So far eleven people have come forward to the police in the wake of revelations about abuse in football stretching back several decades.
Conservative MP Mark Field, vice-chair of the All Party Parliamentary football group in the Commons, said stories like the ones presented by victims were the “tip of the iceberg” in abuse cases in sport.
However, the reality is that the grotesque abuse of Children is endemic in British society. From the entertainment industry, to Westminster, to even the Sports industry these crimes have not just happened once- but countless times.
According to the NSPCC nearly a quarter (24.1%) of young adults experienced sexual abuse (including contact and non-contact), by an adult or by a peer during childhood.
In October 2014 the National Crime Agency (NCA) admitted that an extensive number of suspected paedophiles will escape prosecution due to the monumental task of actually convicting the flood of cases coming through the door. The Child Exploitation and Online Protection centre (CEOP) estimated 50,000 people in the UK are involved in downloading and sharing images of child abuse, out of the suspects a mere 660 arrests have been made.
A report by CEOP in 2012 found new trends in child sexual abuse offending. CEOP reveals research conducted by the NSPCC;
- Around 5% of UK children suffer contact sexual abuse
- Approximately 190,000 of these will fall victim to contact sexual abuse by a stranger before turning 18, representing more than 10,000 new victims in the UK every year
The second half of 2012 was dominated with reports of sexual abuse from the 70’s and 80’s, most notably the predatory and prolific sexual offending of Jimmy Saville and prominent celebrities in the public eye. The long and ugly list of British politicians and celebrities continues to be exposed and covered up.
The widely publicised Rochdale grooming cases tapped into an undercurrent of racism and anti-Muslim feeling with the media and politicians quick to blame culture and religion for why Asian men targeted young white girls.
Given the multitude of child abuse claims that have come to light in the wake of hundreds of sexual abuse allegations, every aspect of the media still try to divert attention to ethnic groups as perpetrators.
Abuse is not specific to any ethnic group but it is a wider societal problem. This means that the underlying societal values are in fact responsible and not an ethnicity, religion, nationality or social class.
There are deep problems within British society with the early sexualisation of children that distorts their views about where their value lies and leaves them susceptible to abuse by some deviant adults adhering to values of individualism and seeking sexual gratification.
Living in the West, there needs to be a rejection of the devastating secular values that treat other humans as objects, that drive some deviant men to satisfy their own desires.
The debate should be widened and explored further onto the real underlying problems which created sexual predators in British society.
وَأَنْزَلْنَا إِلَيْكَ الذِّكْرَ لِتُبَيِّنَ لِلنَّاسِ مَا نُزِّلَ إِلَيْهِمْ وَلَعَلَّهُمْ يَتَفَكَّرُونَ
“And We have also sent down unto you the Reminder and the Advice (the Qur’an) that you may explain clearly to the people what has been sent down for them” (An-Nahl 16:44)