ET Editor: The grooming gangs scandal back in the headlines. Some survivors have quit the inquiry, saying it is being watered down. The Prime Minister has responded, vowing that the inquiry will look at the Islamic motives of the perpetrators. Jeremy Fowler has returned from working in northern Iraq, shocked to see what’s happening in the UK. Here is his take on a Christian response…
We returned from eleven years’ serving in Iraqi Kurdistan in 2021, knowing there was lots of work we could do helping UK churches reach out to Muslims. But we didn’t anticipate that, once back in England’s ‘green and pleasant land’, one part of our work would be raising awareness about the sexual enslavement of British girls at the hands of Islamic gangs.
We knew what ISIS had done to poor Yezidi girls, and it was with horror that I started to read that similar crimes had been committed in the UK—in East Oxford in fact, where we now serve. And the chief inspector for that extensive police operation has told the BBC the crimes are still going on.
Just a few miles from the Dreaming Spires, vulnerable schoolgirls were lured from care homes and troubled backgrounds into the arms of ‘boyfriends’ who then handed them on to criminal gangs selling them for up to £600 an hour. Taxi drivers were complicit in driving these girls to their abusers, and the well-to do often overlooked what was going on because the girls were seen as wild, working-class, and worthless.
