Dan Hodges Grooming Gang Guff BUSTED

As Zelo Street noted last weekend, the Home Office report Group-Based Child Sexual Exploitation concluded that “Based on the literature it is not possible to draw any conclusions as to whether some ethnicities have a greater involvement in group-based offending compared with others … it is likely that no one community or culture is uniquely predisposed to offending”. Most offenders were white.

He's desperate, Dan

This has clearly displeased those out there on the right, and in and around our free and fearless press, some of whose attempts at pushback I included in Saturday’s post. But then came an intervention from the Mail on Sunday’s not even slightly celebrated blues artiste Whinging Dan Hodges, a worthy successor to Peter McKay as The World’s Worst Columnist. Desperate Dan says the Scary Muslims™ are the ones wot done it.

Hodges’ screed is a masterpiece in circular logic: the Home Office report, readers are told, “was supposed to put the official spotlight on to one of the greatest scandals in British history - the systemic abuse of white working-class girls by Asian men”. They Done It, so the evidence was going to be produced to show that, er, They Done It.

Here’s a little sleight of hand: “The sole definitive conclusion … was that 'research has found that group-based CSE [child sexual exploitation] offenders are most commonly white’ … The study had actually found no such thing. As Priti Patel pointedly acknowledged in her foreword: 'Some studies have indicated an over-representation of Asian and black offenders’”. Some studies that did not include that by the Home Office.

So Hodges is flat-out lying there. And the circular logic continues: “another appalling abdication of responsibility by officials and a system that has again failed the countless victims of Britain's Asian grooming gangs”. The Scary Muslims™ done it. Again. There is more.

“An official” told Hodges “They were right, there wasn't any hard data. But that was because people didn't want to record it or look for it because they knew exactly what they would find”. Nudge nudge, wink wink, know what I mean Squire? And, don’t forget, “there has still not been any official national recognition of the horrors inflicted by Asian grooming gangs”. Remember, the Scary Muslims™ done it. It gets worse.

A cover-up is alleged. Civil servants are blamed. There is talk of betrayal. But this is woefully thin gruel, even for Hodges. And he was duly called out for it. His flailing and sneering response was telling. “Home Office officials aren't ‘experts’. Ministers aren't ‘experts’. The people who represent those who were abused aren't ‘experts’. Those who were actually abused aren't ‘experts’. Just you and your mates. You are the only ‘experts’ that matter” was one snipe at Jonathan Portes from Kings College London (thread HERE).

Later came “Never bought the ‘sick of experts’ narrative. But when you spend half an hour being told by academics you should speak to ‘experts’ on child-grooming - themselves and their friends - rather than the actual victims and their representatives it's quite hard not to give it credence”. Except he wasn’t told that. Deflection and dishonesty.

And after one Tweeter tried to point him in the right direction came this sneering dismissal: “Here we go. From a ‘Senior Lecturer in Art History & Director of US Studies’. Literally ignore the victims of child-grooming, and instead listen to the ‘experts’. What is wrong with these people”. As so often with Desperate Dan, the question marks ain’t making it. And if we’re talking qualifications … Hodges is standing in a very draughty glasshouse.

Also, that is not what he has been told. Moreover, apart from his Government source, he appears to have talked to one representative (singular) of victims - what status that person holds is not told - and one (singular) actual victim, the latter giving a quote which does not say that the Scary Muslims™ done it. His defence is as woeful as his article.

The impression is given that Dan Hodges took dictation from someone within Government who wanted the Scary Muslims™ to be blamed, as well as dumping on the Civil Service. The use of circular logic, the assumption of guilt at the outset, is all too predictable for papers like the MoS, but does the actual victims of abuse no favours at all.

And that’s the truly unforgivable part. Not that Dan Hodges will care. He’s done his bosses’ bidding, secured his six-figure wedge, and, well, he should care.

Thus the reality of a shameless floor-crosser. I’ll just leave that one there.

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