Another week, and another person has been convicted for posting something online during the disorder this summer. This time it’s Derek Heggie, a boxer turned actor and podcast host from Carlisle. In two YouTube videos posted between August 2nd and 8th, Heggie was alleged to have made “grossly offensive” online comments, including saying that “young white girls are being raped by these grooming gangs that worship the Prophet Muhammad”. He admitted to posting these comments “with intent to cause distress and anxiety” at Carlisle Crown Court. He had initially pleaded not guilty, but being held on remand for four months – since August 8th – seems to have changed his mind. He will be sentenced this week.
Whatever else it may have been, it must be noted that this comment of Heggie’s is undeniably true. In the decades-long horror of the grooming gangs scandal, thousands of white, working-class girls have been groomed, abused and raped, largely across the post-industrial north of England, by Pakistani-Muslim men. There was indeed a racial angle. Charlie Peters, who has reported on this tirelessly, notes: “Through the countless testimonies that I’ve heard, I’m convinced that the national grooming gangs story was a race hate scandal, perpetrated mostly by Pakistani men who saw white children as legitimate and ‘easy’ targets for abuse.” And worst of all, says Maggie Oliver, a police whistleblower who has done much to expose this story, the abuse is likely still ongoing. “We’ve been approached by 60 victims in the last three days who are currently being failed by the police,” she said last year. “It is not a historical problem.”
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