British-Pakistani girls still 'silenced' 10 years on from Rotherham grooming scandal

A Rotherham charity says girls from black and minority ethnic backgrounds are still being 'silenced' when it comes to tackling sexual abuse.

It comes as we mark a decade since the release of the Jay Report looking into child sexual abuse in the town.

The narrative that followed focused on white girls being abused by groups of predominantly Asian men. But whistleblower Jayne Senior and Apna Haq founder Zlakha Ahmed estimated 10 per cent of the victims were British-Pakistani.

At the time, Apna Haq also estimated one in four British-Pakistani victims had been subjected to other forms of violence against women and girls including forced marriage and physical and sexual abuse.

Zlakha warns that British-Pakistani girls in Rotherham are still growing up in an atmosphere of sustained sexual targeting, but remain ‘invisible’ with their protections ‘inadequate’.

Aaliya Malik is a girls and young women’s worker at the charity and says by missing British-Pakistani women out of the conversation, victims still don’t feel like they will be believed if they come forward.

“If you don’t see someone like you speaking out, you think well maybe if I speak I’ll be silenced. Because how likely is it that it’s happening to someone like me? It was happening, but there was no light shed on it.”

Aaliya works with girls and young women to give them a safe space to talk about issues they’re facing. She says there is still a major challenge, particularly within Muslim communities, where topics like boyfriends, relationships and sexual abuse remain a taboo. It means very few victims are willing to go the police because they don’t want their families and communities to find out about what happened.

“The girls want to tell their stories, they want to say what’s happening… and what’s NOT happening as well, so the support that they’re not receiving. But they want to say it anonymously. For me to even speak to any of the girls it was ‘this has to be completely anonymous.’

“In one case, a girl was blackmailed with nude images and she was threatened that they would be posted through the door. She was so scared and so worried. After all of that, after staying in the abusive relationship, when she DID decide to end it, the images were posted through the door.

“And she was blamed. Because she wasn’t ‘meant’ to be in the relationship in the first place.”

The charity wants to see a system whereby information and intelligence could be collected in a better way to encourage people from minority communities to report things without having to be identified.

“Even if the girls don’t want to say their name, they can say maybe the perpetrators’ name,” says Aaliya.

“And if there’s enough cases that match there should be something done. Organisations like us should be able to put that onto a police system. If there’s a pattern going on, as organisations we can say ‘hold on, work needs to be done in this area’.”

Zlakha shows us a poster on the wall at the charity, depicting a conversation between a mother and daughter about a sexual relationship.

“Had we produced a poster like this in Rotherham 40 years ago, we probably would’ve been run out of town by the community,” she says.

“But because of the work that we’ve done around domestic violence and because we talk about uncomfortable issues, this is a conversation that we’ve been able to have with the women that we work with.”

Looking to the future of tackling CSE, Zlakha also raises the issue of funding for charities like theirs.

“As an organisation, we’re still in the position where we only have half the funding we need to carry on.

“There is still such a big need to do the awareness-raising and for women to see women like themselves and be able to understand that what’s happening to them is violence and that they will get support.

“Those cases may initially go to the police but they’re never progressed because the young women are not wanting the communities and the families to find out the detail.”