What is worse than racism?

[Gob]

child rape?

LONDON: Police and social workers have been accused of failing to investigate an Asian paedophile gang for fear of being perceived as racist, leaving the men free to prey on up to 50 white girls.

Nine men from Rochdale, Greater Manchester were jailed yesterday for abusing five teenagers after plying them with alcohol and small sums of money. The true number of victims was likely to have been closer to 50, police said.



Greater Manchester Police and the Crown Prosecution Service apologised after failing to bring the case of the first victim, known as Girl A, to trial following her initial cry for help in August 2008.


One 13-year-old victim became pregnant and had the child aborted while another was raped by 20 men in one night, Liverpool Crown Court heard. Complaints to social workers and the police were ignored because they were ''petrified of being called racist'', Ann Cryer, the former Labour MP for Keighley, said.

''This is an absolute scandal. They were petrified of being called racist and so reverted to the default of political correctness,'' she said. ''They had a greater fear of being perceived in that light than in dealing with the issues in front of them.''

Mrs Cryer, who has campaigned to bring the issue of Asian sex gangs to light, said the girls had been ''betrayed'' and condemned to ''untold misery''.

Girl A told police that she had been raped and provided DNA evidence from her attacker. The Crown Prosecution Service twice decided not to prosecute him. As a result, the 15-year-old's abuse continued. At its height she was driven to flats and houses to be raped by up to five men a night, four or five days a week. She was singled out because she was white, vulnerable and under-age.

Her ordeal only ended when she became pregnant and her teachers became concerned by the number of Asian men picking her up from school.

Kabeer Hassan, Abdul Aziz, Abdul Rauf, Mohammed Sajid, Adil Khan, Abdul Qayyum, Mohammed Amin, Hamid Safi and a 59-year-old man, known only as Defendant X for legal reasons, were found guilty of running a child exploitation ring by a jury at Liverpool Crown Court. Defendant X, seen as the ringleader, was jailed for 19 years for conspiracy, two counts of rape, aiding and abetting a rape, sexual assault and a count of trafficking within Britain for sexual exploitation. The remaining gang members were handed sentences of between four and 12 years for a string of offences.

Police are being investigated by the Independent Police Complaints Commission over the failings in their 2008 investigation.

Assistant Chief Constable Steve Heywood said officers could have dealt with the case ''better than we did''. But he denied complaints had been ''brushed under the carpet'' due to racism fears. ''At the time we did what we thought was best. We have learnt a lot of lessons.''

Telegraph, London

[Scooter]

The claim that they failed to act for fear of looking like racists is at best a third hand account. It does not look like this was handled well, but the notion that a prosecutor would have DNA evidence that had the perpetrator dead to rights and declined to prosecute for fear of being labelled racist is more than a little hard to believe. How strong was the case, really? An account like this, written to tell the story a certain way, isn't the place to find out.

[BoSoxGal]

I would like to read a more comprehensive detailing of events.

From a source that doesn't refer to aborting a 'child'; this seems to me to indicate a propensity to sensationalize.

However, I will say that at my recent NDAA training, I learned that the rape conviction rate in the UK is 6%.

That is NOT a typo.

There is serious dysfunction in a prosecution system achieving such a low rate of conviction, and I suspect this story has some truths reflecting that dysfunction.

eta: I acknowledge that the conviction rate in the US is not terrifically high, either - but the average does break into double digits.

[Scooter]

6% of cases tried? Or 6% of all rapes? Please tell me the latter.

[BoSoxGal]

Conviction rate on charge of rape still important, says solicitor general
Vera Baird responds to Stern report calling for less emphasis on 6% figure, saying it accurately reflects situation victims face

Rachel Williams
guardian.co.uk, Mon 15 Mar 2010 17.37 GMT
The government should continue highlighting the low proportion of reported rapes that end in a successful prosecution on the full charge of rape, despite a review's claim that focusing on the 6% rate was detrimental to victims, the solicitor general, Vera Baird, said today.
Baroness Stern's independent report into how rape complaints are handled called for politicians and campaigners to stop quoting the 6% figure. Stern said the way it had been used was "extremely unhelpful" and misleading, because it suggested there was little chance of attackers being found guilty in court. It was more relevant, Stern said, that of the cases reaching court, 58% resulted in a successful prosecution. (The 58% is for cases reaching court on a range of charges, from rape to lesser sexual assault charges.)
Campaigners accused her of missing the point that many rape complaints never get to court, often because of problems with the police and prosecution system. Baird said she too thought the reports-to-convictions rate remained important.
"I do have reservations about ceasing to refer to the widely used 6% figure, which reflects the percentage of reports that produce a conviction [on a full charge of rape]," she said. "Although we don't count any other offence in this way, it is particularly meaningful as it reflects the high number of rape victims who drop out before they get to court. We really need to focus on that group, as Baroness Stern herself says."
Baird said more needed to be made of the 58% figure, which had increased by more than half since 1997. The government's interim response said it agreed with Stern that the way statistics were reported too often did not reflect the reality of what happened in the courtroom.
The Stern review was commissioned by the government last year in response to concerns over the conviction rate. Baird said at the time that the report should offer answers on how to drive the rate up.
The crossbench peer instead came back with a report that called for a broader measure of success to be adopted, with support to victims to be given equal priority. She criticised the focus on the 6% figure, saying it remained important but was "not the be all and end all".
She said the 14% estimated proportion of reported rapes that end in a conviction for the crime of rape or another related offence, such as sexual assault, was "not dramatically low" compared to other crimes.
"The 58% figure was never going to be considerably higher under the current legal system," she said. "We have probably put so much emphasis on the criminal justice process ... that the needs of the human being who's suffered this appalling violation come second."
Some campaigners said the recommendation let the criminal justice system off the hook, when women were still receiving "shocking" treatment. "What she's proposing is to cover up what's happening in the criminal justice system, just at the time when women are finally getting the truth out," said Ruth Hall, of Women Against Rape.
The 6% figure most accurately represented the situation women faced when reporting rape, she said. "To move away from that is to hide what women are really up against."
Rape Crisis said it still considered the conviction rate, when taken as a proportion of rapes reported to the police, to be "extremely low". Ceri Goddard, the chief executive of the Fawcett Society, which campaigns for an increase in conviction rates, said: "While we welcome Stern's call for greater focus on supporting victims of rape, we would caution that this should be alongside more, not less, efforts on increasing conviction rates."
In future, Stern proposed, police and prosecutors should be rated on how well victims are treated, as well as clear-up rates. Independent sexual violence advisors (ISVAs), who support victims throughout the process, should be an intrinsic part of the system and available to every complainant. There are currently only 43 ISVAs in England and Wales, with 13,000 rapes reported last year. Stern believes that sufficient ISVAs could be provided at a cost of £1m a year.
The report found problems persisted in the criminal justice system, and that implementation of policies for improvement were "patchy". But Stern said she believed that most people were treated well by the police.
The government said it would consider the findings carefully. Yesterday it said it would be announcing this week grants for ISVAs and rape crisis centres worth more than £3m, but it was swiftly forced to admit that this money had been announced previously.
• This article was amended on 14 March 2012 because the original did not make clear enough that "the 6% conviction rate" for reported rapes pertains to conviction on a full charge of rape.

Bear in mind that it is generally accepted by law enforcement professionals that only 25% (at best) of rapes are ever even reported.