King Street Cat wrote:
It's all too easy to just point at the parents and say 'you've failed as a parent'. Nobody knows the story behind how these children ended up in care, how they ended up living with single parents or how their lives have been affected by living in an area of depravation.
The parents shouldn't even be mentioned in this whole episode. What happened to these children was wrong and the blame lies with the perpetrators in the first instance. The council and police if anyone should be the ones who shoulder some of the blame for turning a blind eye.
You can't go saying you can't mention parents as it's only the perpetrators to blame and then say the council and police shoulder some of the blame.
If the police and council are "to blame" in some cases for turning a blind eye then in some cases some parents are undoubtedly "to blame" too.
Or the perpetrators are solely to blame.
Personally I place the entirety of the blame on the perpetrators but we must also hold those to account in the council, in social services, in the police, in the Asian community and, in some cases, parents or family members who should be looking after and caring for their child better. Unfortunately some parents don't care that much for their kids and some can't be bothered to parent properly. I don't for one minute think they deserved this to happen or it's their fault but then neither is it the police, the council or social services fault.
It's the fault of those who committed the acts. But there are issues surrounding it that need discussing too.
Such as the responsibility the Asian community has in self policing, the social workers not picking up/not acting on alarm bells that should've been ringing, the council and central government in not funding police/social work properly and for a target culture, parents and families who don't look after their children properly and the police who find it too easy to ignore certain things when it's too difficult, they don't like certain types of people or might affect their crime stats.
Like I said, the people to blame are those who committed the acts but all the issues I mentioned are big problems in society and government which don't work as well as they should.