Elon Musk has reopened the national scandal surrounding gangs of men who train, beat and rape girls across England.
In several messages posted on his X platform over the past week he has gone from including excerpts from court documents to calling Sir Keir Starmer “guilty of raping Britain”.
They represent recent intervention is a tech billionaire, who will serve in the incoming administration of Donald Trump, for UK affairs.
What was the scandal?
Mask claimed in X that “hundreds of thousands” of “little British girls” were targeted for gang rape and murder.
It's unclear if Musk backs up his claim. It's 2014 Jay reported in the South Yorkshire town of Rotherham, led by Professor Alexis Jay, estimated that around 1,400 children were targeted between 1997 and 2013. Some of them were 11 years old. country.
While the first prosecution of street grooming began in 2010, the number of known victims has reached thousands.
Was there a legal secret?
Evidence of gangs operating in different towns and cities has slowly emerged – often from court cases and inquiries – and the pattern is always the same.
Local police forces and social services have been repeatedly criticized by victims who failed, for not prioritizing such crimes, perhaps for not wanting to believe the children, or to blame.
Vulnerable children were considered to have brought their grief, after being given gifts and attention by the perpetrators.
As a result, many cases are not investigated or referred to the Crown Prosecution Service.
In a Rochdaletwo passengers – ex-detective Maggie Oliver and ex-social worker Sara Rowbotham – repeatedly warned that the agents turned a blind eye to what was happening despite raising the alarm.
In cases involving gangs of British-Pakistani men, agencies have also been criticized for failing to act because of concerns over racism, including in Rotherham.
Independent research into exercise in the Manchester suburb of Oldham, published in 2022, focused specifically on allegations of a “cover-up” process.
While it found the claim unsubstantiated, it found several security lapses by local agencies.
What was Starmer's role?
Starmer ran the Crown Prosecution Service between 2008 and 2013, when the scandal broke.
Musk wrote in X this week that “Starmer must go and must face the allegations of his involvement in the worst crime in British history”.
Allegations that Starmer is responsible for the failure to bring gangs to justice, in particular, in the case of 2009 when the decision was made not to prosecute the perpetrators in Rochdale. The lawyers believed that the victim would not be seen as trustworthy or reliable.
Starmer had been director of public prosecutions for nine months when the decision was made. There is no evidence to show that he was informed of the details of the case at that time.
In 2011, Nazir Afzal, the new chief prosecutor for the north west of England at the time, overturned the 2009 decision and nine men were convicted.
Afzal then said: “The only way we could bring this case was to admit that we failed the victims when they first filed a complaint in 2008.”
He added: “Keir was 100 per cent behind the decision to admit publicly that we did something wrong in the past.”
He later added: “With Keir gone in 2013, the CPS has gone from being worst at handling sexual assault cases to having the highest number of convictions in our history. This would not have been possible without the support, resources and security Keir gave me, at which point it would have been easy to give up.”
Starmer in 2013 revised CPS procedures and guidelines on how prosecutors should approach correctional cases in an effort to ensure that young victims are not dismissed in the future because of preconceived notions that are believed to undermine their credibility.
Should there be a government-led national investigation?
Since the first cases of street fixing gangs were tried 15 years ago, several local independent inquiries have been carried out into how they were able to operate under the nose of the authorities, including in Rochdale, Manchester, Rotherham and Telford.
It emerged last week that Jess Phillips, the UK minister for safety and violence against women and girls, rejected a request made by Oldham council to carry out a national inquiry into gangs in the town. He said the council should commission local investigations instead, as has happened in Rotherham and Telford.
Nationally, i Independent Research on Child Sexual Abuselaunched in 2015, it includes an in-depth examination of how local agencies have responded to such criminal networks.
Currently, none of the proposals have been implemented.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting said on Sunday the government was not going ahead with the national inquiry “because there is already a national inquiry”, adding that “the victims today, tomorrow, next week deserve a full implementation.” . . recommendations”.
The reports of police inspectors are also very important in relation to how each force handled the issue.
“The idea that national inquiries are always better is being challenged,” said Ella Cockbain, a professor of criminology at University College London, pointing to the fact that a national inquiry commissioned by the government costing more than £180mn has already taken place.
Why is Tommy Robinson in prison?
Alongside the posts about the grooming scandal, Musk has raised the case of Tommy Robinson, an activist whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon.
Why is Tommy Robinson in solitary confinement for telling the truth?” Musk wrote on X on Thursday, adding that he “must be released and those who cover this atrocity must take his place in that cell”.
The comment suggested he thought Robinson was incarcerated because of his public outings about grooming gangs.
Robinson, who has other criminal convictions, was jailed late last year after pleading guilty to contempt of court by repeating false and false allegations about a Syrian refugee in a document.
In an interview over the weekend, UK reform leader Nigel Farage said he would explain to Musk that Robinson was in prison for lying in court rather than exposing criminal gangs.
In response, Musk wrote on X on Sunday morning: “I know he's in jail for contempt of court . . . but there is NO reason for such long prison terms or solitary confinement!”