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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 22, 2026

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It's-a mea culpa.

Last week there was some discussion of Rupert Lowe's report on Pakistani grooming gangs in the UK. I accepted the already infamous estimate of 250k victims uncritically, assuming that this number included all victims in the period 1970-2018. But according to this article, the report actually claims that the figure of 250k victims only includes those in the period 2000-18. The linked article tries to come up with a more accurate estimate of the total number of victims.

I was wrong to accept that specific claim at face value, and wrong to disagree with people who were suspicious of it. I think the real figure might be an order of magnitude lower – still a national outrage, mind you, and a far greater scandal than the clerical abuse scandals of the 2000s.

I think this article makes a big mistake by trying to make a distinction between victims who were "actually raped" versus just other victims of exploitation. We have a bit of hyperbole and motte and bailey, but i think it's totally reasonable to read the claims of the original report as claiming that there were approx 250k victims of rape gangs overall, and not specifically that they all met the legal definition of rape. To me this seems like a massive nitpick.

Exactly. Debooonkers of this number are also likely ones who didn't have any issue with the '1/3 males in college will rape somebody' study that has been cited for a decade+ now or other insane flourishes of the #metoo era.

The relevant issue is that there are significant number of your Pakistani neighbors who could call up some friends to gang rape your daughter and their extended clan network will overlook it while the police ignore it to preserve "community cohesion". There is no way back from here.