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By Elizabeth Pearson | Across the 2000s, a series of child sex exploitation cases affected British towns, including Telford, Rochdale, Oxford and Rotherham, scarring the lives of hundreds of children. In 2011, Times journalist Andrew Norfolk reported that networks—so-called “grooming gangs”—of largely British Asian men of Pakistani heritage had trafficked and raped hundreds of mainly girls and young women.
These are facts that are widely known in the U.K. and have been the subject of multiple investigations. The 2014 Jay report found that authorities had been slow to act, sometimes for fear of being accused of racism.
Police had in some cases blamed victims, criminalizing children as prostitutes. Alexis Jay, who also led the 2022 independent inquiry into child sexual abuse, has noted the “appalling and lifelong effects” of abuse on victims.
Elon Musk—the billionaire owner of social media platform X and incoming lead on U.S. government efficiency—has, it seems, just found out about this devastating national scandal.
In a series of posts on X, Musk politicized these crimes to denounce Prime Minister Keir Starmer as “evil”, and to call for a new general election in the U.K. He also reposted the anti-Islam activist Tommy Robinson, calling for his release from prison where he is serving 18 months for contempt of court.
Musk portrayed Robinson as campaigning to expose the “truth” about grooming, as though the story had not been subject to widespread investigation, media coverage and public debate.
Of course, women’s rights within our criminal justice and political systems desperately need to be improved. But, Musk is no cheerleader for women, and there is no evidence that he is “genuinely incensed” by child sexual exploitation.
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