The prosecutor who brought the Rochdale “grooming gang” to justice has called for a national conversation about masculinity after warning that the abuse of women was widespread in society and not restricted to any one ethnic group.
Nazir Afzal, the former Chief Crown Prosecutor for North-West England, was responsible for securing convictions of nine men of south Asian heritage for a range of offences including rape, trafficking and conspiracy to engage in sexual activity with children in 2012.
It was the first of a series of high profile cases involving mainly Muslim perpetrators in English towns, including Rotherham and Telford.
Speaking at the Byline Festival at Keele University recently, Afzal rejected the idea that the religion or ethnic background of either the offenders or their victims was a significant issue.
“Most of the victims were white girls, but there were also girls from South Asian backgrounds, from black backgrounds, and there were also some boys as well,” he said.
“Victims came from all manner of places, and by just focusing on the white victims and the ethnicity of the perpetrators, it's quite dangerous to do that, because what you're saying to young white girls is ‘avoid the brown man.”
Afzal pointed to data showing that 85% of abusers are, in fact, white whereas men of Pakistani origin make up just 3.9% of the total.
The government announced a national enquiry into grooming gangs last month, following a social media campaign mobilised by Elon Musk on his social media platform X, despite the fact that an independent report into Child Sexual Abuse by Professor Alexis Jay reported as recently as 2022.
“It's not a cultural issue, it's a gender issue,” Afzal said. “Men, unfortunately, abuse women and girls. If you just focus on the Muslim perpetrators, that doesn't explain the fact that one in four women in this country suffers domestic abuse; that one in five are sexually assaulted; that two women every week are killed by their partners or ex partners; that 10 women kill themselves every week.”
He’s now calling for a national conversation about male attitudes to women: “We want men to start talking about…why they feel the way they feel, and [see] what we can do to address the issue, whether it's through education, through learning, through behaviours, through role modelling.
“Boys and men need to step up and start addressing the issues that currently mean that women are not safe.”
Listen to ‘Lost Boys’ author James Bloodworth talking about the Manosphere and toxic masculinity here.
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