This evening's news are dominated by the conviction of nine men for horrendous offences relating to child sex exploitation. The news makes ones hair stand on end. Details of the news are easily available online.
One particular issue that interests me is whether race is related to the issue of grooming, and in particular whether it is an issue for Pakistani men. The BBC and ITV gave a slightly different flavour to this issue: The BBC One news at 6pm said that Asian men were involved in only around 25% of such offences, and that the majority of offences were committed by lone white men. On the other hand the ITV news at 6:30pm emphasised that Pakistani men were invovled in over 80% of group offences of this nature; i.e. where the grooming and exploitation is done by groups of men.
Either way, the news is not good for Pakistani men and some very serious individual and community level introspection is warranted. There should be no buryinig of the head in the sand. The issue of the attitude of Pakistani men to white women, and to sexuality in general, must be addressed.
