The UK’s ‘grooming gang’ scandal is about race, class and misogyny | Women’s Rights

“My daughter is being gang raped and sold to countless men.” These were the words, spoken by a heartbroken mother, that first alerted me to the organised rape and pimping gangs – now commonly referred to as “grooming gangs” – targeting young girls in the north of England.

It was the late 1990s and, knowing that I was a campaigner against child sexual exploitation, some of the mothers of these girls had reached out to me. They were desperate for help.

I wasn’t the first person…