A few weeks ago, just as I was settling into my hundredth doom scrolling session of the New Year, X exploded with a story out of the UK that caught the attention of several high-profile influencers not the least, Elon Musk. It detailed transcripts from a case linked to a decades-long scandal, on where Pakistani men had been systematically grooming, raping and trafficking young white girls across Britain. Though many in the UK had been aware of the issue for years, to the rest of the world, the story came as a shock.
The details were damning— police persistently and knowingly neglecting a series of allegations, spanning decades, with children being treated as nothing more than collateral damage. As I absorbed the maddening details, I was quickly reminded of another sex abuse story out of the UK, one that has stayed with me since I first read about it over a decade ago.
Truthfully, what surprised me most about the grooming gangs scandal was not the treatment of the victims — most of whom were working-class kids with unstable home lives — but that the perpetrators in this case were working class too. In , I came across an article, which eventually led to a series of articles , in The Daily Mail detailing findings from a London Met Police investigation into child sex crimes at the hands of key political figures in Britain. What the investigation uncovered was shocking; decades-old allegations linking a group of British politicians, as well as other powerful and influential members of society, involved in high profile sex trafficking and pedophilia rings.
The events, according to whistleblowers, often took place at Dolphin Square in central London, with some victims claiming to have been as young as 7 or 8 years old. Brittan had suggested in a letter to Dickens that the file would be given to police, however, police later confirmed they had no record of any investigation into it the whereabouts of the dossier remain unknown.
Perhaps coincidentally, that same year, a prominent, now infamous, British politician, Sir Cyril Smith , would leave Westminster for good though his crimes would not be publicized until years later. Smith was a Labour councillor, and later MP, from until and, like Righton, was found to be at the centre of various child sex scandals throughout his career. Like others, he would target disadvantaged kids, most often in the care of the State. Incomprehensibly, in , prosecutors decided not to file child abuse charges against him, despite ruling that they were likely to succeed.
