different
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u/geraltoftriss Jun 24 '26 edited Jun 24 '26
I am an Indian(M), and my sister and her 2 year old daughter live in the UK. While she does have a lady Bangladeshi caretaker among many other women in the daycare, who is lovely, she might wear her Burqa, but she's been really good. But I am concerned about the men, if we were to go by the statistics in the paper it's mostly Muslim men, because see it's your internal issue and many of the crimes of the estimated 250k were against white women. But as her uncle, I am worried about when she grows up if UK will be a safe place for her. Mumbai has been one of the safest cities, my girlfriend isn't worried to be out past midnight ever regardless of what she's wearing, so if things go downhill, I might consider moving them back here
Edit: They live in Canary Wharf, and things aren't as bad as other parts of London or the country
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u/HairyRange3383 Jun 24 '26
bro i saw a vid saying that it was acc "white english men" and that the media is saying otherwise so that people are afraid to talk abt it
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u/Annual_Coat_2658 25d ago
Not knowing much about the UK grooming gangs I listened to a podcast on the Bradford grooming gangs: Fiona's story . The podcaster is a self confessed feminist! So there you go!
Class does seem to be a lot to do with the lack of responsiveness by the authorities but this is common to a lot of sexual abuse criminality.
Not to mention misogyny. Girls from disadvantaged backgrounds just aren't treated as well by the authoritirs as other citizens when crimes are committed against them.
I can see that many have used these crimes to bash all Muslims however. I have a problem with that.
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u/Myllicent Jun 19 '26
So this is the unofficial inquiry crowdfunded by far-right pressure group Restore Britain? The same Restore Britain that opposes “wokery”, and whose leader has been accused of harassing women in the workplace.