Tuesday 2 September 2014

A tale of two police cock-ups

The bizarre and tragic manhunt for Ashya King and his parents has got me thinking about the Rotherham abuse scandal and how the police respond to complaints. 

Let's compare the two cases:

In Rotherham over the course of about six years, 1,600 victims routinely suffered appalling sexual abuse. Much of this abuse was reported to the police and we now know that it was dismissed - and appears to have been covered up.

In Southampton a little boy with cancer was not able to get the radiation treatment available in some other countries and so his parents took him out of the hospital to seek the treatment abroad. As there was no court order to prevent this at the time, there is a legal argument as to what if any offence was committed. Nevertheless a much publicised police operation was launched to track the boy and his family to Spain.

In Rotherham the people making the complaints to the police were vulnerable  young girls. People from what is stigmatised as the 'underclass' - people who lack 'advocacy'. On the other hand in Southampton the people doing the complaining were taken from a group of people at the very other end of the scale - both in status and in advocacy - doctors and medical professionals.

And in both cases a smoke screen has been thrown up to obscure institutional incompetence . In Rotherham it is the suggestion that it was political correctness and multiculturalism to blame -  and in Southampton it was the fact that Aysha's parents are Jehovah's Witnesses.

In both  instances this smacks of lazy thinking at best and racism at worst.

1 comment:

Dr Llareggub said...

I am not sure that institutional incompetence explains the Rotherham cover up. We might consider the corruption of Labour authorities and the left's affinity with conservative Islam, such that no voice of criticism could emerge without accusations of racism. Or even worse - councilors kept quiet to keep the moslem vote. As for Southampton - the God like authority of the doctors, oncologists who should have been prepared to acknowledge that the treatment offered in the second or third best cancer hospital in the UK had better alternatives overseas. Rotherham, however, should be a wake up call for the left, who have achieved the impossible: making Nick Griffin who identified the problem, appear virtuous.However, a brief glance at the left blogs indicates that they are still in denial. Perhaps those proposing to attend the UAF demo in Rotherham might ask why it was felt that a cover up was needed, and to those on Save the NHS demos it is worth asking whether its medieval authority structure should be challenged.