Latest news with #AndrewNorfolk
Telegraph
21-06-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
It is time to suspend Dominic Grieve's anti-Islamophobia group
There have been too many casualties in the grooming gang scandal. Yet so far, the political consequences have been few. It is far from clear however that Dominic Grieve's Anti-Muslim Hatred/Islamophobia Definition Working Group can, or should, survive this week's fall out. What a few weeks ago was dismissed as 'dog-whistle' politics or the agenda of the 'far-Right' – the scandal of mass grooming of girls by mostly Pakistani origin males – is now viewed very differently. This shifting ground greatly impacts attempts to establish a definition of 'Islamophobia ' – controversially signposted by Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner in February. A new Policy Exchange report How Not to Tackle Grooming Gangs: The National Grooming Gang Inquiry and a Definition of Islamophobia details just how difficult it has been, for over two decades, to describe openly what people could see about grooming gangs with their own eyes. Let four examples suffice here. For her past work on Rotherham, Louise Casey was put forward for an 'Islamophobe of the year award' by one activist group. The late journalist Andrew Norfolk was vilified, as was then Labour MP for Keighley, Ann Cryer. In 2020, when broadcaster Trevor Phillips was suspended by Labour for alleged Islamophobia, the first charge listed was journalism where he had written of 'the exposure of systematic and longstanding abuse by men, mostly of Pakistani Muslim origin in the North of England.' How ridiculous this orthodoxy now looks. On one level, Government appears to accept this new reality. On Monday the Home Secretary declared 'those vile perpetrators who have grown used to the authorities looking the other way must have no place to hide.' As she spoke, she was surrounded by female Labour MPs who appeared chastened by the weight of events. And yet, there are grounds for pessimism. For the national inquiry into grooming gangs to work it cannot be placed in a straitjacket. It will need to shine a torchlight into every Whitehall office, every stalled police inquiry, each Town Hall in England, and every licensing arrangement between a local authority and a taxi firm. Its hands cannot be tied by political, social or religious considerations. As Yvette Cooper spoke in the Commons, others were risking that very scenario. The call for evidence by Grieve's working group is underway, as he seeks to develop a new definition of Islamophobia. While ministers have said this would not be statutory, if accepted by the public and private sector (as activists will demand) it would in practice become binding policy if not law. To that backdrop, how confident would a care worker, teacher or local councillor in Rochdale or Rotherham be, about speaking openly on issues which concern them? Angela Rayner should thank Dominic Grieve and his team for their work, then put the group on ice. If the grooming gang inquiry finds fears of prejudice and Islamophobia have undermined the response to grooming gangs, then the retirement of the Islamophobia Definition Working Group must become permanent.
Sky News
19-06-2025
- Politics
- Sky News
Whitehall officials tried to convince Lord Gove to cover up grooming scandal, he tells Sky News
Whitehall officials tried to convince Lord Michael Gove to go to court to cover up details of a report into the grooming scandal in 2011, he has said, confirming Sky News reporting earlier this week. Speaking to Sky's Politics Hub With Sophy Ridge, the former senior cabinet minister said it is "undoubtedly the case that more should have been done" to prevent the abuse of young girls in Britain, admitting that it weighs on him. The allegations of an attempted cover-up were first made to Sky News by former Downing Street adviser Dominic Cummings in an interview with Sky News, and the claims were substantiated by other sources as well. Mr Cummings was working for Lord Gove, who was then education secretary. Lord Gove explained that in 2011, he learned that the late Times journalist Andrew Norfolk, who he described as "a heroic reporter who did more than anyone to initially uncover this scandal", was seeking to publish details of a report from Rotherham Council about the abuse and grooming of young girls. He said: "Rotherham Council wanted to stop that happening. They wanted to go to court to prevent him publishing some details, and we in the Department for Education were asked by the council, 'would we join in, would we be a party to that court action to stop it?' "And I had to look at the case, advised by Dominic [Cummings] and by others, and there were some within the department, some officials who said, 'be cautious, don't allow this to be published, there may be risks for relatives of the victims concerned." 1:56 Rotherham Council also argued that publication may pose "risks" to the process of "improving in the way in which it handles" grooming cases, he continued. The judicial review wanted by officials would have asked a judge to decide about the lawfulness of The Times' publication plans and the consequences that would flow from this information entering the public domain. But Lord Gove said: "My view at the time, advised by Dominic and by others within the department, was that it was definitely better for it to be published." "So we said to Rotherham, we will join the case, but we're joining it on the side of the Times and Andrew Norfolk because we believe in transparency." 1:11 'Tough questions' for Whitehall Lord Gove went on to say that a national inquiry could see some "tough questions" asked of the Home Office about its culture and its interactions with the police. But those questions will also be posed to two departments he led - the Department for Local Government and the Department of Education, and he said: "I think it's right that there should be, because the nature and scale of what the victims have endured means that there's an obligation on all of us who've been in any form of elected office to be honest and unsparing in looking at what went on." He said he "certainly didn't have the knowledge at my command that we now do about the widespread nature of this activity". 'Not nearly enough' progress made Sophy Ridge put to Lord Gove that despite commissioning a report on what was happening to girls in care, and not seeking to block the publication of Andrew Norfolk's reporting, he still failed to make change. He replied: "Yes, so it is undoubtedly the case that more should have been done." He admitted that it "absolutely" weighs on him, and that "not nearly enough" progress was made on the protection of vulnerable girls. "With the benefit of hindsight, I do wish that I had been more vehement in trying to persuade people to take appropriate action," he said. 1:36 Local government 'sought to deny scale' of scandal The now Spectator editor went on to say that there was "pushback, particularly but not exclusively, from those in local government" to subsequent questions about cultural background, and he said "local councillors and others sought to deny the scale of what was happening and particularly, sought to deny questioning about the identity and the background of the perpetrators". He continued: "I think the right thing to do is for everyone to acknowledge that sometimes there were people who were acting from noble motives, who did not want to increase ethnic and racial anxieties, who did not to fan far-right flames, and thought that it was better to step away from the really grim reality of what was going on. "I can understand that. But ultimately, that didn't serve anyone. It did not serve the victims."
Yahoo
25-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Andrew Norfolk, tenacious reporter who broke the story of the grooming gangs scandal
Andrew Norfolk, who has died aged 60, was the dogged investigative journalist who braved accusations of racism and the hostility of officialdom to uncover the widespread existence of Asian grooming gangs in the north of England. The first intimation of one of the most dismaying British public scandals of the century so far was a report by Norfolk that appeared on the front page of The Times on January 5 2011, under the headline: 'Revealed: conspiracy of silence on UK sex gangs.' He disclosed that for more than a decade child protection experts had been cataloguing repeated instances of groups of men, mostly of Pakistani origin, befriending and grooming vulnerable under-age girls, usually white, whom they met in the street. 'No research has been carried out into why such a high proportion of the offenders belong to one minority ethnicity,' Norfolk wrote, 'and with the exception of one town there is scant evidence of work being undertaken in British Pakistani communities to confront the problem.' He quoted the view of DCI Alan Edwards of West Mercia Police that a 'damaging taboo' was preventing police forces, local authorities and charities from acknowledging the scale of the problem. As Edwards put it: 'To stop this type of crime you need to start talking about it, but everyone's been too scared to address the ethnicity factor. No one wants to stand up and say that Pakistani guys in some parts of the country are recruiting young white girls and passing them around their relatives for sex.' The report provoked a national outcry and the rapid announcement by the Coalition government of an inquiry. It was one of the great scoops of the decade. And yet, for many years beforehand Norfolk had talked himself out of pursuing the story. Shortly after being appointed North-East correspondent of The Times in 2003, he had reported on the concerns raised by Ann Cryer, the Labour MP for Keighley in West Yorkshire, about groups of Pakistani men hanging around outside schools and targeting teenage girls for sex. Although the parents of several girls complained that the police and social services were ignoring pleas to take action, Norfolk decided not to investigate in depth. 'Liberal angst kicked instinctively into top gear,' he recalled. 'If I'm honest, I didn't want the story to be true because it made me deeply uncomfortable… [It] was always going to be the far Right's fantasy story come true.' Over the next half a dozen years, however, 'regular prodding of my conscience' came from reading frequent reports of gangs of men preying on girls aged between 11 and 15, using the same modus operandi and 'inevitably [with] Muslim names'. He decided to investigate but received no co-operation from the police, or from the larger children's charities such as Barnardo's. Eventually two small organisations that worked with children put him in touch with people whose daughters had been groomed and forced to have sex with several older men. His stories caused a sensation, and in 2012 he was promoted to chief investigative reporter. He continued to delve into the grooming scandal, focusing on Rotherham, where he found that one girl living in a children's home had been taken to Greater Manchester and raped by 50 men in one night, while a 13-year-old girl found naked in a flat with seven men had been arrested for being drunk and disorderly with no action taken against the men. Norfolk had to hold his nerve when one trial collapsed and colleagues at The Times began to question the wisdom of pursuing the story. But in 2012 he produced evidence culled from confidential documents 'that laid bare a decade in which senior council officials and police officers knew exactly what was happening to hundreds of girls in the town, and often the names of the men committing the offences, yet invariably chose to look the other way'. In 2014 he was happy to observe that there had been 'a steady transformation, for the better, in the stance adopted towards child sexual exploitation by police forces, local authorities, the Crown Prosecution Service and the judiciary'. The inquiry report published that year by Prof Alexis Jay, which identified more than 1,400 young victims in Rotherham, led to several police misconduct investigations and the resignation of the chief executive of Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council. Norfolk always took care to point out that most grooming of young girls in Britain was carried out online by white men, but nevertheless endured a torrent of accusations of racism for focusing on Asian perpetrators. He regretted that, inevitably, aspects of his reports fuelled racist rhetoric from the far Right. 'There have been many days,' Norfolk once admitted, 'when I secretly longed for it all to come to an end. It was just too bleak, the details of the crimes too grotesque, too calculated to make one utterly despair of human nature.' He was reluctant to accept praise for his dedication. 'It was always the girls and their families who kept me going… They are the closest this tale will ever come to having heroes or heroines.' Andrew Mark Norfolk was born in Canterbury on January 8 1965, the son of David Norfolk, a teacher and Methodist lay preacher, and his wife Olive, née Bellerby. The family later moved to Harrogate when David Norfolk was appointed headmaster of the Methodist school Ashfield College, where Andrew excelled academically and as a sportsman. He read English at Durham University and became a trainee at the Scarborough Evening News before joining the Yorkshire Post in 1995. The most modest and mild-mannered of journalists, Norfolk only secured a job at The Times after his brother applied on his behalf, attaching copies of his outstanding reports into corruption at Doncaster Council. Norfolk loathed living in London, however, and after two years insisted on being transferred to Leeds in 2002. Among other stories he investigated at The Times were allegations of abuse at more than 100 boarding schools, corruption at the trade union Unite and links between British banks and Islamist extremists. In 2014 he received the Orwell Prize and was named Journalist of the Year at the British Journalism Awards. Latterly rheumatoid arthritis obliged him to walk with a stick, and he retired in 2024. Earlier this year Norfolk criticised Elon Musk for claiming that the mainstream media had been silent on the grooming gang scandal: 'It just seems that Elon Musk, whose relationship with the truth seems so loose… clicks his fingers, shoots his mouth off and the whole British establishment responds. I find it surprising that man wields that much power.' When Musk accused Sir Keir Starmer of complicity in a cover-up, Norfolk reiterated that it was Starmer, as Director of Public Prosecutions, who had 'changed the rules to make more prosecutions possible. That happened and there was a huge increase in convictions.' He also rejected recent calls for another inquiry into the scandal: 'These girls… are being exploited all over again. Now for politicians to jump on the bandwagon again when they've been silent for so many years just strikes me as a bit shameful.' Andrew Norfolk was a dedicated smoker and lifelong Tottenham Hotspur fan with a tattoo of the club crest on his ankle. He is survived by his sister and two brothers. Andrew Norfolk, born January 8 1965, died May 8 2025 Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
The Guardian
19-05-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Andrew Norfolk obituary
The award-winning reporter Andrew Norfolk had only just retired from the Times when he agreed to appear on one of its podcasts, The Story, to talk about Elon Musk, the businessman and adviser to the US president, at the start of this year. 'This wasn't how I intended to spend my 60th birthday,' he said. Not only did Norfolk, who has died suddenly, refuse to promote his work on social media – he spent only two weeks on Twitter in 2010 as part of a deal to watch the World Cup final in South Africa – but his dogged, forensic reporting was in so many ways the antithesis to Musk's inflammatory online commentary. It was Musk's wild accusations about the grooming gangs in Britain and the failures of not just the authorities, but the media, that forced Norfolk briefly out of his retirement. 'The farcical attacks on mainstream journalism don't make sense when it comes to this story,' he said. Norfolk knew that better than most - his investigations into grooming gangs in Rotherham and cities in the north of England led to a public inquiry, which found that 1,400 children had been abused over a 16-year period. His work led to him being garlanded with awards, including the Paul Foot and Orwell prizes for journalism. When the Labour MP Ann Cryer first raised the alarm in 2003 about young girls in Keighley being groomed outside local schools, Norfolk shied away from signs of an emerging pattern of abuse among the perpetrators, for fear of feeding into 'a dream story for the far right'. The story of Rotherham was largely of vulnerable young white girls, many of them in care, being abused by men, mostly of Pakistani Muslim heritage. Years later, another case involving a 14-year-old girl being 'passed around' a group of men, while regarded with something Norfolk considered contempt by police and social workers, led him to decide 'to get over my fear that this story is impossible to cover'. His initial front page story in the Times in January 2011, headlined 'Conspiracy of silence on UK sex gangs', identified 17 cases in 13 places where 56 men had been convicted. The government launched an inquiry and his then editor James Harding put Norfolk on the story full time. His next investigations were all based around Rotherham. In one, a girl who had gone missing from a children's home 15 times in two months, was taken to a house in Greater Manchester and raped by 50 men in one night. Another told of the police, on finding a nearly naked and drunk 13-year-old girl and seven men in a flat at 2.30am, convicting the girl of being drunk and disorderly, while failing to question the men. 'The exposure to so many horrific cases of manipulation, rape and assault was gruelling,' Harding said. 'Through it all, [Norfolk] was selfless and softly spoken – except on the page.' Norfolk was accused of racism and suffered a torrent of abuse, including two death threats. He always said the plight of the victims and their survival kept him going, but he hated the suggestion that he was being racist, pointing out that an awareness that most child abuse is carried out in Britain by white men should not stop the reporting of such abuse. 'In the way most white men don't abuse their daughters and most priests don't abuse choir boys, not all Kashmiri men behave like this,' he said. When I interviewed him for the Guardian in London in 2014, I found him deeply uncomfortable at being the focus of any story; he stressed he was a 'reporter, not [a] columnist or opinion-former'. Yet, we eventually sat talking for three hours, perched on uncomfortable bar stools in a hotel near King's Cross, as he discussed the importance of the investigation. I described him as 'that increasingly rare thing, an old-school shoe-leather reporter; his investigation of what appeared to be a local issue ended up not only on national front pages and news bulletins, but questioning accepted truths and holding the powerful to account'. Even then Norfolk, a chain-smoker with the blinking demeanour of someone who spent too many hours working, was showing signs of the distress and exhaustion that led him a year later to ask to be taken off the story. Yet the controversy never really went away, nor the attacks on him. Nor his concern for his victims. In this year's podcast, he said: 'Every single child who falls victim to these men is one child too many.' Although Norfolk rarely moved south after studying English at Durham University, he was born in Canterbury, Kent, to Olive (nee Bellerby) and David Norfolk, a headteacher and Methodist lay preacher, and went to Kent college, a local private school. The family moved to Harrogate, North Yorkshire, when his father took up a post at Ashville college, where Andrew completed his schooling. After leaving university, in 1989 he joined the Scarborough Evening News, then in 1995 moved to the Yorkshire Post. His award-winning reporting of a corruption scandal in Doncaster led to a job on the Times in 2000 but, after two years there, he threatened to resign unless he could relocate to Leeds. He became chief investigative reporter a decade later, investigating abuse at some of the UK's leading boarding schools. After being showered with awards, including journalist of the year at the 2014 Press awards, he told me he had been happiest on his first newspaper job at a local paper. He loved the connection to readers and sense of making a difference, and admitted: 'I'm not from the London media world.' Suffering from rheumatoid arthritis, he retired in October 2024 after 35 years as a journalist. His work brought changes in the law and guidelines that had hampered prosecutions, and a recognition that many of the most vulnerable women and girls in society were being ignored. Rotherham council's explanation that it had ordered an independent inquiry into grooming gangs because 'the Times won't leave us alone' was a statement Norfolk described as 'in itself … vindication for being a journalist'. In Rotherham and beyond, he trawled through archives and documents and gained the trust of people who had learned to trust no one. 'It was an uncomfortable story,' he said, 'but sometimes uncomfortable truths are the ones for journalists to tell because if we don't, no one else will.' Norfolk is survived by two brothers and a sister. Andrew Mark Norfolk, journalist, born 8 January 1965; died 8 May 2025
Times
16-05-2025
- Times
Andrew Norfolk truly was righteous among men
Before she rang Andrew Norfolk, the Rotherham whistleblower Jayne Senior had already contacted several national newspaper journalists. She had told them that as a youth worker she saw many underage girls who were being groomed and raped by a local gang of British-Pakistani men. She had made notes, had names, addresses, car registrations. Were they interested? None replied — until Andrew. Righteous Among the Nations is an award given to gentiles who endangered themselves assisting Jews during the Holocaust. If there was an equivalent prize for men who put everything on the line — career, reputation, peace of mind and ultimately health — to seek justice for women and girls, it would go to my late colleague. Before he entered this story, those raising the
