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Notes -
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.
On the contrary, from what I can gather the 250k figure seems like a perfectly reasonable estimate, and is probably actually lower than the real number as the Rape Gang Inquiry Report suggests.
Firstly, the report clearly says this figure is an estimate only and the countersignallers only trying to "debunk" this figure are by disingenuously portaying as a hard statistic with bad methodology.
Secondly, while the estimate is extrapolating from data from the Rotherham inquiry (and a couple of other smaller inquiries) and you can criticise how accurate such and extrapolation can be:
You can quibble about how specifically representative Rotherham is, but basically the argument comes down to whether you this Rotherham (and some of the other local inquiries) are broadly, if imprecisely, representative of Muslims in the UK, or you think Rotherham was just some weird fluke or exception.
I have no reason to believe it isn't or wouldn't be representative, and on balance the evidence that does exist seems to suggest the opposite.
It seems grossly unjust for the entire British state apparatus to cover up, refuse to record or report statistics on this matter, and then at the same time supportors of this apparatus turn around and reject any estimate based on the infomation that is available. We all know why there isn't more information and stats being reported. The criticism is all being made in bad faith. I am yet to see a single person make a reasonable counter-estimate. I have not seen someone say, "actually 250k is maybe too high, actually 200k/100k is more reasonable for these reasons."
The approach is basically to assume that 250k is an absurd number to begin with, and then work backwards to "prove" it's false with no real counter-estimate or one that's ironically absurdly low. It's apparently not absurd to believe the official British Government estimate that 3.1 million people in the UK have experienced some kind of child sexual abuse, but it is absurd to believe that 250k is a generally reasonable estimate of those raped and abused by Muslims specifically.
The Rape Gang Inquiry Report is sloppy in some respects, I don't deny but its general thesis and reporting is correct.
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