Exposed: Groomed for Sex

This programme contains scenes which some viewers may find disturbing

On our streets today, a new breed of sexual predators

and British Pakistani men are being blamed.

Young Muslim men have been grooming young girls.

We've got a problem. We can't bury our head in the sand.

I just cannot understand why.

It's been called on-street grooming,

networks of men who target young teenage girls.

The guys always tend to be 30, 40s. It makes me feel sick.

They were relentless in trying to get more girls into that vehicle.

Befriended using drink, drugs and rides in flash cars,

then raped and forced to have sex with the men's friends and relatives.

I'd be in bedroom, locked in bedroom, and they'd send man after man in.

We cannot treat human beings like this. We are not cheap meat.

The view from inside the British Pakistani community

reveals neighbourhoods shocked by the accusations laid at their doors.

What has happened to this nation of Muslims?

What has happened to us as a community?

'I'm setting off on a deeply personal journey...'

-Hey, how you doing, boys?

-Here we are!

Balloons, drink, boys, bitches...

'..and talking to regular guys to find out

'the truth behind the accusations made against Pakistani men.'

I'm Adil Ray and I grew up here in Birmingham,

home to Britain's biggest Pakistani community outside of London.

But right now, being British Pakistani is nothing to shout about.

'We're seen as suicide bombers, sporting cheats and now perverts.

'Young Asian men are being accused of exploiting teenage girls.'

Brilliant, just what we needed(!)

The last year has seen one after another high profile court case

hit the headlines in which gangs of Pakistani men

have been found guilty of targeting teenage white girls for sex.

And this is what it's all about on-street grooming.

Asian men cruising around a city centre

on the look out for vulnerable young girls.

Their victims are enticed in for a ride and, for them,

what seems an innocent friendship or even romance.

But once that confidence is won,

the relationship turns to sexual exploitation, rape and brutality.

This is a personal journey for me and it's one I feel I have to make.

I want to find out how these young girls are falling victim to on-street grooming,

how big a problem it is, what's causing it,

and what can be done to stop it.

As a British Pakistani, I know I'm not going to like some of the things I'm about to discover.

But it's really important to understand what's going on here.

Two Asian men have been given long jail sentences for abusing white girls in Derby...

'I'm a broadcaster and I'm a British Pakistani.'

..a quarter of men accused of grooming may be Asian.

Comments made by the former Home Secretary Jack Straw a few months ago caught my attention.

He talked about the sexual attitudes of some British Pakistani men.

Pakistani heritage men, some of some age as well,

who target vulnerable young white girls.

Was he right to make the comments that he did?

To suggest this was ingrained within Pakistani young men

was deeply patronising and offensive.

He did say it was a minority in the Pakistani community

and he did point out that most sex offenders are white.

These young men are in a Western society in any event,

they act like any other young men, they are fizzing

and popping with testosterone, they want some outlet for that,

but Pakistani heritage girls are off limits.

Sadly, there is a problem

and for too long we've been burying our heads in the sand.

There should be no hiding place and we should take them on.

I think the community is waking up to that reality.

Mohammed Shafiq, thanks for joining us here on 5Live, the time now is 11.24.

Since the initial media storm after he made these comments,

Jack Straw hasn't given any more interviews on the subject of grooming.

When we approached him, his office said he was unavailable for comment.

I'm heading up north on the M6 to Blackburn,

Jack Straw's constituency.

Many British Pakistanis are unhappy with his comments

and some of them voted for him.

A fifth of Jack Straw's constituents are Asian.

Blackburn has seen its fair share of trouble over the years,

including riots almost a decade ago,

but locals have worked hard to heal community tensions ever since.

I've come to meet three Blackburn lads who think what the MP said

about grooming was offensive and potentially inflammatory.

They mounted a campaign to get Jack Straw to apologise.

What was it about what he said that bothered you so much?

The fact that he generalised across the board.

Five people out of 100 might do it, that doesn't mean 100 of them do it.

I do a lot of coaching,

there's loads of kids and with their parents watching,

are they thinking he's teaching my daughter how to play some cricket

but is he thinking something else?

Do you think in any way Jack Straw was right to bring up those comments?

This is Jack Straw. Why can't he go inside a mosque and speak to the Imam over there?

why can't he speak to an elder within his house

and try to address this problem within the Asians?

I think he's got it wrong. Totally wrong.

A criminal's a criminal, a paedophile's a paedophile.

You don't racialize criminality.

A criminal will always be a criminal no matter what his colour is,

what his religion is, what his sex is, a criminal's a criminal.

Jack Straw apologised for his choice of words and for any offence

he may have caused to British Pakistanis,

but not for speaking out.

The fact is, if he hadn't, then a lot of people, including me

may not have engaged with this important issue.

I want to get to the bottom of just how widespread this crime is,

but details are sketchy as there hasn't been much research done on the subject.

When you look at sex offenders as a whole, over 80% are white,

so clearly the vast majority of Pakistani men are not sexual predators.

But when it comes to this specific crime,

on-street grooming, a recent government study found

that a quarter of men suspected of taking part were described as Asian.

But reports of criminal convictions

suggest the real figure could be much higher.

What's interesting here looking at some of the newspaper reports

are the names of the people that have been convicted.

They are a lot of Asian names clearly,

but the vast majority are Pakistani.

I'm seeing Hussains, Alis, Shahs, Khans, Raja,

they are Pakistani Muslim names.

I've found around 20 cases that fit the on-street grooming model in the past ten years

and of them, around four out of every five men found guilty

are of Pakistani Muslim origin.

'Work is being done to investigate the sexual grooming

'of vulnerable teenage girls...'

'..three month operation into suspected organised crime.'

'...whether there are any patterns emerging in street grooming of young girls...'

'..treated a group of teenagers as sex objects...'

To find out what's behind the grooming stories continuing to make the headlines,

I'm off to meet the man who wrote many of them.

The first to investigate the link between Pakistani men

and on-street grooming was Times journalist, Andrew Norfolk.

He's examined criminal cases going back as far as 1997

and I'm hoping he can fill me in on how these gangs operate.

I think, from what I can gather in the cases I've been looking at,

there's a fair sense of contempt for the white girl who's there and available,

and is worthless in the minds of the men who are doing this to her.

Where one gets into sensitive territory here is, these are lads who've grown up in this country.

The values at home belong to a different country,

where their sister, their cousin is an object of...

to be protected at all costs.

Her chastity is to be protected at all costs.

But they're growing up in a Western society where sex is on a plate every time they open a newspaper,

and white lads your age are going out and having sex with anything that moves.

And as a white journalist, if you don't mind me asking,

how much success have you had with this?

We've had some strong criticism from people who clearly feel

we've ventured into territory that we had no right to venture into,

who would seem to say that we are attempting to make effectively a racist point.

All we're trying to do is highlight a very specific model.

But what we're saying is it's happening in almost

every single town and city in the Midlands, in the North,

and it's time somebody tried to do some work to understand why.

Andrew is right.

Of course this is a sensitive area,

but unless we try to understand it, nothing will change.

A few days later, I'm in Burnley's Asian area,

where the town's Bangladeshi and Pakistani residents mostly live.

'I happen to meet a group of Bangladeshi lads,

'so I decide to chat to them about girls.'

How you doing boys?

'They're nervous about talking openly so don't want to show their faces.'

How you doing? All right?

-Your faces aren't being filmed, so you don't have to worry about that.

-A bit more lower.

So tell me, what do you guys do for a night out?

-What do we do?

-Where do you hang out and stuff?

Local, innit. Balloons, drinks, boys, bitches. Shit like that.

-The main problem is racism.

-Right.

You're not a racist but... You know what I'm saying?

When you say bitches, what do you mean? Girls?

That's our way of saying girls, innit?

We don't mean it no wrong way, like female dogs.

We don't mean it like that, we mean like girls. You get me?

Where do you find girls from?

We don't find the girls, the girls find us, innit?

Right. Have you got a girlfriend?

Not one, couple. Why? You want one of them?

I might do at some point, yeah!

-Keep the camera down.

-It's down, we don't want a picture of your face.

-No problem, you know what I'm saying?

-So are they Asian, are they white?

Everything, mix. Keep it down.

What's it like dating a white girl in Burnley?

It's hard, innit. Like all them, you know - well, I don't wanna say white people, but I gotta say it.

"What's he doing with a white girl?" In the park,

park rangers kick us out cos we with a white girl.

Hang on, that's news to me. So you go to the park?

Yeah, with white girls and they're like, "What you doing?"

They think we're bribing them, giving them money to shag them,

shit like that, but we're not that type.

They're like, "Let me take your name, you're probably grooming that girl,

-paying her, bribing her", shit like that.

-Has this happened to you?

It's happened to me, not only once...

-Everyone.

-Bare times, yeah.

The park rangers, they're cock blockers, man. You know what I mean by cock blockers?

-No, what do you mean?

-How shall I explain that?

Cos they couldn't get a suck, they don't want you to get a suck. So they block that shit.

Right. Thanks very much.

That group of lads were by no means the voice of Asian youth.

But I can see how easy it is for guy like that to feel unfairly targeted.

The police have to strike a delicate balance when dealing with on-street grooming.

20 miles away in Preston, I've come to spend a shift with one of Lancashire Police's

six sexual exploitation teams to see how they do it.

The Deter team, headed by DS Paul Burnside, check up on suspected offenders,

and look for potential victims in the places young people hang out,

trying to stop grooming before it happens.

So what kind of things will you be looking out for here?

You know, the bus station, the train station,

these at times can be magnets for perpetrators to arrange to meet young people.

I can see your team just behind us there, chatting to a couple of girls there.

This is not about, you know, "What are you doing here?" You know, the big finger coming out,

it's just about engaging them in conversation.

'The team weren't worried about those girls and move on.'

So what do you know about the ages of these girls then? How young are they?

They're as young as 11.

-11 is incredibly young, isn't it?

-Yeah.

You know, as an 11-year-old, you are vulnerable.

So we're dealing with young people now who are going through that teenage stage in life,

you know, who are entering or approaching adulthood and cannot see their vulnerability.

And that's what these perpetrators play on.

In an ethnically diverse area like Preston,

offenders and victims come from all sorts of backgrounds,

but the team's intelligence tells them the methods are often the same.

A lot of our referrals have been in relation to some of these takeaways.

The repeated story that we're getting back very simply is that they've engaged in a relationship,

and in most cases it started off with them coming in,

and they've been offered a free sandwich, kebab or whatever the takeaway is selling.

So it's something as small as that. A free kebab.

To build the trust up is so much easier than doing that with an adult,

because an adult is more worldly wise.

That's the thing that gets me now, is that if you had that mentality,

if you wanted to groom young children, it seems to be...

Potentially it could be very easy, because you meet these young girls,

and it's just the price of a burger and chips. What's that? £2?

They're gaining that friendship,

and all along they're thinking at some point

there will be sexual activity.

And that is why we do stuff like we're doing now,

and it's to nip that in the bud before it happens.

As the evening draws in, the team continue to look for vulnerable teenagers.

Sadly, this type of preventative work isn't nationwide,

and as many as 2,000 young people fall victim to sexual exploitation every year.

Now I've seen how a victim's trust is won,

I want to understand where the grooming process leads next.

So I've come to meet a young woman, Emma -

although that's not her real name.

-Hi Emma, how you doing? Adil.

-Nice to meet you.

Lovely to meet you.

'What is all too real is her description of the brutal treatment

'she received at the hands of a group of Asian lads,

'who befriended her when she was just 12.'

What actually happened when you were 12?

I just started going to a local shopping centre, in children's arcade,

and I got approached by teenage boys, who was a couple of years older than me.

And then they started to introduce me to older men,

who had flash cars. You know, they wasn't strangers.

A 30-year-old didn't pull up at side of me in a BMW

and ask me if I wanted to get in, and he'd take me for a McDonalds,

cos I would have said no.

I'd spent 12 months with these people

and they were friends of people who I trusted.

After almost a year of hanging out with her new group of friends,

one older man in his 30s began to single Emma out.

-So when did the abuse start then?

-After I met Tarik,

probably about a month later, a couple of months.

I was on the floor and he was ripping my trousers and all my clothes off,

and he was on top of me,

and there was a gang of men stood watching and laughing,

and he'd started to rape me.

Then there was one man holding my arms and pinning me down,

and trying to put his penis in my mouth,

and another one holding my legs down as well.

And someone holding my friend's eyes open, making her watch.

-All Pakistani men?

-Yeah.

I was a virgin, and he'd raped me quite brutally,

and I'd got a white coat on,

and he got the blood and wiped it all down my white coat,

and my friend had to take me to the toilet and sort me out.

She was trying to scrub the blood off my coat, because I couldn't go home like that,

and I was really upset and I was crying,

and she was just saying that, you know, making out as though I've over-reacted.

No-one ever around me made out that what had happened was wrong.

It was made out as though that was right and it was acceptable and that's life.

It's remarkable that after this horrific rape,

the teenager still thought these boys and men were her friends.

It shows how chillingly effective the 12 months the gang invested in grooming Emma really were.

By now, she was distanced from her real friends and family.

They'd isolated me from everything and everyone.

My only friends were these people.

The way they groomed me was through drugs and alcohol.

But my biggest drug was these men.

They were like my habit, and it was getting over that,

and I just felt like, you know, it was normal.

That was just life.

-Are you OK?

-Yeah.

-Sure?

Yeah.

It must have been such a confused state to be in.

It didn't end there, did it?

It just got worse.

Tariq used to rape me once a week, every week.

I used to think, maybe he must really fancied me or something,

but it wasn't, it was about controlling me

and letting me know where my place was.

They'd lock me in flats,

and I'd have to do things with men in flats.

I'd be locked in bedroom, locked in bedroom

and they'd just send man after man after man in

and that was just life and that was every day.

Extreme violence and threats to Emma's family,

including that her mother would be raped,

kept her in this cycle of systematic abuse.

The teenager saw no way out.

I'm finding it pretty hard to come to terms with what Emma has told me.

The fact that these men, these guys from the Pakistani community,

the community I've been very much a part of, would do this to her,

it just disgusts me and I just cannot understand why.

There's little more than a million British Pakistanis

and throughout this small population, everyone is asking the same question.

How could these crimes happen? To try to find some answers,

I've come to visit a town grappling with grooming head on.

It's Friday afternoon and British Muslims around the country

will be off to their mosque to read their prayers

and hear a sermon from their Imam.

I'm in Rochdale and at a local Mosque,

this Imam has a particular challenge.

Just over a week ago, two members of his congregation

were convicted in a rape case

that has all the classic hallmarks of on-street grooming.

'Detective Sergeant Paul Langley, says it's a shocking case of child exploitation.'

'It's one of the worst cases that I and my colleagues have dealt with.

'One of the victims was subject to a number of brutal rapes by all three men.'

Two brothers and their cousin, all in their 30s,

have been given indefinite jail sentences

for raping two 16-year-olds.

My dear brothers and sisters, my mothers listening downstairs.

Just last Saturday, I saw an image on the front page of a newspaper

that really made me want to dig a hole and die.

I saw an image of three Muslims committing a sexual act.

Young girls, even before the age of consent.

What has happened to this nation of Muslims?

What has happened to us as a community

when we have Muslims, who kidnap young innocent lives?

And who rape them and pillage them.

Crimes that we can't even define in the limits of the Qur'an.

The men involved in this case lived near here

and some members of the congregation will know them or be related to them.

It's pretty brave for the Imam, Irfan Chishti, to speak out in this way.

After prayers, I'm hoping to talk to him.

But I have to wait.

Down in the women's prayer room,

he's speaking to the mother of the two brothers convicted in the case.

Half-an-hour later, he's back and can talk to me.

It's harder when we know that two of the guys involved in the case

were regulars and came to this mosque.

I wouldn't call them regulars.

I mean there's two brothers and there's one associate friend.

I have met them personally, I know them.

I think the most why I'm quite upset even now,

is that I've just had a conversation with the mother of the two brothers

and she's obviously quite distraught and quite upset.

It has devastated lives, it's devastated children.

People like myself and others,

we need to do more to educate this community of ours.

British Pakistanis tend to be a tight knit bunch

and I'm wondering how it feels to know you've been rubbing shoulders with a groomer.

So I've arranged to meet some lads who might be able to tell me.

What was your reaction to the recent case here?

You want your area to be known for something good.

Maybe football or whichever way.

Known for something as bad as this,

and on top of that, somebody that you possibly know...

Have you ever come across the guys that were involved in these crimes?

Those two brothers and that cousin who got jailed recently,

my mate was telling me, I couldn't believe it, I was so shocked.

I was with that guy, I was chatting to him about four or five times.

He seemed such a nice guy.

He had a wife, he had kids,

he used to be taking his kids to school.

I was... It was disgusting,

I couldn't believe that kind of guy could do such a thing.

It's just shocking.

The guy lived down the road, I couldn't believe that.

It's sad to say that this guy was all right at the time

but he could do something like that.

It is scary, you lose that trust in general with other people.

English Defence League have come into the town

and done the demonstrations

and that's left the town now picking up the pieces there.

All the years of work that was done to build community relations,

between people of different backgrounds, races, faiths.

With this one issue now, that polarised discussion,

we're going to have to start all over again.

It's easy to see how this issue could cause racial tension

as Mohammed Shafiq knows.

He appeared on the radio with me a few weeks ago

and now he's taking me for dinner at his local.

-How are you doing?

-Welcome to Rochdale.

-Nice to see you again.

-Shall we get some food?

-Yeah.

Is this is your manor then?

It certainly is, this is where I come if I want some good food.

What would you recommend?

Seekh kebabs.

'As part of his community work,

'Shafiq has been speaking out about these kinds of crimes since 2006.'

-So this is good stuff, is it?

-It's very good.

-Let's tuck in.

We'll soon find out if you southerners like it.

You've been talking quite openly about this issue

for probably longer than most - for some time, haven't you?

I think I was the first person to talk about this in 2006.

There were times where I was accused of doing the work of the BNP.

I received death threats.

I received excrement through my door. So yeah, it was a dark period.

When the community sees a guilty verdict,

do you think they realise,

"You know, maybe we have got a bit of a problem"?

That's been significant and if you look at the Derby case,

earlier on this year, I think that was the turning point for me

and the reaction from the community, because people said,

"Wait, there must be truth to it." The evidence was damning.

Now that the floodgates have opened,

people are more confident talking about these crimes,

and we are going to see real change.

The on-street grooming case Shafiq is talking about in Derby,

was one of the most high profile to date.

The national media spotlight was turned on the small Midlands city

when two men at the heart of a sexual exploitation ring

were sentenced for an array of sickening sexual crimes.

One of the reasons the case caught national attention,

was the CCTV released by Derbyshire police,

catching the perpetrators, who targeted girls as young as 12, in action.

The jury heard that the defendants referred to one of the cars

as the Rape Rover.

The backlash feared in Rochdale has been felt

by this small Pakistani community

and on the frontline are its takeaway workers and cabbies like Tanveer.

How did it affect you personally because you're a taxi drive?

They were calling up the taxi's

but when we approached the actual address,

some people used to approach the car and then just walk away.

So they'd call a taxi, you turn up,

they see it's an Asian bloke, Pakistani, Muslim bloke...

"Not getting in, mate." Did they ever say anything to you?

-You would get some abuse, yeah.

-What kind of things would they say?

Things like paedophile, you know, things like that.

Just silly comments, racial comments.

I don't want to get deep into it but it was nasty.

-So they called you a paedophile while they were in your cab?

-That's right.

It's not nice when you're driving, you've got three guys in the back

-and they're calling you paedophile.

-How did that make you feel?

Small. Didn't feel really good, really bad.

Obviously, the community itself, it's very good

but the small minority has cast a big shadow over the whole community.

All too aware of the potential impact on the local community,

Derbyshire Police had to be certain they had a cast iron case.

The ground-breaking investigation, named Operation Retriever,

was led by Detective Superintendent Debbie Platt.

Why was this case so unusual?

It was unusual because we used very different tactics

to deal with the organised crime group.

The team focused on gathering corroborating evidence.

As none of the young girls had come forward,

police couldn't be certain of their testimony in court.

The other unusual factor was the number of victims involved.

We'd got 27 young people,

the youngest one only being 12 years of age.

'Months of undercover investigations involving dozens of officers

'came to a head one night in 2009.'

Tell me about the surveillance and what you found.

What happened that night was incredible.

They picked up two girls,

these were two girls that had never ever met these men before.

Within minutes of the car driving up at the side of them,

these girls naively got into that vehicle.

They were then driven outside of the city.

They were eventually that night brought back to Derby

and for some reason, they were dropped off.

The vehicle driven by our two principal subjects drove around the city

and they were relentless in trying to get more girls into that vehicle.

That night the men cruised around Derby for two hours,

looking for and approaching girls.

But they had no more success,

and a surveillance team followed the pair back to a block of flats

at around 2.00am and kept watch, not knowing which flat they had entered.

At 5.00am, a 14-year-old girl emerged and was tailed by officers

who overhead a shocking revelation.

She disclosed that she had been orally raped within a block of flats

by Asian males.

The police picked them up but more importantly,

when the offending group came out and got into the vehicle,

they were all arrested at that point.

How are you dealing with the fact that it appears that

a disproportionate number of men involved in this type of grooming,

not just in Derby, but across the country

come from the Pakistani community?

It's difficult for me to confirm that,

because if I look, and I've been in this role for three years now,

the vast majority of offenders that we deal with in child abuse

and child exploitation are white males without a shadow of doubt.

If I look at the number of registered sex offenders

that we are managing in the community,

they are predominantly white males.

Operation Retriever involved a number of men from Asian backgrounds

and you can't deny that, that's the facts of that case.

That's exactly what I want to get to the bottom of.

If the men responsible for general sex offences are mostly white,

why is it that so many of those convicted of this specific type

of sexual exploitation, are Pakistani men?

I'm wondering whether the environment they come from

has something to do with it.

So, I'm heading back to Derby's Normanton Road,

a pretty typical Asian shopping street.

I want to find out about rumours I've heard that, around here,

it's pretty normal for white girls to get approached by Asian men.

In a local takeaway, I met Tara.

You see it all the time. You see cars stopping, or whatever.

Cars have stopped, to me and my friends, before, like, in the past.

You just walk down the street, and the guy could say, like, "Sexy", or "Mmm!"

Or... it makes me feel sick. It really does.

-So, you walk down the street, and a car pulls up next to you.

-Yeah.

And what do they say?

Er, just say things like, "You're looking nice", or,

we're going to go to a party, or something, or go out for some drinks.

Do you know what else? The guys always tend to be old. 30, 40.

I don't understand why a grown man would want to go out drinking with a young girl.

It's just, and I bet they have daughters,

I bet they've got younger sisters.

I'm trying to work out the difference is between

some girls who's saying, I'm going to get in a Pakistani guy's car

and someone like you, who obviously didn't.

Maybe the girls do want to have a good time.

And I think the guys know that.

I think all they're thinking of is,

he's probably got money, he can buy me drink,

he could buy me cigarettes, I'll have a wicked time.

They don't think of the consequences.

It's hard to see this friendly shopping area

as a hunting ground for sexual predators.

But, as the shops shut for the day, I feel the atmosphere change.

That evening, a local youth representative wants to take me

for a drive, to show me some of the problems facing his area.

How does this sort of part of Derby change by night, then?

It becomes a sort of, you would say, a red light district, of the city.

-Really?

-Yeah.

So, will there be prostitutes, working here tonight?

They do, most nights.

So, I can see a girl on the corner here, wearing a short skirt,

and she's obviously white, there's three of them here,

it's quite obvious, isn't it?

We've had problems with prostitution for a very long time.

On this corner, you can see, you know...

So I can see a girl there.

I can see two girls, one on each corner.

And you go down 300 yards

and there's Muslim chaps been to read their late prayer.

I just saw a couple of girls who look like prostitutes, all in the same street.

It's amazing, actually, that you have this very religious Pakistani community,

but right next door to them,

on the same street, you've got this prostitution.

The prostitution, it brings all the crime to the areas.

People are coming into Normanton for drugs.

So, for some Pakistani men, the traditional ones,

that perhaps weren't born here, that have come here recently,

to see white prostitutes on their street corners,

do you think that can have an effect?

You don't know whose a prostitute, who is not,

who is over the age of 16, and who's not.

And you can see how easy it is for people,

regardless of background, to get involved in these sorts of acts.

By night, this place has completely changed.

It's hard to believe that, only a few hours ago,

Pakistani families were here doing their grocery shopping.

Now, in Derby, this is the place to come if you want drugs,

drink, or prostitution.

This street's problems don't in any way excuse what these men did.

But now that I've spent time here at night,

I can see how this environment could be

a potential breeding ground for sexual exploitation.

The next day, Normanton Road is once again a family-friendly shopping street.

This is the area where the men behind these crimes grew up.

And I want to find out a bit more about them.

I've arranged to meet up with the chairman of the local Pakistani community centre.

Why is it happening in the Pakistani community then?

I wish I knew the answer to that.

In Derby's case, for example, it wasn't about money.

It wasn't about prostitution itself. That's not what came out of this case.

So, they weren't charging lots of money and making money?

They already had flash cars, anyway.

There was no evidence that what they were doing was pimping the girls out.

In this particular case, it was nothing more than actual entertainment.

You know, it was about using and abusing the girls,

for their own pleasure and, more than anything,

what emerged from the case was, it was like a level of bravado.

Sort of passing the girls onto someone else,

saying "look what I brought you, look what I've got,

"look what I can bring to the table."

The idea that the sexual abuse of a teenage girl is a way

to gain respect is sickening.

But it tells me a lot about the mindset of these gangs.

The rules they're living by are not the same as the rest of us.

They seem to be prepared to use any means to get what they want,

as one mum I arranged to meet knows only too well.

I'm in Yorkshire, but I can't say exactly where.

We won't be filming her in her real home,

and you won't hear her voice or see her face.

That's because the family are afraid that they'll be threatened

if they're recognised.

We're calling her Mary.

When she realised her 12-year-old daughter had been

groomed by a gang of Asian men, she was forced to investigate,

to try to stop the continued abuse.

-This file is full of information that you've gathered.

-It is, yeah.

-These are notes you've made on each of them?

-Yeah.

The ages, what they look like.

As soon as we were digging and digging more, then we were targeted.

They threatened to come and kill us.

They came to the house, they did that to the garage.

So, this mentions your daughter's name and some horrific insults.

Yeah. And they put placards all over the village,

planks of wood with the same kind of derogatory...

So other people could see.

Yeah. Our daughter was absolutely terrified.

You know, she'd lock herself in the house.

But when they came, she had no option but to go with them

because they threaten to kill us, you see,

-or threatened to firebomb the house.

-Oh, dear.

'It took three years, but despite the terrifying campaign of intimidation,

'Mary's daughter eventually got away from the gang.

'But she was still so afraid, she couldn't give enough details

'to the police for the men to be charged.'

How does it affect you and your daughter when you see Asian or Pakistani men?

We're absolutely fine, because we know that there are only certain ones that are bad.

We know that everybody else is not like them.

I feel ashamed.

I'm finding it hard to accept that these guys are Pakistanis,

because in the Pakistani community, we are taught about family values.

That is at the heart of being Pakistani, it's about family values.

And yet, these guys are destroying families.

Somehow, men who grew up with the same clear moral code as me

think the sexual abuse of young teenage girls is acceptable.

But why?

What I really want to try and find out is whether

there's anything within the Pakistani community itself

that could be a contributing factor to all of this.

One of the ways British Pakistanis have upheld traditional values

is by weddings arranged between families

or within the same religious sect, caste, or clan.

The often successful practice of cousin marriage is carried out

by as many as half of all British Pakistanis.

But, could it be that this survival technique

has now become the very thing pushing some young British Asians into secretive sex lives?

MUSIC: "A New London Eye" by Asian Dub Foundation

# Moments flashing, cultures clashing, every single day, yeah

# Number crunching box-a-ticking pastime activity, yeah

# Words are spinnin', people grinnin', careful what you say

# Seen through my London eye... #

I've come back to Burnley.

I'm meeting a group of four mates, two Pakistani and two Bangladeshi.

I want to find out whether they have trouble

balancing parental expectations and relationships.

Are you guys expected to marry within, not only religion,

but perhaps within caste, within communities?

Is that, kind of...?

It's sort of the done thing to do.

Even, some people, they marry

sort of relatives back home in Pakistan, Bangladesh or India.

If, you and a girlfriend, are you able to openly have a relationship?

No, no. That's out of the question.

Why is that out of the question?

Because, it's Asian values, it's religion, it's religion as well.

Because the majority of people here here are Muslim,

so you have that big major divide, as in, guys and girls.

So does that mean that there are no Asian lads in Burnley going out with girls?

They are, but it's all undercover. The parents would be totally oblivious to it.

And then it comes down to, because when you see a guy,

for a girlfriend, he'll favour a white girl,

but then, for a wife, he'll favour an Asian lass.

A lot of the white girls, and I'm not meaning to stereotype,

when you're 17, 18, 19-years-old,

very few of them will be thinking about marriage.

A lot of them, just want to have fun and getting on, and stuff like that.

With an Asian girl, as soon as you get with an Asian girl,

they will think marriage and stuff like that.

So a lot of Asian guys will tend to stay away from Asian girls.

Say, when you go out to a nightclub or something, just to have a bit of fun on the lash with the lads,

you won't see many Asian girls, if you go out in Burnley.

It is a closed community, in that way.

Everyone sort of knows each other.

If an Asian girl was seen out in the club,

before the night ended, her family would know it.

It is the same for the lad, as well.

Have you guys shown restraint? Never have girlfriends?

Of course! No. No!

Never have girlfriends?

-No.

-No.

-No, no?

-Not on camera, anyway!

-THEY LAUGH

It's Saturday night in Burnley, and it doesn't take long for me

to see what the lads were talking about.

One thing that's clearly obvious to me here,

for a town that's got a sizeable Pakistani community,

I haven't seen one Pakistani boy or girl here on a night out.

Looking around, I realise that,

whilst I may only be a mile away from the town's Asian area,

it seems a world away.

The only Asian faces are working in the takeaways and driving taxis.

It's 4.00am now, in Burnley, and the revellers

have made it up the road from the bars where the drinks were cheap.

They're staggering out of the clubs and they're pretty hammered.

This is the kind of Saturday night display

seen in towns and cities up and down the country.

But it's one way of letting inhibitions go that's not an option for young British Asians.

I'm wondering if the strong moral code Asians are expected to live by,

including no sex before marriage,

means that young British Pakistanis simply don't act this way.

Or, are these taboo behaviours just sent underground?

-Hi, Salaam aleikum.

-Salaam, how you doing?

I'm very well, thank you. Lovely place you have.

'I've come to meet a Muslim writer and relationship counsellor,

who advocates being more open about sex.

He also happens to be an Imam.

So, you've worked quite a lot in the area of marriage

and relationships, sexual health, etc?

Why are a lot of Asian Pakistani people growing up thinking

you just don't even talk about it, that it is the greatest ever taboo?

It is the greatest gift God has given us, as far as Islam is concerned.

Without that gift, you and I wouldn't be here on this earth.

I think there is an unhealthy attitude towards sex and sexuality, in Pakistani men.

Not just Pakistani men, but Asian men.

Parents tend to shy away from discussing the topic.

It isn't allowed, in Islam, as far as they're concerned.

I had a guy who recently spoke to me, saying,

when he got married, before he got married, his uncle advised,

"Their girls, just use them and forget about them."

So, the uncle said, you're about to get married.

The advice from the uncle to the nephew was,

"It's a girl. We use them for sex."

It's a dirty thing you do anyway.

As soon as you've sex, make sure you jump out and have a shower.

I mean that kind of a sick mindset that is being perpetuated

by some families or some individuals, it's pretty unhealthy.

In my view, a contributory factor that people are forced into

or emotionally blackmailed into preserving their family honour

by marrying their cousins not a good thing.

You can also put in to that caste, and bradhri

which they call as caste, because that's also another issue as well,

because all these things, if you're required to marry

within a certain caste or marry a cousin

that limits the girls you can marry

and if you're not in a happy situation,

and like most marriages if people aren't happy,

-they tend to go elsewhere looking for that happiness.

-And they do, indeed.

Many young people do exactly that. They get married to their cousins

whilst they retain their girlfriends.

And this, almost contradictory personality, does contribute

to an unhealthy attitude towards sex and sexual relationships.

And what about the attitude towards white girls? Is there an issue there?

The majority are respectful, I believe.

Some are thinking to themselves, "OK, I don't want to do rubbish

"in my own front yard, do I? I don't want to do that, so I am going to

"go and find white girls, the girls that are not my own communities."

That attitude, that they are perhaps cheap, perhaps value-less,

that attitude is very wrong. We cannot treat human beings like this.

We are all human beings, not cheap meat.

I thought it was really refreshing to hear Ajmal talk about

this notion of an unhealthy attitude to sex amongst certain sections

of the Pakistani community,

and I know some people will be very uneasy hearing that.

But I think it's really important. I think a lot of the things

that Ajmal Masroor talked about, really do ring true with me.

I've seen it and I've heard about it

right at the heart of the Pakistani community.

The British Pakistani population is made up

of many different communities but the grooming cases

that have come to light have been almost entirely in the North

and Midlands of England.

I'm wondering whether geography has influenced these crimes,

not just where British Pakistanis live now,

but where their families came from back home.

I'm meeting former specialist sexual offences lawyer

and Bolton MP, Yasmin Qureshi.

There doesn't seem to be as many cases down south.

It seems to be, mainly, a Northern thing and the Midlands.

-That's the interesting factor here.

-Well, it's because different...

different groups of people came in the South and settled there.

I used to live in London before and worked there.

And you can see that generally there's more integration

between communities.

You very rarely find a school which will have

just say 80% of one nationality. It will be a mixed group of people.

And also a lot of the people who came and settled in the South

were people who came from educated background

or sort of, you know, much more literate background -

people who knew or the parents who knew about some of the dangers

their children are subjected to.

Because, up here in the north, a lot of the families

and a lot of the fathers, they came here to work in the mills.

Are you suggesting that they weren't as educated as the city dwellers?

-I don't want anyone to think that if you don't have education it means...

-This is going to happen.

..this is going to happen.

But there is that element you can't take away from the fact that,

a lot of the people have come from either Kashmir or from Pakistan.

And it is true that some of the communities are still

culturally very traditional in the sense that...

And when you say Kashmiri,

we mean a very rural, village part of Pakistan and perhaps

in large part the most undeveloped part of Pakistan and India.

And there's a big, big migration from Kashmir,

in the northern parts as well.

But there's a very tiny, tiny - and we really have to put this

in perspective very tiny handful of young men who have deviated

this way but I think it's happening in the rest of society as well.

I found what Yasmin Quereshi had to say really interesting,

particularly these issues of family background and cultural factors

but as much as they're a part of Pakistani community,

we mustn't forget that these groomers are also part of British society.

Pakistani and Bangladeshi Britons are almost three times as likely

to be poor as the rest of the population

but you can't blame these crimes on poverty alone.

Society as a whole needs to find an answer to this but only a fraction

of the men responsible have ever been brought to justice.

In 2009, Barnardo's found that almost 3,000 children were believed

to have been victims of sexual exploitation

but there were just 89 convictions.

I'm on my way back to see Emma,

who endured three years of abuse after being groomed

at the age of 12.

I'm meeting her dad too, to discover how the family dealt

with the aftermath of sexual exploitation.

She'd said that she was being raped

and you automatically think that somebody's grabbed her from behind

and sexually assaulted and raped her.

But then it was that she was being raped on a regular basis,

by this gang and you just can't imagine as a father

what that feels like.

Still now, we don't know everything that Emma went through.

And what we do know, is quite horrendous.

You wouldn't put a dog through that.

Just take us through what happened, once Emma had confessed

and told you what happened.

We got no protection whatsoever from the police

and this is organised crime

so we were dealing with individuals who are quite dangerous.

-So we dropped charges.

-We dropped the charges.

They also lost all the evidence so I'd saved clothes that

I'd been sexually assaulted in and they had lost all of them.

-They lost the evidence?

-Yes.

They just brought him in for questioning

and he just said, "No comment," all the way through

and made a statement through his solicitor and that was it.

It's worse than what happened to a degree and that may sound silly

but you're expecting these people to actually know what they're doing

and protect your child and that didn't happen.

The police who dealt with Emma insist that they conducted

a thorough investigation before she dropped charges

and that she was paid £140 for the loss of her clothes.

The authorities seem to be waking up to this problem

but only this year, a Government report

found that less than a quarter of the local bodies

tasked with looking after vulnerable children

had a plan to deal with sexual exploitation.

It seems to me that unless more local authorities

and police forces tackle this appalling crime head on,

the men responsible will carry on, thinking they can get away with it.

I've come back to Derby, one last time.

Police here were successful in their investigation and prosecution

of Operation Retriever and I want to find out why.

Today their child exploitation investigation unit are serving

an abduction notice, a warning to a man whose relationship

with a 14-year-old is thought to be inappropriate.

It's a very good tool. It makes sure that the suspect is well aware

of how old the child is.

It will either prevent him from further contact with that child

or help support a prosecution.

Although the man being served with the notice

doesn't want to be filmed, I'm allowed to sit in.

If you do not co-operate with this request and this young person

is traced to your home or is found in your presence,

then you are liable to arrest and prosecution

under section 2 of the Child Abduction Act 1984,

which carries a maximum sentence of seven years imprisonment.

Thanks for your time.

The police are showing the guy out now and he's an Indian Sikh guy,

from Derby and his side of the story is that he didn't think

this girl was 14, this girl that he claims he's only seen once

and went round to her house for drinks.

He said that she said she was 17 or 18.

And then when he texted her saying, "I didn't think you were 14 -

"again she repeated that and claimed that her dad

"was all right with it anyway."

That's the problem with sexual exploitation cases.

They're often based on he said, she said - the word of a teenage girl

against an adult man.

And that's why the CCTV and other forensic evidence,

gathered in the Operation Retriever case were so important.

It took the burden of proof away from vulnerable victims.

I think that if more police forces adopted preventative techniques

like Derbyshire, there needn't be victims in the first place.

And it's not just the authorities changing their tactics.

British Pakistanis have an important role to play in preventing

these crimes too and there's signs that they're starting to take on

this responsibility.

In Manchester, I'm off to Friday prayers.

I am quite looking forward to hearing the sermon today

because this Imam is known to be quite outspoken.

These are very heinous, very serious crimes.

Let us make sure that we are talking to our children.

If we don't tell them, talk about the birds and the bees as they say,

then the playground will.

And they won't do it in the context of morality, of family life,

they will do it from the point of view of gratification.

I'm impressed by what Imam Asad Zaman has said today.

Talking about sex in a sermon is practically unheard of.

I've been meeting up with and speaking to quite a few people

about this over the last few months and only now do I see

a more openness from people to want to talk about grooming.

I really hope that it's a sign that the community is ready

to have a more honest and open debate

about this really hideous crime.

Thousands of childhoods have been stolen by sexual exploitation.

Every single one of those victims has to find a way

to put their lives back together again -

just like Emma Jackson.

She's managed to build a new life after the horrific abuse

she suffered, even though the men responsible

were never brought to justice.

This is my room.

OK, so this isn't the house that you grew up in then.

No, this is a completely different house in a different area.

Emma has written a book about her experiences

and has a job helping other victims of sexual exploitation.

How do you feel when you look back and think about that little girl

that got involved with Tarik and all these guys?

I think the worst thing about it is them years that I'll never get back.

I'll never ever go to me school prom,

I'll never ever be able to get them years back where I'd get excited

about taking my A-levels and going to university.

And what about your attitude to Asian men?

How do you feel now, sat here, on your bed with a Pakistani guy?

Fine. You know, most of my friends

are Asian, my boyfriend is.

So your boyfriend now - is he Pakistani?

Yeah, so I've got no issues.

It's not a thing about them being Pakistani.

I think we seem to use that a lot because it draws attention away

from what it actually is and we're talking about kids being abused.

And this is a handful of people that are in community

and that's all it is.

Emma's words sum the situation up better than I ever could.

On-street grooming is not a problem in the whole Pakistani population.

It's a problem we must all tackle head on.

Talk must become action.

The British Pakistani community have to speak out about this,

to separate themselves the law-abiding community -

from the criminal fraternity.

Because if they don't, it'll appear as if they are not willing

to accept this is going on right on their doorstep.

And if you bear in mind sexual exploitation can affect each

and every one of us, it's down to us all to find a solution.

And that's the most important thing,

so that we can make sure there are no more victims like Emma.

# I fly like pepper, get high like planes

# If you catch me at the border, I've got visas in my name

# If you come around, hey, I'll make them all day

# I'll get one done in a second if you wait

# I fly like pepper, get high like planes

# If you catch me at the border, I've got visas in my name

# If you come around, hey, I'll make them all day

# I'll get one done in a second if you wait... #

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