Seven men who raped two vulnerable girls in Rochdale, northern England, were jailed on Wednesday for a total of 174 years, in the latest case of the decades-old “grooming gangs” scandal that has rocked the United Kingdom.
They were sentenced to individual jail terms of between 12 and 35 years, totalling 174 years.
Prosecutor Rossano Scamardella told the court, in Manchester, England, at the start of the trial that the two victims were “passed around for sex, abused, degraded and then discarded.”
Scamardella also said the two girls were known to social services and that it was “no secret” they were having sex with older South Asian men, with the abuse beginning when they were both just 13.
The scandal centered on the issue that children, specifically poor white girls in various towns in northern England, were targeted and groomed by Pakistani-heritage men, while—as later investigations, court cases, and reporters revealed—local officials turned a blind eye to the abuse due to fears of being labeled racist or of destabilizing community relations.
This resulted in it taking decades to come to light, not becoming a noted national issue in Britain until 2011, following an investigation by The Times of London.
Musk accused Starmer of failing to tackle the scandal when he was Britain’s director of public prosecutions, something the prime minister strongly refuted.
Baroness Louise Casey, a member of the House of Lords with a background in social care, was tasked with conducting the first national audit of ethnicity in grooming cases.
Her review said many institutions avoided confronting this reality “altogether for fear of appearing racist or raising community tensions.”
No date for the findings of the national inquiry announced in June has yet been publicly stated.