LONDON (Reuters) – Former Labour home secretary Jack Straw said yesterday some young Pakistani men regard white girls as easy targets for sexual abuse, drawing criticism from the Muslim community and other MPs.
The Blackburn MP made his concerns public after the jailing of a mainly Asian gang who raped girls in the Derby area.
On Friday, Mohammed Liaqat, 28, and Abid Saddique, 27, were jailed at Nottingham Crown Court for raping and sexually abusing several girls aged between 12 and 18.
In an interview with BBC television Straw said he believed there was a specific problem in some areas of the country, including his own, where Pakistani men were deliberately targeting young white women because they were viewed as morally inferior.
He accused them of treating white girls as “easy meat” ripe for sexual abuse, while women in their own community remained off-limits to them.
“Pakistanis, let’s be clear, are not the only people who commit sexual offences, and overwhelmingly the sex offenders’ wings of prisons are full of white sex offenders,” he said.
“But there is a specific problem which involves Pakistani heritage men … who target vulnerable young white girls,” he added, saying there was no point in denying it was an issue and had been for years.
