TWELVE MORE RAPE GANG ARRESTS IN KIRKLEES
THREE QUESTIONS WEST YORKSHIRE POLICE AND REFORM UK CANNOT RUN FROM.
On Monday, twelve more men were arrested in Kirklees over allegations of rape, sexual assault and trafficking of a girl aged between 14 and 16. The offences allegedly took place between 2006 and 2009. The woman reported them in 2023. We do not know yet whether she reported them whilst she was a child.
These are allegations at this stage, not convictions. But the announcement raises three serious questions that demand answers.
FIRST: Why have West Yorkshire Police not disclosed the ethnic backgrounds of these twelve suspects?
After the damning findings of Baroness Casey's audit last year, there can be no excuses. She exposed years of shoddy ethnicity recording and institutional reluctance to even discuss the backgrounds of grooming gang perpetrators.
Her examination of West Yorkshire Police's own records from 2020-24 found that 35% of CSE suspects were recorded as Asian, 34% White, and a staggering 24% missing any ethnicity information at all.
Casey demanded mandatory recording of suspects' ethnicity and nationality. The government accepted her recommendation. So have West Yorkshire Police recorded this data for all twelve of these latest suspects? If so, why keep it hidden from the public, even in anonymised form?
After the failures Casey exposed, we deserve a straight answer on exactly what information the police have and what they are prepared to put on the record. No more obfuscation. No more evasion.
SECOND: Where is the public response from Sarah Wood, Reform UK's leader of Kirklees Council?
Wood called the grooming scandal the defining issue of her generation. She promised openness, transparency and unstinting cooperation with any investigation.
Yet since Monday's bombshell announcement of twelve further arrests, I've not heard a word from the council leader on this latest outrage right under her nose.
- Has she demanded an urgent briefing from West Yorkshire Police?
- Has she asked whether Kirklees children's services held any information about this alleged abuse between 2006-2009?
- Has she issued a statement reassuring the public that she and her team of Reform UK councillors will do everything possible to ensure that the cover ups and failures that has plagued Kirklees for decades will not be repeated now they are in charge?
These questions matter because Kirklees Council's own independent reviewer, Dr Mark Peel, previously identified serious missed opportunities to protect exploited girls during those very same years.
Now, another woman has reported being sexually abused as a child in Kirklees. The pattern is all too familiar. Twelve more men have been arrested.
What exactly is the Reform administration doing now? The public has a right to know.
THIRD: Why has Reform UK still not called an Extraordinary Council Meeting on the National Inquiry?
The law is crystal clear. Under the Local Government Act 1972 and Kirklees Council's own constitution, a group of just five councillors can force an Extraordinary Meeting. If the mayor refuses, those councillors can take matters into their own hands and convene it themselves.
Fiona Callow and Richard Edwards
Reform won 29 seats in May. Even after some defections, they have far more than the five needed.
When I challenged Wood publicly, asking why no Extraordinary Council Meeting had been called, her feeble response was: “Maybe Raja is not aware? It is not within my power to make this happen. Only the enquiry can choose this by law. What I can do I have done. If the enquiry comes to Reform Kirklees I will ensure from what is within my power that no stone is left unturned.”
I’m sorry if you vote Reform. Your Council Leader in Kirklees is deceiving you. I did not claim Wood has the power to name Kirklees in the National Inquiry. I called for her to call an Extraordinary Council Meeting to write to Baroness Longfield demanding Kirklees is named in one.
It is 100% within Wood’s power to call an Extraordinary Council Meeting and present a motion to the full council demanding that the National Inquiry name Kirklees as one of its locations.
I urge her to call that Extraordinary Council Meeting as a matter of urgency. The survivors of these heinous crimes deserve nothing less.
Next door in Bradford, Tory councillors used this same power to secure an Extraordinary Meeting on 24 June, where they debated demanding inclusion in the National Inquiry. Reform councillors took part and even proposed an amendment.
Yet in Kirklees, nothing. Not a squeak. Why the hell not?
Kirklees Council rules allow a councillor backed by five others to demand a recorded vote. This would etch into the public record exactly how every single councillor voted on a motion calling for Kirklees to be included in the Inquiry.
Labour, Tory, Lib Dem, Reform, Green - nowhere to hide. Each would have to stand up and be counted. A council vote can't force Baroness Longfield's hand. But it can nail the council's colours to the mast and present an irrefutable case for statutory scrutiny.
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So why hasn't Sarah Wood rounded up a measly five signatures to haul this before the full council?
Kirklees has a grim history of grooming gang prosecutions stretching back decades. It has documented safeguarding failures. Convicted child rapists fleeing abroad.
Its own reviewer warned in 2019 that his investigation was no substitute for a public inquiry. Now police are announcing another twelve arrests and keeping the ethnicity hidden.
This isn't about whether Kirklees has a serious CSE problem. The courts settled that long ago.
This is about whether those in power, those who catastrophically failed to protect children, will finally face the unflinching scrutiny that only a statutory inquiry can deliver.
Sarah Wood claims she's done all she can. She has not.
Five councillors. That's all it takes to trigger an Extraordinary Meeting.
Why will Reform UK not call one in Kirklees?
Raja Miah MBE
My name is Raja Miah MBE. For eight years I have exposed how politicians, police and public bodies failed working class White girls who were systematically raped by Pakistani grooming gangs. Together, with the support of the people of Oldham, we forced the Government to concede a National Statutory Inquiry after years of resistance.
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