Academia should operate on two levels, the first is research for the sheer sake of research even if what is being studied does not have any immediate impact on society. The second level is research that has a clear, present and immediate impact on the way we manage our societies, in other words stuff that does have a clear practical benefit. However both these levels need to operate in a culture of truth seeking, whether it be truth seeking as an end in itself or truth seeking in order to solve a practical problem. Unfortunately, both in the USA and in the United Kingdom, in part due to a surfeit of doctrinaire Leftism in academia, the seeking of truth has become a casualty of the leftist domination of our academic institutions.

A good example of how truth telling in academia has taken second place to pushing a particular narrative has been uncovered by the writer of today’s Guest Post a correspondent named Robert. Robert has examined an academic paper on the subject of Islamic Rape Gangs that appears to have all the hallmarks of biased academic denialism. These academics rather than openly study or debate a particular problem, have merely screamed the phrase ‘far right’ at those who have spoken publicly about this problem and accused them and others of pushing a ‘harmful narrative’.

Robert’s excellent article delves down into the work of the academics behind this paper on the Islamic Rape Gang problem and shows them to be so intimately linked to left or Islamic extremist causes and currents, that their academic paper should be seen as little more than propaganda.

The Devil’s in the Detail – By Robert

Now that the Petition to Release the Home Office’s Grooming Gang Review in full has collected sufficient signatures for it to be considered for Parliamentary debate it’s pertinent to look at the position of the Grooming Gang Denial faction, as expressed at length in Dr Ella Cockbain and Waqas Tufail’s:

“Failing victims, fuelling hate: challenging the harms of the ‘Muslim grooming gangs’ narrative” January 2020

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0306396819895727

This can only be described as a piece of heavy duty leftist political polemic often couched in less than academic language, some predictable targets are enaged – the Times which did much to expose the grooming gang scandal to the light of day is ” a rightwing broadsheet owned by Murdoch’s News International”; their award winning journalist Andrew Norfolk ” personally crafted (a) crime model of white victims and Pakistani perpetrators”. They are pleased to continue in the same vein – the Quilliam organisation’s report which found that 84% of those convicted of grooming gang offences were Asian is simply “drivel”, Quilliam itself is captive of a “transatlantic web of dark money and influence”. Sarah Champion’s robust views have been ” likened to those of the far Right, the former Home Secretary Sajid Javid who suggested that there may be “cultural reasons” underlying grooming gang atrocities is accused of “dog whistle” tweeting.

And so on and so forth in similarly “academic” vein – but Cockbain and Tufail are not exactly agenda free actors themselves; Dr Cockbain chose Socialist Worker as as her medium of choice and Waqas Tufail has “close links with far left and Islamic extremists”(Harry’s Place)

http://hurryupharry.org/2017/08/29/just-yorkshire-on-prevent-%e2%80%93-just-rubbish/

Now to the nub of the matter

Cockbain and Tufail deny the “central argument of the ‘grooming gangs’ narrative …..that a ‘disproportionate’ number of Asian/Muslim/Pakistani-heritage men are involved in grooming (mostly) white British girls for organised sexual abuse.”. They say that the numbers convicted(currently running at 343 Muslims – Peter Mcloughlin Easy Meat author) cannot be said to amount to an epidemic. All we now know about the decades long cover ups by reason of political correctness, fear of upsetting the “community cohesion” applecart and sordid Labour bloc vote politics; they elide.

But consider this, the one and only town where the evidence has been really drilled down is benighted Rotherham, Professor Jay found that there had been 1400 victims over a 16 year period. Rotherham does not host a large relevant demographic as far as these offences are concened(3% as per 2011 census). If child sexual exploitation is on this scale in Rotherham(population approximately 250,000) what must the story be across the country and in the major population centres with much higher relevant demographic proportions? It must be a total nightmare which the trial records and reports coming out of Telford for instance indicate is indeed the case.

One might suppose this would be a problem for Cockbain and Tufail, not so for they craftily and disingenuously elide it by claimg that another report found Jay’s figure to be “methodologically dubious”

“The Jay (2014) report received intense publicity for its (methodologically dubious137) estimate that 1,400 children were abused in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013, mostly by groups of Pakistani-heritage offenders.” – Cockbain/Tufail

But the report they cite does not say this at all(Kelly, Karsna: Measuring the Scale” )

“The other widely cited statistic comes from Alexis Jay’s (2014) Inquiry into CSE in Rotherham. Whilst an appendix lists a large amount of documentation which was consulted, quite how the estimate of 14,000 girls over a 16-year period was reached is not transparent”

https://cwasu.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/18871_CSA_Scoping_paper_web_FA.pdf

Methodologically dubious can in no way be legitimately assumed on the basis of “not transparent”. And awkwardly for the Cockbain/Tufail duo Professor Jay’s 1400 victim count was thoroughly vindicated by the National Crime Agency Operation Stovewood update of October 2018 which reported 1523 victims, 90% White British(Andrew Norfolk – Times). This apparenly passed them by and their dishonestly is plain to see from the “methodologically dubious” devil in the detail.

Building on this falsehood Cockbain and Tufail are pleased to comment on Operation Stovewood as follows

“Differential investment could also exacerbate the perceived threat of ‘grooming gangs’. An obvious example is Operation Stovewood: the UK’s largest CSE investigation, led by the NCA with a projected total cost of around £90 million by 2024.168 Initiated in response to the Jay Report, it focuses on abuse in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013 and has resulted in twenty convictions, many conforming to racial stereotypes. Although too limited in number to affect national statistics greatly, these high-profile prosecutions may disproportionately influence public perceptions.”

Well the “methodologically dubious” Jay Report “describes the abuse as “appalling” and says it included the rape of girls as young as 11 by “large numbers of male perpetrators”.

Children were raped by multiple attackers, trafficked to other towns and cities in the north of England, abducted, beaten and intimidated, the report revealed.

Some were doused in petrol and threatened with being set alight, while others were threatened with guns, made to watch “brutally violent rapes” and warned they would be next if they told anyone.”

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-28942986

The honest part of the pubic would in no way regard the investment in Stovewood as being a “disproportionate” response to the “perceived threat of “grooming gangs”, as fostering false perceptions or indeed to the sheer horror of these atrocities.

But then again we are not “acadamics” with far left sympathies and agendas or “close links to far left and Islamic extremists”.