By David Batty, 08 Jan 2011
Row erupts after former home secretary says grooming for sexual abuse is a problem among some Pakistani men. |
The former home secretary Jack Straw has been accused of stereotyping Pakistani men in Britain after he accused some of them as regarding white girls as "easy meat" for sexual abuse.
The Blackburn MP spoke out after two Asian men who raped and sexually assaulted girls in Derby were given indefinite jail terms.
Straw said there was a "specific problem" in some areas of the country where Pakistani men "target vulnerable young white girls".
His comments were criticised by Keith Vaz, chairman of the Commons home affairs select committee, who said it was wrong to "stereotype a whole community".
Yesterday Mohammed Liaqat, 28, and Abid Saddique, 27, were jailed at Nottingham crown court after being found guilty at a trial in November of charges including rape.
The judge in the case said he did not believe the crimes were "racially aggravated", adding that the race of the victims and their abusers was "coincidental".
Speaking on the BBC's Newsnight programme yesterday, Straw said: "Pakistanis, let's be clear, are not the only people who commit sexual offences, and overwhelmingly the sex offenders' wings of prisons are full of white sex offenders.
"But there is a specific problem which involves Pakistani heritage men ... who target vulnerable young white girls.
"We need to get the Pakistani community to think much more clearly about why this is going on and to be more open about the problems that are leading to a number of Pakistani heritage men thinking it is OK to target white girls in this way."
Straw called on the British Pakistani community to be "more open" about the issue. "These young men are in a western society, in any event, they act like any other young men, they're fizzing and popping with testosterone, they want some outlet for that, but Pakistani heritage girls are off-limits and they are expected to marry a Pakistani girl from Pakistan, typically," he said.
"So they then seek other avenues and they see these young women, white girls who are vulnerable, some of them in care ... who they think are easy meat.
"And because they're vulnerable they ply them with gifts, they give them drugs, and then of course they're trapped."
Vaz, the Labour MP for Leicester East, told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: "I disagree with Jack Straw ... I don't think you can stereotype an entire community. What you can do is look at the facts of these national cases, give it to an agency, make a proper investigation and see how we can deal with these networks of people who are involved in this horrendous crime.
"One can accept the evidence that is put before us about patterns of networks but to go that step further is pretty dangerous."
Vaz told Sky News: "I don't think we can make that jump necessarily to it being a cultural problem ... We want an investigation that has no fear or favour to any community. But it is important that we get this into context."
Saddique was jailed for at least 11 years while Liaqat will be locked up for at least eight years. The pair were the ringleaders of a gang that groomed and abused girls aged from 12 to 18.
The sentences were passed down a day after the prime minister, David Cameron, said "cultural sensitivities" should not hinder police action in such cases.
Six other men had already been sentenced for their part in the abuse, investigated in Operation Retriever, led by Derbyshire police.
The Barnardo's chief executive, Martin Narey, said the case was more about vulnerable children of all races who were at risk from abuse. Street grooming was "probably happening in most towns and cities" and was not confined to the Pakistani community.
"I certainly don't think this is a Pakistani thing. My staff would say that there is an over-representation of people from minority ethnic groups – Afghans, people from Arabic nations – but it's not just one nation," said Narey.
Retired detective chief superintendent Max McLean, who led a previous police investigation into sexual exploitation involving the grooming and trafficking of young girls in Leeds, questioned whether it was a cultural problem.
"I'm not suggesting, and I do not think anybody is, that it is a problem within a community," he told the Today programme. What I am saying is that, when you take a crime type – street grooming – and see that the vast majority of people convicted are from a particular community, then there appears something we should do about those offenders.
"But that is the very danger, that we say that all street groomers are Asian men. What we have found is that our investigations have led to convictions, generally speaking, for this type of crime.
"That is a slightly different thing and it is incumbent on the police and professionals to engage with communities where we identify those offenders to see if there are preventative opportunities."
Mohammed Shafiq, chief executive of Muslim organisation the Ramadhan Foundation, condemned the crimes and called for the issue to be addressed without prejudice. "No community or faith ever sanctions these evil crimes and to suggest that this is somehow ingrained in the community is deeply offensive."
