In some cases, the NSPCC states, peer pressure is to blame. Clearly, children are being increasingly sexualized through the media, and this, of course, feeds very rapidly into the way in which children see themselves and how they see the world. Girls, particularly, are encouraged to think of themselves as virtual adults, or, perhaps more especially, as virtual adult stars. A month ago, for example, an online ‘game’ called Miss Bimbo was launched which, although aimed at children, gives players a naked virtual Bimbo character to be dressed, embellished with breast implants, and its virtual weight controlled by virtual diet pills – hardly a good example of womanhood.
However, according to the BBC’s investigative reporting program Panorama many British girls (some as young as 12) are “groomed” for prostitution by criminal gangs with networks that extend across the country. Such girls are typically not the out-of-control youths lacking parental guidance, such as we might assume. They are merely teenagers, easily manipulated and easily controlled by ruthless, older men. “Grooming” consists of an emotionally and mentally paralyzing mix of flattery and gifts from boys only slightly older than their victims, introductions to older men, drink, drugs, sexual abuse, and rape. According to Jane, who talked on Panorama about being forced into prostitution at the age of 13:
"The grooming starts where you meet them [slightly older boys in a group] and they're nice to you and take you to McDonald's and buy you cigarettes.""I was flattered that older boys were interested in me, which at 13 is nice.”
"And then you start to meet the cousins and the brothers, and then you realize that you've been passed on because suddenly you're hanging around with older people."
"They [the older men] start to touch you and say sexual things to you."
"And then the abuse starts. I was pinned down by two men while a third man raped me.
"And there were other men watching."
The Daily Mail ran a couple of stories that drew on this particular episode of Panorama (‘Sex for Sale’) even before it had aired, though it concentrated largely on the racial composition of Britain’s various gangs, in contrast to the television program itself. The newspaper states, for example, “these crimes frequently have a racial element: in many of the identifiable cases, the pimps come from the Asian or Afro-Caribbean communities”. The racial composition of Britain’s gangland is, accordingly, “largely Asian in northern England, Afro-Caribbean in the West Midlands and elsewhere White, Turkish and Kurdish.” However, while the documentary focused on a specific few Asian criminals and their White, female victims, it only very briefly touched on the subject, and a description of the documentary on Panorama’s homepage makes no mention at all of the race of the pimps or their victims, though, not surprisingly.
Race and sexual abuse is a sensitive issue in multicultural Britain. The fear that racist groups will exploit the situation to enflame tensions, or that accusations of racism will emerge in response to any official enquiry, seem to run through the sad tale of child exploitation in Britain. A Channel 4 documentary made in 2004, claiming that Asian men in Bradford were grooming White girls for prostitution, was cancelled for fear of public anger. The Coalition for the Removal of Pimping (CROP) has, likewise, a lengthy statement against racism on its website noting that it will not cooperate with racist organizations, as:
“Racist and political exploitation of the issue confuses the issue and undermines, or even prevents, active responses by relevant responsible agencies.”
Both Conservative M.P. Philip Davies and Director of the Ramadhan Foundation Mohammed Shafiq have suggested that the police have so far failed to tackle the problem of Asian gangs pimping White girls for fear of being accused of racism. Shafiq, who appears in the Panorama show, has said:
"These are criminals they should be treated as criminals. They are not Asian criminals, they are not Muslim criminals, they are not White criminals. They are criminals and they should be treated as criminals.""If there is a drug dealer grooming a White teenager into prostitution then I don't want the police service or local authority not to be open about it."
Although the police appear to have a good idea about the ethnicities of Britain’s gangs, according to the NSPCC little is known about the ethnic composition of its child prostitutes. Last year the press highlighted the plight of young women trafficked from Eastern Europe, though thousands are also brought into Britain every year from Asia and Africa, usually under the pretext that they will have a better life in the U.K. Yet they are uquickly used by their traffickers to obtain government benefits, and in many cases are made to work as prostitutes. Interestingly, the NSPCC does acknowledge that racism plays a part in the experiences of sexually exploited ethnic minority children, though it does not state exactly how, or whether the racism they experience comes primarily from pimps or those who pay to abuse them, etc.:
“We know very little about the experiences of Black and minority ethnic children and young people involved in prostitution, but available accounts points to racism as being important in understanding their experiences.”
As we are now becoming increasingly aware, different cultures conceive of sex, women, marriage, and homosexuality, etc., very differently. Notably, even within the Western world the age of consent, for example, can differ quite substantially. On the continent of Europe it can be as low as 13 or 14; in the U.K. the age is universally 16; and in the U.S. it can be 16, 17, or 18.
The authorities seem ill equipped to cope with such a complex problem as the child prostitution, crossing racial boundaries but yet evoking the issue of race as it does so. The mantra of British political establishment has long been that cultural “differences are to be celebrated”. Yet while it champions “multiculturalism” it understands not even one single culture, and, perhaps for this reason, treats the worst of every culture as if it must somehow be representative of the whole, and, as such, beyond criticism. It also clearly fails to understand young people.
With teenage pregnancies vastly increased in number in the last decade, the authorities – in an apparent attempt to rectify the problem – have encouraged teenagers to engage in oral sex (instead of copulation), and are now examining the idea of compulsory sex lessons for 5 year olds. As if Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World is playing out before our eyes, government minister Dawn Primarolo has even suggested that teenage girls should be sterilized. That way they would be free to have sex with anyone they want, or don’t want.
The authorities are no less inept when it comes to children of specifically non-British backgrounds. If Mohammed Shafiq has suggested that the police go softly on Asian gangs pimping White girls for fear of being accused of racism, the same fear raises its ugly head at the mention of the forced marriages of teenage girls – often to much older men from abroad. But, other, cultural issues emerge as well.
Bradford police support worker Philip Balmforth, who has spoken out about the scale of forced marriage in Britain – winning even the praise of M.P.s – now finds his position helping vulnerable young girls under threat, as members of the Bradford Council claim he has damaged the city’s reputation. This response is not, perhaps, entirely unsurprising, however. The notion of reputation is central to some Asian cultures that have a very large presence in Bradford. According to an NSPCC survey of 500 people of Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi origin, two thirds believed that reporting suspected child abuse would “have a negative affect on the 'honor'” of the victim’s family.
Again, in his report, The Poverty of Multicuturalism, for the Think Tank, Civitas, Patrick West observes that judges have regarded the ethnic culture of the murderer as a mitigating factor in some so-called “honor killings”, thus giving Asian-British girls, for example, less protection under the law. Likewise, Saira Khan in The Daily Mail has also denounced the National Health Service’s policy of performing “virginity repairs” on Muslim girls who fear that their families may harm or even kill them if they discover they have had sex out of wedlock:
“It's effectively condoning an increasingly fundamentalist Islamic culture that is patriarchal, regressive and increasingly demeaning to women.”
The government seems to have finally woken up to the scale and seriousness of child prostitution in Britain. The police will have new targets, and schools will receive educational videos tackling the issue. Yet, if children are to be protected across the board the government must also abandon issues for principles, seeing that the human rights of minors are upheld and that criminals are treated as criminals.