I think the media are usually pretty even handed where child abuse is concerned inasmuch as ALL child abuse cases become dramatic headline news. In fact usually pretty disgustingly so. I don't think we need to pore over the usually voluminous and gratuitous content of stories about non-Asian abusers to demonstrate that to be so.

Personally speaking, I think there's been a misattribution here, insofar as I don't believe there is any evidence whatsoever for a predilection for paedophilia within Asian or Pakistani or indeed Muslim (just to cover all bases) communities. Certainly not any morso than within White communities anyway - indeed looking at the stats, less so.

The (principally White) minors being sexually manipulated and exploited in the pimping activities of these (primarily Pakistani) gangs in Northern UK towns, were all (so far as I'm currently aware) above thirteen, in other words they were pubescent teenagers and not prepubescent young children.

These men were sexually exploiting vulnerable teenagers, they were not sexually abusing prepubescent children. Some commentators see this as an irrelevancy, an obfuscation, but I don't.

The cult of sexualising teenage girls has been with us in the West -and explicitly so- until very recently; anyone fondly remember the St. Trinian's stereotype of the 'naughty schoolgirl', or 'Please Sir'? Very popular images sexualising teenage girls from only twenty or so years ago - though they wouldn't be shown today!

Another issue is that some more traditional cultures, especially those which believe in Religiously controlling female sexuality, concealing female flesh and liberty (both sexually and otherwise) haven't yet caught on to the West's gradual acceptance of feminist ideas about women's freedom of dress and behaviour and remain stuck in the old (and also often perpetrated in the West) notion that a woman who dresses in a revealing way, is somehow "asking for it."

But just like the sexualisation of teenage girls in popular Western media, such a perception of the scantily dressed women as a "seductive Eve" in in no way exclusive to Asian culture either. Again, nothing new here.

It's time to step back from political right left divides, and start looking at the kinds of ignorance which promotes this type of abuse against women that we are currently witnessing in the North or England.

As I've intimated, I don't think these gangs necessarily exhibit attitudes about 'scantily clad' women and teenage girls, which are all that different from the UK of twenty or so years ago. I think they exhibit classist and sexist attitudes which in fact pretty much echo those of Western attitudes until more recently.

However I also think the fact that the police failed to take action until recently could be equally an example of lingering institutional sexism and classism; one wonders how many of the coppers who claim "I was afraid of the racist backlash!" quietly harboured sexist and classist sentiments about the victims?