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   HebrideanHecate (hebrideanhecate@spinster.xyz)'s status on Thursday, 23-Oct-2025 07:18:18 JST HebrideanHecate

   https://unherd.com/2025/10/why-is-london-ignoring-its-grooming-gangs/

   Stratford’s shopping centre has been a notorious grooming hotspot for years. It’s easy to be anonymous in the cavernous mall, and security guards have spoken about how hard it is to keep an eye on suspicious individuals as they disappear into the front and out of the back of many of the large department stores. “It’s not illegal for teenagers to have coffee together, or to flirt, go into the cinema, or try on trainers,” one police officer told me. “What are we supposed to do?” By now, everyone is familiar with the grooming gang scandal. But few people realise how serious the problem is in London — and those who do are very reluctant to call it out. As we are only now discovering, the capital’s politicians, police and social workers are just as guilty as those pilloried Up North for conspiring to keep this growing threat out of the public eye. Rather than exposing and stopping the trafficking of girls, they have dodged the issue by saying this isn’t sexual exploitation: instead they say the girls are criminals too. They’re being recruited for “county lines”, to move and supply drugs.

   Khan’s response is scarcely credible on many levels, especially since the grooming of girls in London has been going on for decades and if one whistle-blower is to be believed, it is at “catastrophic” levels. Jon Wedger is a former Metropolitan Police officer with more than 25 years experience investigating child sexual exploitation. Back in 2006, Wedger submitted a list of 50 youngsters who had been groomed and sexually abused in the capital, providing details such as the car-registration numbers of the perpetrators. But he was told to back off by social services, and even a large children’s charity, because he was generating “extra work”.

   As the scandal in London grows, the process for bringing institutions to account is in complete disarray. And last night, a fourth member of the Starmer inquiry resigned: all four women are victims; all four are sick of the continued cover-up. The question for the rest of us is: how can there ever be justice for the abused girls, and retribution for the perpetrators, if public servants such as Khan remain in denial?

   https://archive.ph/SKuwW