It was hailed as the pinnacle of investigative journalism, worthy of any and every prize: the story from Andrew Norfolk, that a “grooming gang” operating in the South Yorkshire town of Rotherham had been allowed to carry on its abuse of young girls as the Police were supposedly afraid of being called out as racist. It was the spark that lit the “Muslim grooming gang” bonfire, a dream come true for the far right.
Andrew Norfolk
From that beginning came the received narrative, which held, more or less, that “grooming gangs” were a predominantly Muslim failing, a weakness attributable to men of Pakistani heritage. This legitimised the attack line claiming criticism of Muslims could not be racist, as Islam was not a race. It also legitimised the decades-old far-right characterisation of all Asian men and women as Pakistanis, or even simply “Pakis”. It made bigotry respectable.
But then Norfolk overreached himself, most notably with the “
Muslim Fostering” story, which was initially single-sourced,
the claims made, despite the
Times being backed up by equally hostile coverage in the
Sun and
Daily Mail,
falling apart under the least scrutiny.
Still, there was a Government investigation going on, courtesy of the Home Office. This, surely, would provide the “
overwhelming evidence” of what the Murdoch press called “
a deeply rooted pattern of criminal behaviour with a clear ethnic component”. It appears that investigators went looking for evidence to back up this claim. But they did not find it.
The report, “
Group-Based Child Sexual Exploitation”,
released this week, has concluded simply “
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”. That comes after two years poring over available data. And there is more.
“
Research on offender ethnicity is limited, and tends to rely on poor quality data … It is therefore difficult to draw conclusions about differences in ethnicity of offenders, but it is likely that no one community or culture is uniquely predisposed to offending”. Just like the so-called Trojan Horse “
plot” to take over schools in Birmingham (that last being the invention of Andrew “
transcription error” Gilligan), Norfolk was ultimately bust.
The problem was that, in the period after Norfolk’s first revelations, a narrative has been allowed to take hold, aided and abetted by bad faith actors like Quilliam, which made a series of claims that, ultimately, even they
could not sustain, and from which they
unsuccessfully attempted to climb down. So where is our free and fearless press today?
As if you need to ask: they mostly aren’t. The
Mail has tried to suggest it was still the Scary Muslims™ wot done it. At the increasingly alt-right
Spectator, Patrick “
lunchtime” O’Flynn
says it’s all about a struggle between Priti Patel and her civil servants, and the latter are at fault for not coming up with the evidence to prove the pre-ordained conclusion. The
Guardian and
Independent have a straight
news take; other outlets haven’t bothered.
Brian Cathcart and Paddy French, whose investigation into Andrew Norfolk’s work caused the Murdoch press such discomfort,
have covered the release of the Home Office report, and have asked The Great Man to respond. The result sums up the whole sorry saga.
“
Andrew Norfolk was approached for comment but did not respond”. No surprise there.
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