Today we are featuring Triggernometry's interview with Dr Ella Hill to raise awareness of the ongoing grooming crisis and amplify the voices of its victims. Foreword by Konstantin Kisin; "While some may argue that the issue of grooming gang crime is historic and something from which we should "move on", we believe that it has now come into sharper focus with the rise of identity-based movements like BLM.
Both law and police conduct must recognise that people of *all* ethnic groups can be victims of racially-aggravated hate crimes and all must be treated equally under the law. Dr Ella Hill's story is a testament to the power of Martin Luther King Jr's beautiful dream of judging people on the content of their character - we must listen to her if we have any chance of learning to live together in harmony again."
Article follows: Featuring and highlighting this interview with Dr Ella Hill is important. It’s important because for too long the issue of systematic gang-led sexual abuse has been ignored, if not silenced. It’s this silencing which makes it incumbent upon us to share the stories of the victims, and to amplify their stories. The number of victims is hard to quantify, though we do know they number at least in the tens of thousands. We do know the Police were “scared to take action”. We do know these crimes persist, often in plain sight of the authorities.
It has taken many years for media outlets to catch up with what many communities knew through their lived experience, which is that the Police knew and permitted some of the most hideous abuses imaginable. Throughout the decades of abuse, the media has remained deafeningly silent. Though one notable exception, Jennifer Williams of the Manchester Evening News, wrote of the short lived and underfunded ‘Operation Augusta’ which was launched to investigate grooming gangs found that:
“In April 2005, a gold command meeting - the minutes of which GMP says have been lost - took place and the chief superintendent said he would be unable to devote any permanent staff to it going forward.
Augusta was to be wound down at the start of July 2005, with only one man having been prosecuted… not only did GMP [Greater Manchester Police] close the original Augusta investigation, but that it refused to reopen it as recently as August 2018, despite pleas from both Mrs Oliver and Victoria’s family”
Yet even damming exposes printed in black and white, supported by internal reviews with explicit condemnations of systematic Police failure, have not commanded the attention that ought to be focused on this ongoing crisis. No amount of “lessons learned” seems to prompt the comprehensive and decisive action needed to secure the safety of young girls. The Oxford grooming gang, busted in March of this year, operated with impunity for over 20 years before being met with arrest.
By listening to the victims, in this case Dr Ella Hill, we can understand how horrific these crimes are. We know from her brave decision to speak out that the Police flatly told her there was “nothing they could do”, on five occasions, despite her visible, and documented fractures and lacerations for which she was hospitalised. The officers in question could not be disciplined because of “missing notes”, in a not dissimilar fashion to the documented case of the missing minutes which had recorded the decision to abandon Manchester’s Operation Augusta.
For speaking out, Dr Ella Hill, far from being amplified by all those who value law, order and social justice, has faced censorship, and has been banned from Twitter. You can support her HERE.
