The grooming gang thing has really blown up in the past couple of weeks. I’m not sure wholly why myself but a couple of guesses.
One is that the media really couldn’t report all that much - and for the same reason that Tommy Robinson got jailed one time around. Because there have been multiple ongoing cases and full reporting of one could - and probably would too - prejudice a jury in subsequent cases. So, those ongoing cases mean that the subject is more or less sub judice and can’t, in volume or detail, be talked about.
Thus things like Guardian reporting. Where you get the news that a gang has been tried, found guilty, sent off to jail. And no comment on who they were. Well, except for a list of names all of which are, shall we say, less than Anglo Saxon or even Viking in origin. We all draw our own conclusions at that point.
I also have more than just a sneaky feeling that the cases have been drawn out over what is it now, a decade? So that the inability to report in a full and rounded manner stretches over that decade. Perhaps that’s somewhere between unkind and conspirazoid of me but there we are, that’s where I am.
However, what I’m really interested in here is numbers. I’ve long known that it’s been going on. But the size of the problem, well, I’ve not known. Oh, sure, more than just a handful of gangs. What is it, 15 or 20 prosecuted now? Or is that just what is being bandied about now and the number is higher?
But that’s not quite the number that interests.
Demanding accurate numbers is ghoulish, obviously. One teen raped is one too many, a handful is beyond vile and so on. But I’m trying to think ahead a bit here. Really, trying to find out how hard the powers that be are going to work - or have to work - to keep the lid on.
To illustrate. Say that 20, 50, girls had been subjected to these continued rapes etc. That is many handfuls beyond vile of course. And yet we all know that evil happens and the trick of civilization is to punish it when it happens and thereby keep a lid upon it.
It’s even true that we know that politicians will lie to keep their seats, bureaucrats will lie that it’s nowt to do with them, Guv, and even that corrupt policemen exist. And handfuls of victims then that’s about believable. Even if we do get all Viking on the arses of those who did this it’s some few hundreds at most. A small enough number that it was all a pollution of this sceptered isle and something that has been purged.
Note, again, that this is not about what happened. It’s about what will.
But what if those victim numbers keep climbing? A couple of hundred poor girls, possibly already in care? A couple of thousand?
I’m seeing numbers bandied about of 250,000 (from a certain Musk, E, proprietor of another place) which I do not believe for a moment. After all, the talk - the cases - are of many men abusing one of several children. The accusations we’re seeing are not of more victims than abusers - at least, not that I’ve so far seen.
But maybe that’s wrong. It’s not unknown for my gut feels - even considered analyses if you can imagine that - to be wrong after all.
The number of abused - which means children raped, recall, arses blown up with pumps so that adult dicks can multiply penetrate to be detailed - starts to be counted up into the thousands. The tens of thousands perhaps.
There’s a point there at which I don’t think that normal societal agreement to allow the authorities to handle things works any more. At some point along that spectrum then significant civil violence breaks out.
Which brings me to the two questions. What is that number which, when known, leads to actual riots? And no, I don’t mean 15 meatheads lobbing half bricks at the police. Actual real and sustained loss of civilian authority control. The second, obviously, is are we going to reach that number?
In short, what is the level of betrayal of these girls that leaves the mob triumphant over law and order?
What really worries me is that I have a horrible - even if still slight at this point - suspicion that there was enough vileness done to enough young girls that we’re going to find out.
The Jay Report got detailed, high quality data about 115,489 cases of child sexual abuse in England and Wales, of which 4,228 were “group-based”, (but I can't find what period that was over) so that's an upper limit.
Subjudice law hasn't exited for many decades and prosecution hurdles for contempt were raised high expressly to allow public discussion and reporting of live trials.
You may be thinking of a specific occasion when there were 2 symultanious trials covering the same subject becayse there were too many defendants to make it one trial.
To prevent cross contamination making any convictions unsafe the judges ordered reporting restrictions but they were only for a very limited time and once the verdicts were in anything and everything about the trials could immediately be reported.