Was it a hate crime? ...

By Martin Robinson And Matt Chorley
Daily Mail
March 4, 2015

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2977034/Police-social-services-face-brutal-criticism-report-revealing-hundreds-young-people-groomed-sexually-exploited-gangs-Oxfordshire-15-years.html

Abuse: An estimated 373 girls, mainly from Oxford, pictured, were groomed, raped and sometimes forced into 'sex slavery' by gangs over the last 15 years, a damning report revealed

Paedophile: Zeeshan Ahmed, 28, was jailed for seven years for two counts of sexual activity with a child

Abuse was carried out at the Nanford Guest House in Oxford and other places all over the city. Pictured is a room at the guest house

Thames Valley's Police and Crime Commissioner, Anthony Stansfeld (pictured) said the abuse could have been a 'hate crime'

Jailed: The gang, five of Pakistani origin and two of north African origin, believed they 'owned Oxford' during their years of abusing children

Was it a hate crime? Fears gangs of Asian paedophiles who preyed on hundreds of vulnerable white girls were racially motivated as PM brands it 'abuse on an industrial scale'

A total of 373 girls suffered sexual abuse in Oxfordshire, a report into 'indescribably awful' child sexual exploitation has found - and now fears have been raised that the abuse may have been racially motivated.

Over 15 years hundreds of victims as young as 11 were groomed, raped and forced into prostitution by gangs of men 'predominantly of Pakistani heritage', a serious case review has found.

The damning 114-page report said victims were in a 'living hell from which they couldn't extricate themselves' after 'hostile' officials wrote some off as 'difficult girls making bad choices' when they begged for help.

The vulnerable girls were initially showered with gifts before being plied with alcohol and drugs including crack cocaine and heroin, making them dependent on the men who sexually abused them.

Today Thames Valley's Police and Crime Commissioner, Anthony Stansfeld, said the abuse may have been a 'hate crime'.

Mr Stansfeld said that 'from the outside looking in' it appeared the abuse was in some way racially motivated.

He said: 'It needs looking at whether this was hate crime. I think it most certainly could have been and it needs looking at.'

Prime Minister David Cameron said this afternoon that the children in Oxford were abused on an 'industrial scale' and vowed laws would be changed in the light of revelations and similar scandals in Rotherham and Rochdale.

Today police and council bosses said they were 'horrified' and 'ashamed' by what happened between 1999 and 2014 but nobody has yet been disciplined over what happened.

One gang of Asian men was responsible for abusing and enslaving 50 girls, mainly from Oxford, but the men were also able to sexually torture girls for eight years after a series of missed opportunities to stop them.

One abuse victim believes that 'hundreds of men' who abused her remain 'untouched' and walking the streets, the report said.

Maggie Blyth, chair of the Oxfordshire Safeguarding Children Board, admitted years of errors 'allowed offenders to get away with their crimes' but she found no cases of neglect or misconduct by staff.

The three senior managers who were responsible for social services in Oxfordshire at this time have all since moved on.

One emigrated but has returned to the UK, another now works in the private sector while the third retired on health grounds.

Alan Bedford, the author of the independent review, wrote: 'What happened to the child victims of the sexual exploitation in Oxfordshire was indescribably awful.

'The child victims and their families feel very let down. Their accounts of how they perceived professional work are disturbing and chastening.'

The report said: 'It [the sexual abuse] was so bad that, for a time, it was hard for staff to grasp the reality of what was happening.'

His report revealed that six girls who were being abused were reported missing 500 times in five years but the authorities failed to act, today's report said.

The devastating 114-page report today also revealed:

    Girls were hooked on drink and drugs before being offered for sex in Oxford and across Britain
    The victims were 'white girls' and the perpetrators were 'predominantly of Pakistani heritage'
    Girls were tortured with meat cleavers, baseball bats and sex toys by men who would also bite, scratch, suffocate, burn them and even urinate on them
    Those abused by gangs who went to social workers or police were often 'disbelieved' or told they were 'bringing problems upon themselves'
    Children who said they were being abused were considered to be consenting to sex with adults and written off as 'difficult girls making bad choices'
    Staff made 'snide remarks' and were 'hostile' to girls who came to them for help
    Professionals showed a persistent 'lack of curiosity', even in one case where a 12-year-old abuse victim linked to a gang was known to be using contraceptives  
    Parents who complained their child was missing or had been raped were seen as 'part of the problem'
    The perpetrators told one parent of a girl they habitually abused: 'They threatened to kill me and behead my daughter's baby'

Some girls were raped repeatedly by groups in attacks that would last for 'days at a time' in guest houses and empty flats, and some were tortured with baseball bats, meat cleavers and sex toys.

The report said: 'Many of the sexual acts committed on the girls were extreme in their depravity. The girls were usually given so many drugs that they were barely aware of what was going on. Indeed, they say that it was the only way they could cope with what was going on.'

Men from other cities would also visit girls for £100-a-time sex 'by appointment' set up by Oxford paedophiles, who would also transport their underage sex slaves to London and Bournemouth to be abused.

In harrowing testimony the report said one Oxford victim told investigators: 'I turned up at a police station, blood all over my body, soaked through my trousers to the crotch. They dismissed it as me being naughty, a nuisance'.

Social services 'washed their hands' of one victim and told her 'It's your choice' while another manager said: 'She's streetwise, she loves it', the report said.

One police officer dismissed a case against a 13-year-old because she looked 16, it was said.  

Victims were groomed using drugs, alcohol and gifts before they were physically assaulted, forced into prostitution, raped and drugged, the report said.

Their abusers kept them 'hooked in' by making the girls dependent on alcohol and drugs, which they then 'paid for' with sex.

One victim said after the abuse: 'The Asian men felt they ran Oxford. That was exciting. People were afraid of them. I felt protected, People respected them.'

The report highlighted the damage of an attitude that 'nothing can be done' and that a 'lack of understanding led to insufficient inquiry.'

It said: 'The perceived difficulty in prosecuting and the lack of investigation on occasions led to a vicious cycle whereby victims would either not disclose, or make only a partial disclosure, or withdraw support for the police, because they could see there was no guarantee of sufficient action to be safe from perpetrators if they did support the police.

'Victims can describe circumstances, some quite dreadful, when they made allegations or were found in dire straits after abuse, yet 'nothing happened'.

'Although there might be understanding now about why nothing (much) happened to end the abuse, for victims who were scared, hurt and trapped, this must have merely reinforced their sense of isolation and lack of choices.'

The report added that: 'The girls who were chosen generally had troubled upbringings and unsettled home lives which made it less likely that anyone would be exercising any normal parental control over them or looking out for them.

'The girls were then groomed in a variety of ways such as being given gifts or simply by being shown the care and attention that they craved.'

 Investigations of the response of organisations including Oxfordshire County Council and Thames Valley Police found that victims' accounts were not believed or they were seen as exaggerated.

Maggie Blyth said: 'It is shocking that these children were subjected to such appalling sexual exploitation for so long'.

Ms Blyth said that parents and carers of vulnerable girls raised concerns which were sometimes 'not given the weight they deserved'.

She also said that officials could not understand that the victims could not say 'no' because they were being groomed by men who had a hold over their lives.

Some parents are quoted in the report. One said: 'No one thought about us - what it would be like if it was their daughter.'

'All this - it has ripped the family apart.'

Another said: 'I put window locks on and kept the key... but in the morning found someone had helped her chisel open the sashes.'

Scores of professionals across a string of organisations or departments 'took a long time to recognise child sexual exploitation (CSE), used language that appeared at least in part to blame victims and see them as adults, and had a view that little could be done in the face of 'no co-operation',' the report said.

The latest serious case review came weeks after the true scale of abuse in Rotherham was revealed, where at least 1,400 girls fell into the clutches of paedophiles, mainly from Pakistani backgrounds.

One former police officer said: 'They were running scared of the race issue… there is no doubt that in Rotherham, this has been a problem with Pakistani men for years and years. People were scared of being called racist.'

The report said in one incident which took place around nine years ago, a concerned parent attended a police station about their daughter and asked why no arrests had been made. The parent said the desk officer told them that such arrests could not simply be made on such information and that the police were under pressure 'not to appear institutionally racist'.

One senior social work manager said the police were 'uncurious'. She said: 'The police response lacked curiosity - they would pick the child up, give them a telling off and drop them back at the children's home.'

Whistleblowers who tried to raise concerns lost their jobs, and  police officers often did not seem to believe the girls, their families or those who reported problems, and did not treat them as victims.

Sara Thornton, chief constable of Thames Valley Police, said: 'We are ashamed of the shortcomings identified in this report and we are determined to do all we can to ensure that nothing like this ever happens again.'

Jim Leivers, director for children, education and families at Oxfordshire County Council, said the authority is 'horrified', adding: 'We fully accept that we made many mistakes and missed opportunities to stop the abuse.'

Oxford City Council said the report clearly showed the girls were 'badly let down by the organisations that could - and should - have protected them'.

The NHS in Oxfordshire said it regretted 'the abuse was not uncovered and information acted on sooner'.

Former Oxfordshire County Council leader Keith Mitchell admitted he had not understood the scale of the problem and said they had 'failed badly'.

He told BBC Radio 4's World At One programme: 'I can't believe that by 2012 I wasn't being briefed that there was a problem.

'Not sure I ever really understood the scale and I certainly didn't understand what a huge problem this was in Oxfordshire and, it seems, across the country.'

He added: 'I don't know how I could have dug into the organisation better. I thought I knew the organisation pretty well. I knew all the senior people, I worked the job and I don't know how I could have raised this issue without knowing it was such an issue.'

Mr Mitchell said 'people at the grassroots' did not push the issue and 'weren't inquisitive enough'.

'It feels like there was a sense that this was just too difficult a problem because many of the girls wouldn't co-operate and there wasn't an evidence base there.

He added: 'We are not a Rotherham and I will not have that suggestion made. We are a good council and we have put in place the measures that are necessary to stamp this evil out.'

The report said that since around 2011 'many lessons have been learned' and services for children vulnerable to CSE 'have been improved considerably'.

The report said: 'The association, not of all CSE but group-based CSE, with mainly Pakistan heritage is undeniable, and prevention will need both national understanding, communication and debate, and also work with faith groups at a local level.'

However, the report said that 'no evidence has been seen of any agency not acting when they should have done because of racial sensitivities'.

Jo Cleary, chair of the College of Social Work (TCSW), the professional body for social work in England, said: 'The findings of Oxfordshire's serious case review are deeply disturbing, and should have far-reaching consequences for the way we deal with child sexual exploitation in this country - from the front line to leadership level.

'That these girls were dismissed, disbelieved and derided by so many and for so long is simply unacceptable.'  

Javed Khan, chief executive of children's charity Barnardo's, said: 'The grim reality of child sexual exploitation is being revealed town by town across the UK.

'In Oxford and elsewhere, vulnerable children are being failed by the systems and people who are supposed to protect them.

'Local agencies must do all they can to free those caught up in sexual exploitation and protect children from being trafficked, abused and raped. No vulnerable child should feel like they have been abandoned and left to fend for themselves.'

Police, council and health bosses admit they are all 'ashamed' that hundreds were abused on their watch

Thames Valley Police force is 'ashamed' of its 'shortcomings' outlined in the report, and others described its findings as 'deeply disturbing'.

Chief Constable Sara Thornton reiterated an apology to victims and their families for not identifying the systematic nature of the abuse sooner.

She acknowledged that the review highlighted that Thames Valley Police was among agencies that could have identified the exploitation between 2004 and 2010 earlier than it did and 'many errors were made'.

She said: 'We are ashamed of the shortcomings identified in this report and we are determined to do all we can to ensure that nothing like this ever happens again.'

Jim Leivers, Oxfordshire County Council's director for children, education and families, said the council 'made many mistakes and missed opportunities to stop the abuse'.

In a statement, Oxford City Council said the report 'shows very clearly that the girls were badly let down by the people and organisations that could - and should - have protected them'.

The statement said: 'The dreadful experiences faced by these young women can never be put right. But the safeguarding board is now in a much better position to prevent, disrupt and detect these crimes.'

It also said evidence shows that child sexual exploitation is 'continuing' in Oxfordshire.

A joint statement from NHS organisations in Oxfordshire expressed 'regret that the abuse was not uncovered and information acted on sooner'.

It said: 'What happened to these children is truly awful. While the review finds no evidence of 'misconduct' by the organisations involved, there are clearly areas for improvement in terms of being able to recognise signs of abuse and sharing information.'

Thames Valley's Police and Crime Commissioner says abuse 'may have been racially motivated hate crime'

Today Thames Valley's Police and Crime Commissioner, Anthony Stansfeld, said the abuse could have been a 'hate crime'.

Mr Stansfeld said that 'from the outside looking in' it appeared the abuse was in some way racially motivated.

Mr Stansfeld backed the review's call to look into why so many Pakistani or Muslim people had been convicted of child sexual exploitation compared with other groups.

He said: 'I think it's in two parts. One is did people ignore it because of the racial issues? There is no evidence for that in Oxfordshire.

'The other is was there a racial element in the perpetrators doing this to another community?

'I'm not an expert, but as an outsider looking at it I think probably there was.

'It needs looking at whether this was hate crime. I think it most certainly could have been and it needs looking at.'

The police involvement in the case is being investigated by the IPCC, but Mr Stansfeld admitted the time between the start of the abuse and the probe made holding people accountable difficult.

'Inevitably people have moved on and left,' he said.

The PCC said the fault lay with various agencies, but the police and social services in particular.

'What I said at the time (of the Old Bailey trial) I would say now: every agency that dealt with this didn't do their jobs properly,' said Mr Stansfeld.

 'The man fault must be with the social services and the police. But what were the schools up to? What were the NHS up to?'

Asian paedophile ring 'who owned Oxford' abused at least 50 girls in eight-year reign of terror

One gang of Asian men was responsible for abusing and enslaving 50 of the girls, mainly from Oxford, but the men were also able to sexually torture girls for eight years after a series of missed opportunities to stop them.

One victim said that they believed they 'owned Oxford' because the authorities failed to act for so many years.

Some were abused for up to eight years despite asking for help from the authorities, who instead refused to believe them or blamed them.
Their abusers fed them drink and drugs before taking them to graveyards, a B&B and flats rented just for the rape and torture of children.

One 12-year-old girl was taken to a Reading house for a backstreet abortion during a six-year period where she was passed between groups of men who raped her in what she called 'torture sex'.

The plight of the victims was laid bare in 2013 when seven members of a sadistic gang were jailed for a total of 95 years for their 'depraved' and 'evil' abuse of vulnerable girls.

Five gang members were given life sentences and two others were jailed for seven years for 'crimes of the utmost gravity'.

The paedophile network groomed more than 50 vulnerable girls in Oxford between 2004 and 2012 with gifts, alcohol and drugs before subjecting them to extreme physical and sexual violence.

They used knives, meat cleavers and baseball bats to inflict severe pain on the girls for their twisted pleasure.

But a catalogue of opportunities to stop the abuse was missed as early as May 2005.

On numerous occasions girls told police officers, social workers and care staff in children's homes how they were raped or seriously sexually abused – but no charges were brought against the gang.

Three of the girls who gave evidence at the trial were reported missing from residential care on 254 occasions.

And the judge in the case, Judge Peter Rook, said 'police and social services missed tell-tale signs' about the abuse that was taking place.

One social worker had earlier told the trial that 'nine out of ten' people who were meant to be caring for the girls 'knew what was going on'.

Life sentences were handed to Akhtar Dogar, 32, and his brother Anjum, 31, who were both jailed for a minimum of 17 years, Mohammed Karrar, 38, who will serve a minimum of 20 years, his brother Bassam, 33, jailed for a minimum of 15 years and Kamar Jamil, 27, jailed for a minimum of 12 years. Assad Hussain, 32, and Zeeshan Ahmed, 27, were jailed for seven years.

How lack of curiosity among professionals meant teenage girls continued to be abused but report does not name individual for misconduct or neglect

The parent of an Oxford abuse victim is furious today after a serious case review concluded that no police, health or council workers was guilty of neglect or misconduct.

Instead the report's author said that officials were guilty of showing 'a worrying lack of curiosity'.

Three senior officers who ran social services at the height of the scandal are no longer working at Oxfordshire County Council, having moved on or retired.

The mother of a victim named only as Girl 3 in today's report said: 'My initial response is that they still haven't got it. In that they haven't grasped how badly the individual victims were treated by social services.

'They did know that there were individual girls who were in great danger. Each girl was extremely vulnerable and was being abused and exploited.

'They failed to respond to the needs of each girl and there was wilful neglect.

'They were told, firstly by me, time and time again, that my daughter was being exploited'.

Thames Valley Police has not disciplined any staff but the Independent Police Complaints Commission will investigate if officers failed to protect scores of youngsters.

Today's report revealed that a police officer asked bosses for help as she feared that one of teh girls may end up dead.

The email, sent in 2006 but contained in today's report said: 'The sad thing is, is that I'm not at all shocked or surprised at this lack of response as both girls appear to be labelled.., streetwise, too much trouble, not worth the effort of finding them as they will run off again.

'The staff at [the children's home] give plenty of information as to the vulnerability of these girls and I don't know what more can be done to ensure that these vulnerable Mispers are treated as a priority enquiry until one of them is found dead

'I know that you share my concern about these girls and I apologise for sounding off but I would like some help in both raising awareness and to try to track the people responsible for abusing these girls'.