Race and religion came up again when members of a child abuse network were convicted last week,but all factors in this crime are importantI’ve cried again this past week, reading approximately the Newcastle trial at which 17 men and one woman were found guilty of involvement in a sex grooming network that plied vulnerable women and girls with drink and drugs before assaulting them.
The case revealed the worst type of sexual and emotional abuse perpetrated against girls as young as 13 who were cruelly manipulated. It took me back to conversations I had with journalists at the time of the Oxford trial in 2013, or where seven men were convicted for sexual offences including rape and organising child prostitution. They told me they had been in tears in the courtroom and could only print a fraction of what had happened because it was so horrific. And again we hear that some of these girls,even in court, call the evil men who abused them their “boyfriends”. It is heartbreaking.
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Source: theguardian.com