Child Sex Abuse, Islam, And FACTS

The Unique Selling Point of the crusade against Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE) led by former EDL head man Stephen Yaxley Lennon, who styles himself Tommy Robinson, is that it is, disproportionately, the Scary Muslims™ Wot Done It. “What if it had been your child?” he shouts at those questioning his figures, his methods, and his motivation. Well, his motivation we know - it’s all about himself. And the rest?

His methods are questionable to the extent that he has been on the wrong end of more than one contempt of court accusation. All that is left is his figures, and these have already taken a knock, with his dependence on Quilliam’s “research”, which has been debunked recently. Now, one enterprising Tweeter has put Lennon’s crusade into context, showing just how misguided his claims on Muslims and CSE really are.

Jim Grace has tallied up all the so-called “grooming gang” cases, showing the numbers of convictions, the numbers of suspects - that’s actual suspects, not people under investigation - along with the number of known victims and the estimated total number of victims. From this, he gets the total number of known victims to be 549. As he points out, there are around 2.8 million Muslims living in the UK.

This gives one known sexual abuse victim for every 5,100 Muslims. Then Grace puts this into a little context. He begins with the approximate number of BBC staff (20,000), and known sexual abuse victims (589). This gives one known sexual abuse victim for every 34 BBC staff. Then, it’s on to the Football Association’s total number of football coaches (25,000) and known sexual abuse victims (849). One known victim for every 29 coaches. As for the Catholic church in Australia, the figures are far worse.

There, the total number of priests and lay staff is around 9,000, and the number of known sexual abuse victims is 4,400. One known victim for every two church staff. In reply to Grace, the Tweeter known as Spooky Head pointed out some examples of “Places where the likes of Tommy Robinson, the English Defence League or Britain First never hassle in their tireless pursuit of exposing child sexual abuse and ‘grooming gangs’”.

There was the Catholic church again, plus the Church of England and the FA. Links to organised drug traffickers, and the infamous Potts family, were included. There have also been several cases of sexual abuse by prominent EDL members, which for some reason Lennon always manages to miss, despite his concerns about it.

None of this is to suggest that some CSE and other cases of sexual abuse are less bad than others; all such crimes are abhorrent. What the figures do show, however, is that if the motivation, as Lennon likes to claim, is “What if it had been your child?”, then his decision to ignore rather a lot of CSE does suggest that he is only doing it as part of an attack on the wider Muslim community. Which feeds one growing suspicion.

That suspicion is that Lennon and his followers are trying to provoke a race war, which of course they will deny, cos Islam’s not a race, innit? Then he can stand back and say he warned everyone. While keeping the petrol and matches well out of sight.

And that, folks, is how dishonest and dangerous Lennon’s crusade really is. End of story.

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