Julia Hartley Brewer: grooming victims sacrificed for political correctness

Victims of grooming gangs in Oldham have received official apologies after a major report said police and the local council failed to protect some youngsters from sexual exploitation but concluded there was no official cover-up. The report looked into the alleged grooming of children in council homes, shisha bars and by taxi drivers in the town and concluded there was no evidence of a cover-up or “widespread” child sex abuse in those settings. Despite “legitimate concerns” from police and the council in Oldham of the far right capitalising on the issue of grooming by predominantly Pakistani men, the authorities in the town, which suffered race riots in 2001, did not shy away from tackling the issue, the report said.