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1383/100k vs 10/100k isn't based on comparing like-for-like, though. AFAICT, that report doesn't list it based on working-class grouping. And if we were to take an average of the 3 numbers you calculated instead of picking the lowest one (as the 1383 count is an average over multiple years, it's quite possible that it varied from 600/100k to 1800/100k in any given year, if the range was anything similar to Ireland), then it'd be about 60x.
Is 60x believable? Depends on your perspective, I suppose. I personally find 100x easily believable when comparing one particularly vulnerable subset of one population to the entirety of another (both being the <18 subset, of course) and would barely blink even if it were 1000x, because humanity is truly diverse. But if you find 100x unbelievable, perhaps 60x is unbelievable as well.
This is a valid point. For the sake of argument, let's say that for each year in Ireland, 82.5% of the victims of defilement were girls under the age of 17. That would imply that the per capita rates for Irish girls <17 was 18/100k in 2005, 48/100k in 2008 and 51/100k in 2009, for an average of 39/100k across the entire period. That would shorten the odds substantially, implying that a white working-class teenaged girl in the UK is 35 times more likely to be sexually exploited by a Pakistani grooming gang than an Irish girl under the age of 18 is to be defiled by anyone.
But I have to admit: I still have a hard time believing that the UK's rate of sex crimes is >=30 times higher than Ireland's. If you told me it was double, I'd have no trouble believing that. 5 times? No question. 10 times? Well within the realm of possibility. But 30 times or more? That strains credibility.
And bear in mind: 1,383/100k isn't the rate at which white working-class teenaged girls get sexually exploited by anyone, but by Pakistani grooming gangs specifically. If we assume that most defilements in Ireland in the period were committed by co-ethnics (e.g. (extended) family members, teachers, Catholic priests etc.), then if the intra-ethnic rate of sexual exploitation of children is broadly similar across Ireland and the UK, white working-class teenaged girls in Briton would have had to contend with this risk in addition to their risk of sexual exploitation by Pakistani grooming gangs. So if the 250k figure is correct, that implies that the difference between the two countries is significantly higher than 35x.
I don't think you should assume that the two victim sets aren't at least partially coinciding, though that's kind of irrelevant here.
Fair point.
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