Elon Musk, the billionaire tech wealthy person, has flung himself into British politics in fresh weeks, the use of his social media platform X to assault and unfold incorrect information about Top Minister Keir Starmer and different participants of the Labour govt.In a sequence of vitriolic posts to his 211 million fans in fresh days, Mr. Musk has falsely accused Mr. Starmer and different Labour Birthday party lawmakers of enabling Britain’s so-called grooming gangs. The word refers to a decade-old scandal involving a sequence of kid intercourse abuse instances during which women had been assaulted and raped by way of gangs of guys in different cities and towns. Many of the perpetrators had been of British Pakistani heritage.Mr. Musk’s posts integrated more than one inaccuracies and handled a broadly coated factor as though it had by no means been discussed. However the posts however forged the highlight again onto a painful kid sexual exploitation scandal that Britain and has lengthy provoked heated debate on problems with race, immigration and abuse.What used to be the grooming gangs scandal?In 2011, The Occasions of London revealed a sequence of investigative articles at the sexual exploitation of ladies by way of prison gangs in England’s north and Midlands from 1997 onward. One detective on the time, leader inspector Alan Edwards, informed the paper: “Everybody’s been too scared to deal with the ethnicity issue.” The instances got here to be referred to as the “grooming gangs” scandal.In 2014, the findings of a yearslong respectable investigation into such abuse within the northern English the city of Rotherham spark off a countrywide reckoning. A minimum of 1,400 kids, some as younger as 11, had been discovered to had been groomed for sexual exploitation between 1997 and 2013, whilst the native government regarded the wrong way for years. Equivalent gangs had been additionally discovered to be working in different cities and towns in England.Thanks in your endurance whilst we test get right of entry to. If you’re in Reader mode please go out and log into your Occasions account, or subscribe for all of The Occasions.Thanks in your endurance whilst we test get right of entry to.Already a subscriber? Log in.Need all of The Occasions? Subscribe.
