Can "political correctness" REALLY lead to a case not being pursued?

Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you:

No adverts like this in the forums anymore.
Times and dates in your local timezone.
Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance.
Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely.
Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net.

If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

**mattyrm**

An interesting read of the much discussed sexual abuse escapades in Rochdale. The part In question is in bold.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/sex-grooming-cases-with-british-pakistani-men-and-white-girls-spark-racial-tensions-in-england/2012/06/27/gJQAkduB7V_story.html

ROCHDALE, England — She was lonely in the way only an adolescent girl can be: No friends, no boyfriend, not much of a relationship with her parents. So she felt special when a man decades older paid attention to her, bought her trinkets, gave her free booze.

Then he took her to a dingy room above a kebab shop and said she had to give something back in return. His demands grew: Not just sex with him, but with his friends. It went on for years, until police charged nine men with running a sex ring with underage girls.

The story of Girl A, as she became known in court, is tragic by any measure, but it has also become explosive. Because there is no getting around it: The girls are white, and the men who used them as sex toys are Asian Muslims, mostly Pakistanis raised in Britain. And it’s not just Rochdale -- roughly a dozen other cases of Asian Muslim men accused of grooming young white girls for sex are slowly moving to trial across northern England, involving up to several hundred girls in all.

In today’s Britain, which prides itself on being a tolerant and integrated society, the case has stripped away the skin to expose the racial sores festering beneath. It is also feeding an already raw anger against the country’s Asian Muslim minority, in a movement led by far right groups at a time when the economy is stalled.

“You can’t get away from the race element,” says prosecutor Nazir Afzal, a British Muslim with family roots in Pakistan who ended several years of official indifference to the girls’ plight and finally brought the perpetrators to trial. “It’s the elephant in the room.”

Nearly 1 million Pakistanis live in England — far more than in any other European country — with about 25,000 settled in the greater Manchester area that includes Rochdale. The government's equality commission reports that more than half of the Pakistanis in Britain live in poverty, far more than the general population, with just under 75 percent having no formal savings.

They face hard times now. The closed shops are signs of a double-dip recession that has hit northern England harder than the more affluent south, which includes London, with its financial district and well-to-do suburbs.

The mills have long since closed; the local newspaper trumpets gloom and doom: A tripling in the number of homeless, a sharp rise in youth unemployment, more people seeking housing benefits. Even the local McDonald's, long a fixture in the town center, has moved out.

It was in this environment that Girl A lost control one summer night in 2008.

After drinking heavily, the 15-year-old went to the kebab shop in nearby Heywood where she had first met her "boyfriend." She started screaming and busting the place up. When police were called, she told them she had been raped -- repeatedly -- and offered up her semen-stained underwear as proof.

Greater Manchester Police detectives concluded the girl, who was below the age of consent, was telling the truth, but Crown Prosecution Service lawyers recommended against pressing criminal charges, reasoning that the jury might not believe a troubled, hard-drinking, sexually active young girl. The case was quietly dropped after an 11-month inquiry.

The abuse intensified. The ring of predators grew; the circle of victims widened. Eventually there would be at least 47 victims or witnesses.

The girl was driven around at night, forced to have sex with more and more men, sometimes up to five a day, in cars or restaurant backrooms or grubby apartments. The men threatened her if she complained. There seemed to be no escape.

She was trapped in a secret world of sex acts that took place late at night when most people in Rochdale were safely tucked away in their homes.

_________

The Rochdale men do not fit the classic profile for sex offenders in Britain -- the majority of pedophilia crimes are committed by white men who target boys and girls via the Internet. However, there is a consensus among prosecutors, police, social workers and leading national politicians that "street grooming," which happened in Rochdale, is largely dominated by Asian men.

Ella Cockbain, a University College of London crime science specialist, says research shows that mostly Asian men make up the big groups of offenders who work together. She chooses her words carefully because the sample size is small and the topic sensitive.

"There are definite patterns emerging that would be foolish to ignore," she says.

Mohammed Shafiq, a British Pakistani who directs the Ramadhan Foundation in Rochdale, has angered some in his own community by suggesting that police at first did not pursue the case aggressively for fear of appearing racist because of an obsession "with the doctrine of political correctness."

Shafiq says that a "tiny minority" of Pakistani men feel white girls are worthless and immoral — and can be abused with impunity.

"They know if they took someone from the Asian community, it pretty quickly is going to be found out," he says. "But those white girls are available, so they think they can get away with it."

The men in the Rochdale sex ring were remarkable only in their ordinariness. They were part of British life, but on the fringes — the sort of people most Britons don't really notice when they pass them on the street.

Many were taxi drivers, accustomed to working all-night shifts with long down time between fares, and they frequented the late-night kebab takeout shops offering familiar lamb, chicken and falafel dishes. Their cab stands and the kebab shops were often the only businesses that remained open after the bars closed.

Most of the men were first or second generation Pakistanis raised mainly in Britain. Only one had faced previous sex charges: Ringleader Shabir Ahmed, at 59 the oldest in the group, who was accused of repeatedly raping a young girl in a separate case. Ahmed, known to the girls as "Daddy," was convicted of 30 counts of rape in that case last week.

Some of the men had families and small businesses. The ring included Abdul Rauf, 43, who would later claim to have experience as a Muslim preacher, which local Islamic leaders dismiss as a total fabrication. A few had ongoing contacts with local politicians.

The men were neither affluent nor dirt poor. They lived outwardly stable lives but had few obvious prospects for advancement.

They were finally brought to justice after health workers reported a large increase in the number of underage girls in the Rochdale area claiming to have suffered sexual abuse. The next year, Afzal, the new regional chief of the Crown Prosecution Service, reversed the earlier decision by prosecutors and decided to press the case in court, with Girl A at its core.

"It was a no-brainer," Afzal told the Associated Press. "She was immensely credible. And the police now had evidence of a wide network."

Eleven men were charged with offenses ranging from rape to conspiracy, and police suspect more were involved. The men had such psychological power over the girls that even during the trial, one girl talked of a defendant as her boyfriend.

Parliament has launched an inquiry based in part on reports that the abuse is far more widespread than originally thought. Afzal said his office is handling roughly a dozen other similar cases, including one that involves 13 men accused of operating a sex ring with 24 girls.

Afzal says that as a Muslim he is sickened by the crimes.

"Rape and alcohol and abuse are not part of Islam," he says. "Just because they have a beard and go to the mosque doesn't make them good Muslims."

As the Rochdale trial reached court, the issue of race and religion burst into the open.

One far-right protester carried a sign making reference to the meat favored by many observant Muslims because it meets strict religious guidelines. "Our girls are not Halal meat," the sign read.

Inside the court, Ahmed, a key defendant, fought back hard. He accused the all-white jury of racism. He accused one girl of thinking whites were superior, and denigrated them all as greedy money seekers. And he accused white society of neglecting its girls and tolerating, even encouraging, bad behavior.

"You white people train them in sex and drinking, so when they come to us they are fully trained," he said.

The jury found nine men guilty and set two free. Judge Gerald Clifton articulated what many felt but were reluctant to say out loud when he accused the men of treating white girls as worthless because "they were not of your community or religion." Then he sentenced them to a total of 77 years in prison.

The May verdict further polarized Rochdale. Pakistanis were horrified at the stigma on their community and enraged that the men claimed to be Muslim.

"They are playing the Muslim card, pretending they are good Muslims, but they are not," says Irfan Chishti, who runs an educational program at one of the town's mosques. "This was a great sin under Islam. If Sharia law was in place, the punishment would be very severe."

Even while he and other leaders of the Rochdale Council of Mosques were discussing the case, about 40 protesters from the far-right British National Party held an unauthorized rally on the nearby Town Hall steps. The far right has seized on the case, claiming that some British Pakistanis follow a code they believe is practiced in parts of the Islamic world that allows men to have sex with girls under 16.

Louis Kushnick, founder of the race relations resource center at the University of Manchester, said it has become convenient for white residents — including those beyond the far-right movement — to blame Muslims for the sex crimes.

"You hear people talking about this, and it becomes tied to Islam," he says. "People say they are Muslim men, they see women as inferior, they have contempt for white women, so it has nothing to do with the rest of us."

That view overlooks all the problems that left the girls vulnerable in the first place, he says, citing a deficient school system and a government-backed child care regime riddled with neglect and abuse. And he says the prolonged economic downturn has intensified resentments, with whites and Asians competing for the same "crap" jobs.

"Blaming the Muslims lets us avoid addressing these questions," he says. "Once we blame 'The Other,' we think we have an explanation that makes sense."

Many in Rochdale are wary about discussing the case. Graduate student Heather Eyre, 25, says the trial has badly divided the city.

"It shouldn't have mattered that they are Pakistani," she says of the abusers. "But it's stirred up hatred. Some say they should be deported, and some parts of the Asian community say the jury was racist. Then the far-right groups came in...this case has been good for the English Defense League."

__________

The girl who first told police about the abuse, now a young woman of 19, has moved out of the area. In a brief pooled interview before she withdrew from the public eye, she refused to call the crimes against her racial in nature, but said she was shocked Muslims would commit such acts.

She said that in 2008, when the grooming began, there was no awareness of this type of crime involving Asian men and white girls.

"Now it's going on everywhere," she said. "You think of Muslim men as religious and family-minded and just nice people. You don't think...I don't know...You just don't think they'd do things like that."

When the abuse started, she said, she felt anger and shame, then became resigned and, finally, numb.

"After a while it had been going for so long and so many different men that it became like I didn't feel anything towards it anymore," she said. "It just weren't me anymore. It just became something I had to do....Once you're in it, you're trapped. I just think what they did to me was evil."

In a nutshell, do you really believe that the case was not followed up simply due to the race of the men in question?

I find that hard to believe, surely if the same thing happened, a drunk, aggressive teenager brandishing a pair of spunky knickers, rocked up at a restaurant owned by a white bloke, the authorities would think "How can you expect a jury to listen to her?!"

The more right wing elements are attempting to claim this as proof that an agenda is being followed by the powers that be to cover up crimes by minority groups, I however tend to think that the lack of a follow up was caused by the victim. Clearly it isn't her fault, but the girl was obviously vulnerable, one of the chavy types that you see hanging around the streets drinking cans and such, possibly living in care. Would this not be the primary reason not only for her being selected as a potential victim for these men, but also for the authorities to not follow the case up?

I just cannot believe that the powers that be would purposely put less effort into chasing a case up just because of some perceived PC dogma?

If she had calmly called the police from home or where-ever it was she lives, and coldly and soberly made a complaint, then surely the case would have reached a conclusion before the Muslims in question went on to abuse legions of other girls?

Am I being optimistic? Do you have a different perspective?

Do you think that the race of the offender can possibly affect the actions of the authorities in modern first world democracies?

And have their been any similar tales in your own respective nations?

**Kilkrazy**

Since the case was followed up and the men were prosecuted I think your question makes no sense.

**Do_I_Not_Like_That**

I think Matty has a point to make. The Lawrence report (which branded the Met police force as 'institutionally racist,') has made the Police more sensitive around this issue. Due to successive government policy, UK law and order has become more politicised than is healthy IMO so this is a factor in dealing with ethnic minorities.

I also agree that the white working class in the UK does get a lot of negative coverage these days when it comes to dangerous dogs, or obesity (Jamie Oliver is always sticking his nose in) or child raising.

And yeah, let's not forget the daily mail agenda!!

**mattyrm**

Kilkrazy wrote:Since the case was followed up and the men were prosecuted I think your question makes no sense.

Then you should read the article more thoroughly.

The case was quietly dropped after an 11-month inquiry.

The abuse intensified. The ring of predators grew; the circle of victims widened. Eventually there would be at least 47 victims or witnesses.

More girls got fethed because the case wasn't followed through following the initial complaint, we could have been dealing with 7 victims instead of 47.

Ergo, my question makes perfect sense.

Your answer?

None at all.

**Palindrome**

but Crown Prosecution Service lawyers recommended against pressing criminal charges, reasoning that the jury might not believe a troubled, hard-drinking, sexually active young girl.

I would assume from this that there was a lack of corroborating evidence and that the case was originally dropped as the chances of a prosectuion were low. There are unanswered questions, such as why nothing was done when the girl was underage and why it was left (apprently) to the NHS to initiate the investiagtion but that doesn't mean that this was politically motivated. This looks to be a failure of the police and possibly the CPS rather than a conspiracy to not prosecute muslims, not least because that is tin foil hat territory.

**mattyrm**

Palindrome wrote:
but Crown Prosecution Service lawyers recommended against pressing criminal charges, reasoning that the jury might not believe a troubled, hard-drinking, sexually active young girl.

I would assume from this that there was a lack of corroborating evidence and that the case was originally dropped as the chances of a prosectuion were low. There are unanswered questions, such as why nothing was done when the girl was underage and why it was left (apprently) to the NHS to initiate the investiagtion but that doesn't mean that this was politically motivated. This looks to be a failure of the police and possibly the CPS rather than a conspiracy to not prosecute muslims, not least because that is tin foil hat territory.

Yeah that's my point, I don't buy that the fact the blokes were Muslims is what stopped the pressing of charges, more that the charges were levied by a teenage piss head who roicked up at the takeaway and started throwing abuse at the staff.

YMMV of course, hence the thread.

**dæl**

I think your first bolded bit is the most telling, rape has a tiny conviction rate and if the CPS said themselves that they thought the chance of a conviction was low because of how the girl would appear to the jury, that is morally wrong, but nothing to do with racism or political correctness. It doesn't matter what other people think was the motivation of the CPS when the CPS have come out and said why they acted in such a manner. It is appalling that the Police and CPS have failed in their duty of care to protect the public, and one of the mos vulnerable groups of the public at that, but this would have happened the same had the accused been of Pakistani, English or Martian descent.

**Joey**

People from certain other cultures bring attitudes with them that we as Englishmen find disgusting.
There's not really much that can be done. Personally there's no way I'd raise a family anywhere near an area with a large Asian population precicely for this reason.
Speak to any young girl around Derby and they'll pretty much all tell you at some point they've been approached by an older Asian man calling them pretty and offering them alcohol. Que sara.

**Kilkrazy**

mattyrm wrote:
Kilkrazy wrote:Since the case was followed up and the men were prosecuted I think your question makes no sense.

Then you should read the article more thoroughly.

The case was quietly dropped after an 11-month inquiry.

...

Your answer?

None at all.

The case was dropped because the victim was seen as an unreliable witness whose testimony would not be convincing in court.

That's completely pragmatic. Nothing to do with PC at all.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

the reprot you quoted wrote:Greater Manchester Police detectives concluded the girl, who was below the age of consent, was telling the truth, but Crown Prosecution Service lawyers recommended against pressing criminal charges, reasoning that the jury might not believe a troubled, hard-drinking, sexually active young girl. The case was quietly dropped after an 11-month inquiry.

**mattyrm**

Kilkrazy wrote:

The case was dropped because the victim was seen as an unreliable witness whose testimony would not be convincing in court.

That's completely pragmatic. Nothing to do with PC at all.

Exactly what I said!

Did you even read the initial post and my reply, or are you just spoiling for a fight when you see that I post something? You usually have excellent reading comprehension.

I said I thought that the fact that the girl was clearly from a bad background was the exact reason she was selected as a potential victim (sexual predators and aren't stupid or else they get caught easily!) and also the reason that the case wasnt followed up. Look, right here...

mattyrm wrote:The more right wing elements are attempting to claim this as proof that an agenda is being followed by the powers that be to cover up crimes by minority groups, I however tend to think that the lack of a follow up was caused by the victim. Clearly it isn't her fault, but the girl was obviously vulnerable, one of the chavy types that you see hanging around the streets drinking cans and such, possibly living in care. Would this not be the primary reason not only for her being selected as a potential victim for these men, but also for the authorities to not follow the case up?

I just cannot believe that the powers that be would purposely put less effort into chasing a case up just because of some perceived PC dogma?

You agree with me entirely, you just don't like reading what I write because you usually don't.

**Squigsquasher**

Joey wrote:People from certain other cultures bring attitudes with them that we as Englishmen find disgusting.
There's not really much that can be done. Personally there's no way I'd raise a family anywhere near an area with a large Asian population precicely for this reason.
Speak to any young girl around Derby and they'll pretty much all tell you at some point they've been approached by an older Asian man calling them pretty and offering them alcohol. Que sara.

That's a broad brush you're painting with, mainly as "Asian" is a very vague term. It could mean Pakistani or Indian or Afghan or Sri Lankan or Lebanese or Syrian or Siberian or Japanese or Korean or Chinese or Filipino or Thai or Vietnamese or Mongolian. It's such a huge area that personally I think the term Asian is a bit useless.

**Kilkrazy**

mattyrm wrote:
Kilkrazy wrote:

The case was dropped because the victim was seen as an unreliable witness whose testimony would not be convincing in court.

That's completely pragmatic. Nothing to do with PC at all.

Exactly what I said!

Did you even read the initial post and my reply, or are you just spoiling for a fight when you see that I post something? You usually have excellent reading comprehension.

I'm afraid you have got rather a reputation as a muslim hater and that probably coloured my interpretation of your thread.

**Joey**

Squigsquasher wrote:
Joey wrote:People from certain other cultures bring attitudes with them that we as Englishmen find disgusting.
There's not really much that can be done. Personally there's no way I'd raise a family anywhere near an area with a large Asian population precicely for this reason.
Speak to any young girl around Derby and they'll pretty much all tell you at some point they've been approached by an older Asian man calling them pretty and offering them alcohol. Que sara.

That's a broad brush you're painting with, mainly as "Asian" is a very vague term. It could mean Pakistani or Indian or Afghan or Sri Lankan or Lebanese or Syrian or Siberian or Japanese or Korean or Chinese or Filipino or Thai or Vietnamese or Mongolian. It's such a huge area that personally I think the term Asian is a bit useless.

It has a defined use in modern England. People of South Asian origin. Mainly India/Pakistan/Bangladesh, also Sri Lanka.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Kilkrazy wrote:
I'm afraid you have got rather a reputation as a muslim hater and that probably coloured my interpretation of your thread.

Hating people who gang rape teenage girls is bad now?
If that's the case, I don't want to be good.

**mattyrm**

I simply despise the idea of doing stupid gak because a religion says so, I am a sceptic and I respect logic and doubt. If that makes me a Muslim hater, then Indeed I am, but you cant say I don't say the exact same about Christianity and Judaism.

Lets be honest here, they are just less problematic. Sure that Religion was responsible for loads of gak years back, and Catholicism is still shocking in modern times with the whole abuse scandal, but I live in the now, and when a Christian cracks something mental like 9/11 or the Beslan school massacre then Ill start taking them as seriously.

But, as I said. Lets be reasonable, clearly the reason this case wasn't pursued was because the girl was stupid about it. If she made a calm sensible complaint, I am certain it would have been followed through. Marching into a kebab shop smashed, assaulting people and waving knickers about isn't going to get you taken seriously.

Clearly that's why they approach those type of girls. Child predators aren't going to try it on with nice school girls at bus stops who will go straight home and tell Dad are they?

**Mannahnin**

Joey wrote:
Squigsquasher wrote:
Joey wrote:People from certain other cultures bring attitudes with them that we as Englishmen find disgusting.
There's not really much that can be done. Personally there's no way I'd raise a family anywhere near an area with a large Asian population precicely for this reason.

Speak to any young girl around Derby and they'll pretty much all tell you at some point they've been approached by an older Asian man calling them pretty and offering them alcohol. Que sara.

That's a broad brush you're painting with, mainly as "Asian" is a very vague term. It could mean Pakistani or Indian or Afghan or Sri Lankan or Lebanese or Syrian or Siberian or Japanese or Korean or Chinese or Filipino or Thai or Vietnamese or Mongolian. It's such a huge area that personally I think the term Asian is a bit useless.

It has a defined use in modern England. People of South Asian origin. Mainly India/Pakistan/Bangladesh, also Sri Lanka.

Whereas in the US the default expectation for "asian" is Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, or Filipino. Since most of the world doesn't have the racist concept of asians you expressed above, most of us aren't too concerned about raising a family in an area with a large asian population.

Joey wrote:
Kilkrazy wrote:I'm afraid you have got rather a reputation as a muslim hater and that probably coloured my interpretation of your thread.

Hating people who gang rape teenage girls is bad now?
If that's the case, I don't want to be good.

Why don't you go back to saying you can take on mountain lions with your bare hands? It'd be an equally dumb thing to post, but not a deliberate and inane misinterpretation of another poster. Matty has made a prominent example of himself as a person who has an irrational prejudice against Muslims in general, in addition to his understandable hatred of the barbaric acts of a small subset of fundamentalist and hypocritical Muslims. He's openly admitted on multiple occasions that he hates the religion, above and beyond his reasonable and rational criticisms of it. In this case his admitted prejudice made it more difficult to judge his meaning in his original post. Even though in this case he is expressing a non-prejudiced view, his previous behavior and reputation made it more difficult to see that.

**Orlanth**

As we were talking about female circumcision on another thread how about this:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/jul/25/female-circumcision-children-british-law

From the Guardian, not the Daily Mail, reporting how an estimated 500-2000 girls from or even in the UK are mutilated each year and yet there are no prosecutions.

**mattyrm**

Orlanth wrote:As we were talking about female circumcision on another thread how about this:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/jul/25/female-circumcision-children-british-law

From the Guardian, not the Daily Mail, reporting how an estimated 500-2000 girls from or even in the UK are mutilated each year and yet there are no prosecutions.

Horrendous.

**Do_I_Not_Like_That**

I made the point earlier that the white working classes in the UK are now seen as problematic. The powers that be are always lecturing them on what to eat, or afraid they're all going to convert to the BNP or they're drinking to much etc etc.
For that reason, the CPS maybe thought that a jury would have these stereotypes in mind at a trial.

It's important to note though that there are always moral panics in the UK that seem to grab headlines, even through the panic never stands up to scrutiny. For example, in the 1980s, it was gangs of black youths terrorising the streets, and the Irish being the enemy within.
In the 1990s it was child abusers lurking in every street.
In the 2000s, every Muslim was a potential terrorist and so it goes on. That's not to say that there are no asian child abusers, or whatever, but it needs to be put into perspective.

**dæl**

Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:I made the point earlier that the white working classes in the UK are now seen as problematic. The powers that be are always lecturing them on what to eat, or afraid they're all going to convert to the BNP or they're drinking to much etc etc.
For that reason, the CPS maybe thought that a jury would have these stereotypes in mind at a trial.

This is very true, we have for the last century had a division between the deserving and the undeserving poor, that no longer seems the case and now if you are poor it is your own fault. If you look at the new seven indicators of a troubled family you see many are not actually the families fault, and most are just a byproduct of being poor.
*no parent in the family was in work;
*living in overcrowded conditions;
*no parent with any qualifications;
*the mother suffering from mental health problems;
*at least one parent with a long-standing illness or disability;
*an income below the poverty line;
*and the family could not afford a number of food and clothing items.

**Do_I_Not_Like_That**

And of course, the traditional champions of the poor - the labour party, have died a slow death. What a shambles.

**Medium of Death**

Greater Manchester Police detectives concluded the girl, who was below the age of consent, was telling the truth, but Crown Prosecution Service lawyers recommended against pressing criminal charges, reasoning that the jury might not believe a troubled, hard-drinking, sexually active young girl. The case was quietly dropped after an 11-month inquiry.

The Police believed her... so did they take her word or was she medically examined? If she was medically examined and it was determined she had indeed been raped then why wasn't it taken further. I'd love to see the findings from this 11 month inquiry...

I don't think it's all PC that led to it not being pursued, but it's at least partly to blame. The force/social work even stated at the time that this all came out that they were afraid of being deemed as racist.

**sebster**

Rape cases are dropped all the time. Very few get to court. It sucks but that's just how it is.

Seeing another instance of rape case being dropped for lack of evidence, and using it to speculate wildly about political correctness seems pretty poor form to me.

**dogma**

Orlanth wrote:
From the Guardian, not the Daily Mail, reporting how an estimated 500-2000 girls from or even in the UK are mutilated each year and yet there are no prosecutions.

Meh, less than 1%.

**dæl**

dogma wrote:
Orlanth wrote:
From the Guardian, not the Daily Mail, reporting how an estimated 500-2000 girls from or even in the UK are mutilated each year and yet there are no prosecutions.

Meh, less than 1%.

2000 is 0.003%, but I can't imagine it's particularly nice for that 0.003%.

**dogma**

Probably not, but it doesn't change the point.

**deathholydeath**

This seems relevant:http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=096_1267472543

I looked into this a while ago. Violent crimes committed by religious or ethnic minorities in Sweden tend to be downplayed by the media and policy because of the risk of being seen as racist.

**PhantomViper**

dogma wrote:Probably not, but it doesn't change the point.

And that point is that only crimes with a high statistical impact should be prosecuted?

**Do_I_Not_Like_That**

No, the point is, terrible as these crimes may be, it's irrational to think that they are sweeping the nation like wildfire. I mentioned this about previous moral panics in an earlier post.

**Testify**

dogma wrote:
Orlanth wrote:
From the Guardian, not the Daily Mail, reporting how an estimated 500-2000 girls from or even in the UK are mutilated each year and yet there are no prosecutions.

Meh, less than 1%.

I'd imagine it's considerbly more than 1% within certain communities.

**PhantomViper**

Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:No, the point is, terrible as these crimes may be, it's irrational to think that they are sweeping the nation like wildfire. I mentioned this about previous moral panics in an earlier post.

Dogma was arguing that the lack of prosecution of female genital mutilation in the UK was irrelevant because it was just 0.003% occurrence, nowhere in any post before or after was it said that there was a wave of criminals chopping of young girls clitorisisis. In this case your point is kind of irrelevant, I'm inclined to think that public outrage should be the same even if it was just 1 case that wasn't prosecuted...

Automatically Appended Next Post:

mattyrm wrote:
And have their been any similar tales in your own respective nations?

Authorities in my country turn a blind eye towards gypsies that are allowed to marry at a very young age, usually 12-14 years old and usually to substantially older males, because it is a part of their "cultural heritage" (despite having been Portuguese citizens for almost 700 years now).

This means, that in my country, if you are a gypsie, then paedophilia is perfectly alright!