A total of 373 girls suffered sexual abuse in Oxfordshire, Britain, a report into ‘indescribably awful’ child sexual exploitation has found – and now fears have been raised that the abuse may have been racially motivated.
Over 15 years hundreds of victims as young as 11 were groomed, raped and forced into prostitution by gangs of men ‘predominantly of Pakistani heritage’, a serious case review has found.
The damning 114-page report said victims were in a ‘living hell from which they couldn’t extricate themselves’ after ‘hostile’ officials wrote some off as ‘difficult girls making bad choices’ when they begged for help.
The vulnerable girls were initially showered with gifts before being plied with alcohol and drugs including crack cocaine and heroin, making them dependent on the men who sexually abused them.
Today Thames Valley’s Police and Crime Commissioner, Anthony Stansfeld, said the abuse may have been a ‘hate crime’.
Mr Stansfeld said that ‘from the outside looking in’ it appeared the abuse was in some way racially motivated.
He said: ‘It needs looking at whether this was hate crime. I think it most certainly could have been and it needs looking at.’
Prime Minister David Cameron said this afternoon that the children in Oxford were abused on an ‘industrial scale’ and vowed laws would be changed in the light of revelations and similar scandals in Rotherham and Rochdale.
Source: Daily Mail
