The Police Commissioner in the northern English town of Rotherham had been under pressure to step down after a devastating report saying that at least 1,400 children in the town were sexually exploited between 1997 and 2013.  Instead, Shaun Wright is quitting his political party and attempting to keep his job.

In handing in his resignation to Labour, Wright said that his “thoughts are with the victims and their families”, and that “much progress has been made since I was elected as Commissioner in terms of supporting victims, taking preventive action, increasing awareness of the issue and bringing criminals to justice”.

Wright’s preemptive strike came after Labour threatened to suspend him if he didn’t resign from the police.  Now, Labour could push for an investigation into whether a case of misconduct in public office could be brought against Wright and others involved in the allegations in Rotherham.  Home Secretary Theresa May thinks Shaun Wright should go.

What happened in Rotherham is nothing short of horrifying.  A report commissioned by the Rotherham Borough Council found that 1,400 girls were sexually abused from 1997 through 2013.  The girls were as young as eleven years old.  But because the majority of the girls were English and the majority of abusers were Pakistani, many local officials didn’t want to press the matter for “fear of being thought racist”.  Others didn’t want to attract the bonehead racists and fascists to town to make matters even worse.

“Several councillors interviewed believed that by opening up these issues they could be ‘giving oxygen’ to racist perspectives that might in turn attract extremist political groups and threaten community cohesion,” wrote the report’s author Professor Alexis Jay, a former chief inspector of social work.

The girls were plied with gifts and drugs, often trafficked to other towns to be exploited by multiple men, beaten and intimidated.  Some were doused in petrol and threatened with being set alight if they told anyone what had happened.

Often, police would arrest the girls for being drunk – alcohol provided by their abusers.  Cops would try to make the whole thing disappear by manipulating official figures for child sexual exploitation by removing from their monitoring process for girls who were pregnant or had given birth.

Rotherham is disgusted, Labour is disgusted, the UK is disgusted.  But just in case you know one of those people who ask, “Why aren’t ‘the Muslims’ speaking out against this” – They are.

“We need to acknowledge there was a large number of Pakistani men said to be involved,” said Muhbeen Hussain, founder of the British Muslim Youth group.  “As a Pakistani Muslim I don’t find anything within our religion to condone this.  We need to reopen every case since the 1990s and investigate them.  If it were any other type of crime the police would have acted.”

Hussain echoes the rest of the town in wondering why there haven’t been more arrests and prosecutions.  In 2010, five Pakistani men from Rotherham were found guilty of sex crimes against young girls.  In 2011, Ashtiaq Asghar was jailed for the murder of 17-year-old Laura Wilson, who had been a victim of sexual exploitation in Rotherham.