A VICTIM of the Oxford sex grooming gang that was allowed to operate with virtual impunity for years has told how she begged social services for help after being drugged, threatened and enslaved. The young woman, known in court as 'Girl C', spoke to The Guardian about her experiences on the backstreets of Oxford following the conviction of seven men at the Old Bailey yesterday. Their charges included rape, conspiracy, child prostitution and trafficking.
One girl's story. 'Girl C' said the abuse began when she was 13. When she and her adoptive mother alerted the authorities "they just passed the parcel between them". By the time they acted, it was too late - the grooming process had run its course. Her abusers first treated her like a "princess" before plying her with crack cocaine and heroin and forcing her into prostitution. The gang threatened to kill her and her mother and decapitate the baby she had had with one of the men if she tried to escape. She said she has "no doubt" they would have murdered her "painfully and slowly". Girl C, now 20, finally escaped after fleeing "halfway across the country" with her family.
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What is the local authority's response? Five of the six victims were abused while in the care of Oxfordshire County Council social services. But the council's chief executive Joanna Simons, who has been in her post since 2005, says she will not resign. "There is going to be an independent serious case review which will look at the actions of all the agencies concerned," she said. "These are devious crimes that are very complicated."
Is race an issue? Five of the seven men convicted yesterday (who will be sentenced next month) are British Asians and two are from north Africa. As the Daily Mail notes, members of a sex grooming gang in Rochdale convicted and jailed for "startlingly similar offences" in 2012 were all British Asians. However, The Guardian reports that while "patchy" figures on grooming cases suggest Asian men are "disproportionately involved" compared with their numbers in the national population, many law enforcement experts say ethnicity is not the issue. They believe occupation is key. "Young vulnerable girls migrate to the night-time economy, where they come across taxi drivers and people working in takeaways, who are more likely to be Asian," one source told the paper. "It is better to focus on the professions of offenders, not their race or religion."
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