Government figures have shown that in the last year alone, 19,000 children and young people have been sexually groomed and exploited. This is in spite of extra resources being put into tackling this issue and promises by police and social services that they will deal with this appalling exploitation and promises by then Home Secretary Sajid Javid to publicly examine this problem.

Some of the highest numbers of sexual exploitation cases have been found in areas such as Leeds, Bradford and Lancashire, areas heavily dominated politically and socially by Islam. In the combined Leeds and Bradford area for example, the number of cases of Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE) was 649. Lancashire was the single local authority that had the most cases of CSE at 624. Compare these figures to Gloucestershire, which only has a 3.2% Muslim population level which has had 409 cases.

We’ve had the usual guff from the authorities such as ‘lessons have been learned’ from the Rochdale and Rotherham cases but still the problem exists. Government, both local and national, is still failing to acknowledge that in some areas of the country there is a pronounced Islamic aspect to CSE with Islamic culture and theology contributing to the sort of out group victim targeting that we’ve seen across many British towns and cities. This cowardly and dishonest attitude to Islamic sex crime needs to stop. We deserve to have our government be honest about the Islamic component to these crimes, not to have this aspect of these offences pushed under the carpet as has happened under previous administrations.

We can see from the released figures that the highest numbers of CSE cases come from areas that have a significant Islamic population and where, in the past, the Labour Party has dominated the area politically. This discrepancy in numbers between areas like Gloucestershire with relatively few Muslims and areas with more Muslims is quite stark. This discrepancy does suggest that the sort of CSE that is occurring in Gloucestershire is different from that which is happening in the North of England. It may well be that outside of Islam / Labour dominated areas, such as in Gloucestershire for instance, abuse and exploitation may be more of a peer to peer issue whereas in other areas with more Musilms, Islam related sexual abuse is more common.

These initial numbers of cases that the government has released details of are considerably higher than I would have expected them to be. They are nearly double what I, someone who has observed this problem for some time, would have guessed the total to be. Whilst I admit that some of the high numbers of CSE reports may be down to better reporting and recording practises by police and social services, the number of cases is still very worrying and far too high.

Previous governments, for ideological reasons or because they had small, shaky majorities, have been far too wary about opening the can of worms which is CSE in Britain. They’ve shied away from identifying the problems that exist in some areas or stating publicly that which many Britons already know, which is that the Islamic community is producing a disproportionate number of rapists and child sexual exploiters. Hopefully, and with a more muscular Home Secretary in the form of Pritti Patel, this will change and the government will finally tell the Islamic community in the United Kingdom to stop raping our children, something that in my view should have been said long ago.