On LBC Lefty O'Brian was pointing out that the majority of child abusers in the country were white which is correct.

What he failed to point out was that these were predominately family abusers so he's not comparing like for like. Of course it's no comfort to the victim but there is a big difference between organised abuse by gangs and individual abuse by a family member.

Most of us can see the difference between a person who is stabbed by their partner and a person who is the victim of a gang stabbing.

It is almost impossible for the authorities to identify an individual abuser until they are notified. The point about these gangs is that it wasn't an isolated incident and they knew about it and did nothing.

As fr the charge of racism I remember when PIE was exposed and that was an organised gang of white man well the media went to town on them and quite rightly.

People need to be held accountable for their inactivity and that means criminal prosecutions or dismissal for gross misconduct and take away their gold plated taxpayers pension.

One more point

When a large number of British children of African/Caribbean heritage are killed ('suspicious' fire, knifings on the street) the parents talk about 'our children are being killed'. That's understandable, they're hurting and I don't think that is wrong, they are simply connecting with their ethnic background.

If the white mothers of victims of a grooming gang were to say that 'our girls are being targeted for rape and sexual abuse', that quite possibly would be called racist (by the usual suspects) for identifying a victim as white and perpetrator as a person of colour.

It may be that the majority of victims of grooming gangs outscores the number of victims of lone white paedophiles (outside the family home) who have been arrested.

Another pointless statistic.

I understand why you might read what I wrote and reach that conclusion but I can assure you that this is not how I think.

In terms of the girls, then I only see victims. They were let down by a whole raft of people and on a wider scale, their own communities. Now how you might want to define those communities, I suspect we might perhaps have differing opinions but nothing happens in a vacuum.

In terms of their 'rubbish families', then yes, I do think parents have to be held to account. From my understanding many of these girls were allowed to exist in a world without much parental censure. Even the ones in care would have come from dysfunctional backgrounds although they should really have been the most protected of all children but that is a different argument altogether.

Now, of course, you could argue that societal breakdown leads to much of that, and I suspect we would agree on more than we would disagree with but if you have kids, you have a duty of care towards them. And I don't see too much of that in evidence.

To probably enrage you, I tend to hold a similar position on the case of Shamima Begum, seeing her as a victim based on her age allied with the wider grooming she was subject to with far more harsher judgment reserved for her parents in failing her.

My post was primarily about expounding on my own sense of shame because I can acknowledge that I have been far too judgemental in the past. That I have sort to perhaps screen my own kids from associating with other kids who I deemed to be of lesser social value as them. Hands up on that score, mea cupla. And that this attitude added, even if only in a tiny fraction, to the zeitgeist that allowed this serial abuse to function.

In short, I did not identify with these girls. I still struggle if I am honest.

"The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command." - 1984 - George Orwell.

By the way, I wouldn't trust most statistics related to this, either government sourced or otherwise. e.g. there are simply tricks like conflating a "British" or "European" person with someone of a specific ethnic background that is likely to be reverent without declaring that.

If you look online you will find that the scale of this is a disaster for this country in that there are already known cases in 80+ cities despite a huge and coordinated effort to cover this up. About 19,000 individual cases in the last year alone. This has been known about for many years now and nothing has been done other than demonize anyone raising a concern (and sometimes imprison - like Billy Charlton).

Still no public inquiry although we got these for phone hacking (mainly impacting celebrities), Grenfell (within months of it happening), Iraq, Al-Sweady (disproved allegations that British servicemen abused detainees in Iraq), Bloody Sunday, Steven Lawrence etc.

Wake up people.

I thought it was very accurate based on observation of what is actually happening and has happened historically rather what you would like to happen in your idealistic head.