How Britain’s Criminal Justice System Let Down Grooming Gang Victims: MP Suella Braverman

the Pakistani men who were involved in this abor Behavior were targeting white girls for a specific reason they have a an outdated unacceptable view of women and the authorities fail to act because they were scared of the charge of racism it's one of the biggest National scandals in our history sella Braverman is the former Home Secretary of the United Kingdom and a conservative member of the UK Parliament we've got this problem in the UK of hate marches where islamism can be paraded on our streets and it's caused a real increase in anti-Semitism and it's made parts of our streets and our public realm noo zones for Jewish people while she was in DC for Trump's inauguration we sat down to talk about what's been happening in the UK and what the election of Donald Trump means to her and her constituents we have a crisis of free speech in the United Kingdom the police have the powers to record your information and log your details if someone somewhere happens to be offended the case is closed you will be uh considered guilty of what we call a non-crime hate incident this is American thought leaders and I'm y Kell right honorable Suella Braverman such a pleasure to have you on American thought leaders thank you very much pleasure to be here so I noticed on X that you have been following the movement of the bust of Sir Winston Churchill from in and out of the Oval Office over the years and that he's back why is that significant to you oh it's so significant because Winston Churchill is not just a British hero but a hero for western civilization and it's thanks to British uh the you know Winston Church Hill's courage Focus determination and bravery above all that Fascism and uh the Nazis were beaten with uh with thanks to the Americans of course and the Allied Forces in World War II but he symbolizes he personifies in many ways the beginning of the special relationship indeed it was he who coined the phrase the special relationship between the US and the UK and I think um you know it's symbolic and symbols are very very powerful uh today and uh the symbolism of having his bust back into the White House I think speaks volumes about the way in which this Administration views the the UK US relationship I think it's enormous Donald Trump has not just shifted the Overton window he's shattered it and that's very influential um for Upon Us in the United Kingdom when it comes to right-wing politics and what we can do to save our country and make Britain Great again we need to learn a lot from the Maga movement from the success of the Republicans under Donald Trump and really try and apply some of those lessons to UK politics right now because we are mired in the depression the recession the Doom and Gloom of socialism I'm afraid uh newly elected not a year old and we've got about four years at least uh of a socialist uh woke High immigration high taxation low growth uh Net Zero militants uh government and you know it's the British people who will suffer so there is um you know a lot that we can learn from the success here uh in the United States tell me a little bit about your background and how you got to today and oh and by the way and talking about Empire I can't tell but I can't help but notice that you're Indian yeah well how far do you back do you want me to go because um I could actually go back to the 19th century in terms of where my background we've done some research on my ancestry but um my mother is from maius and my father is from Kenya and so they were born under the British Empire in the 1940s and they grew up really with admiration and gratitude for the British Empire they saw the good that Britain did for the world in the Victorian era in the 1800s um in the 1700s and the 1800s and into the uh 20th century uh you know take India the British built the railways and the ports and the infrastructure and the irrigation and uh in maius the the legal system and the parliamentary system and in Kenya the again the railways and infrastructure and the Civil Service were all fruits of the British Empire and they laid the foundations for subsequent prosperity for these countries when they gained independence my parents came to the ukaine um in the 1960s after Independence uh was gained by their country and they met in the United Kingdom and then they made their life in the UK and then when I was an adult um I got involved in student politics at University at Cambridge University and I chaired the Cambridge University conservative Association I was studying law I qualified as a lawyer a barrister and I worked for a decade as a barrister in London and um around the country specializing in uh Public Law administrative law um and judicial review um and immigration a lot of that area of work of law takes you into the field of immigration and I defended the home office in a lot of immigration and Asylum cases as a lawyer um I then got elected to Parliament to represent um an area in Hampshire beautiful area called farum uh on the south coast and I've been the MP in farum for coming up to 10 years it will be 10 years this may and in that time uh during my parliamentary career I've served as a minister in the brexit department uh so we had the referendum in 2016 the British people voted to leave the European Union we set up a new Department called the department for exiting the EU dexu and I was a minister in that department tasked with delivering this massive constitutional change and um so I I I I served as a brexit minister under prime minister Theresa May I was then attorney general um under prime minister Boris Johnson um and then I was home secretary under Liz truss and RI and did you did you leave the May government I think you did right I did I I'm I'm one of these um politicians who has a few principles and they sometimes get in the way of they get in the way basically so um I I was very much uh a brexit Enthusiast I campaigned to leave the European Union in 2016 and I was very cheered on by the hutzpah of the British people when they decided to leave the European Union I didn't think we were going to win the referendum but we did I wanted us to take back control over our borders um because previously it was the European Union who controlled our migration policy um Take Back Control over our laws because previously it was a European Parliament that set the dictates on what laws we the limits of what our laws could be and um and I wanted us to Take Back Control of our trade policy um you know because again previously it was the European Union that dictated who we with whom we could have trade deals um so on laws borders and trade I thought there was a very um strong case and ultimately sovereignty you know the UK Parliament is the mother of all parliaments and I really felt that self-government was the right thing for us to do so that's why I voted for brexit those were my objectives unfortunately what happened under Theresa May is that the negotiations failed and she was unable to present a brexit deal that honored those objectives that I set out control of our borders control of our laws coming out of the single market and the Customs Union and full extrication from the the EU orbit and so her her deal was a failure it was called bro brexit in name only or brexit betrayal deal and it was very controversial and so I had to resign from her government because I couldn't support the deal that she had had negotiated couldn't defend it it it because it didn't satisfy the criteria that brexit represented so one of the things that we've been hearing a lot about in the US and I think in good part because of Elon Musk getting interested in the issue is this you know what's dubbed The Grooming gangs Scandal explain to me what this whole scenario is yeah I think you're right this is the first time that it's exploded into the public consciousness even though tragically the problem has been going on for over a decade and so what the problem is of the grooming gangs all more accurately the rape gangs is that in some of our towns and cities around the United Kingdom there have been organized gangs gangs of men who've targeted girls these gangs have been made up of predominantly Muslim Pakistani men and they have Target Ed White Girls poor white girls and this has been an Open Secret in these towns the authorities have been aware the teachers have been aware sometimes the girls themselves have reported the suspects the perpetrators to the police and what's happened is the authorities turned a blind eye and they didn't take sufficient or in some cases any action to arrest these perpetrators or to investigate the crimes they were scared of um backlash from Community leaders uh ultimately they didn't want to be called racist and they they were fearful and there was an Institutional cowardice on the part of the police on the part of social workers on the part of teachers on the part of elected officials who knew about this should have known better owed a duty of care to these girls and did nothing so there are two elements to this Scandal there's the the actual wrongdoing itself which is going on today and then there was a failure of the authorities to take any action and um over the years there have been reports commissioned into it which have concluded some of the things that I've just set out independently verified um there have been investigations there have been some convictions um and there has been uh recommendations to try and reform the whole of the system to try and fix this and I think the problem is is there's been a squeamishness in British Society to really tackle it headon when I was home secretary I was very keen to tackle it I went to rotheram and I went to Rochdale I met with some of the women now women they were girls previously um who had survived some of this horrendous uh abuse and they told me about their experiences just as I've told you there have been whistleblowers Maggie Oliver is a former uh police officer who worked for Manchester police and she writes she's written a book about it actually called survivors detailing what she came across um and so and I set up a task force I set up a dedicated um unit involving the National Crime agency which is a very kind of um Elite set of crime investigators in the United Kingdom and uh in England Wales and then um and the police to um expedite and improve the criminal investigations to get these investigations to court so Justice could be secured and in its first year it did secure over 550 arrests and it identified 4,000 victims but there was much more that could have been done and you know if I'm honest I did struggle to get the support to do more and to do uh more faster when I talked about it publicly um there was a real um you know shutdown by the kind of mainstream media people on the left accusing me of racism and accusing me of um islamophobia so uh we're going to take a quick break right now yep okay and we'll be right back and we're back with the former Home Secretary of the UK sella Braverman MP you know just a a few statistics from the daily mail um I think there 76 gangs in total in 41 towns um I think just about 400 were evicted something like 150 have been released back Qui they say quietly and so how how can this happen I guess is the question or why does this happen so again the criminal justice system has lets a lot of these victims down so you're right some of these perpetrators have been convicted and sentenced and then they've received short sentences and then they've been released quite early in other instances these people have been foreigners they've not been British citizens and our immigration system and because our border control is not perfect and in fact is dysfunctional to a large degree um we've not been able to deport them so um to Pakistan and these people have come have been let out of prison and they're still in the UK so there is a real failure when it comes to border control but also our justice system yet you yet it's still happening as you said yeah it's still happening because the police is still institutionally scared and the that there is also a kind of operational challenge here so I mean I think what we've got to focus on is the policing response you know how many specialist officers do the relevant police forces have diverted onto this kind of work these cases are complex to build to make them ready for trial um you need a lot of evidence sometimes it's difficult to get a hold of this evidence so it can take time but if you um apply more resour course you can you can do it more quickly I would ask as well how fast is our Criminal Justice System working it can sometimes take you know a very long time like over a year sometimes two years from arrest to a charge a and then even longer from charge to trial and so you know your victim has to stay the course for sometimes you know two or three years that's a very long time to try and get Justice for something so awful and and I would say that we need to think about Expediting that justice system so that people uh are getting charges much more quickly and then reaching a court and a judge much more quickly and so that we can start getting these people sentenced and into jail um so I think there are real structural problems that need to be addressed before we can say confidently we we're anywhere near making progress on it I understand in in the UK I understand there's thousands of people that are actually in jail for publicly on social media saying things saying things that were you know apparently UNT apparently illegal uh we have a crisis of free speech in the United Kingdom um and I use that word deliberately we have a situation where uh the police have the powers to record your information and you know uh log your details if you've said something that might be offensive to someone doesn't matter about the object Ive uh nature of what you've said if someone somewhere happens to be offended by what you have said and it relates to a personal characteristic race gender religion um sex then that's it the case is closed you will be uh considered guilty of what we call a non-crime hate incident and that's what you're talking about and there are thousands of these cases in the UK or in England and Wales where the police spend and in ordinate amount of time policing social media and um it is um having a chilling effect on our freedom of speech in the United Kingdom there's many people who have um lost their jobs who have um you know ended up with uh uh criminal um criminal sanctions um because they have said a man can't be a woman uh or they um are very vocal about defending is for example that seems to be a another issue where uh the police takes a very um you know kind of double standards approach uh we have a case of a journalist Allison Pearson famous journalist award-winning writer who wrote on social media after October the 7th I'm not quite sure what she wrote I can't recall the details but she wrote something which was very pro-israel and she was criticizing the um Pro Palestinian extremists we've got this problem in the UK of hate es where uh extremism anti-Semitism and um um islamism it can be paraded on our streets um and the police won't take any action and it's caused a real increase in anti-Semitism and it's made parts of our streets and our public realm no-go zones for Jewish people anyway she was criticizing this and she was commenting on it and she got a knock on the door from the police and they suggested that that she might have committed a non-crime hate incident um and there was a public outcry the police did backtrack because of the public back backlash but there are many thousands of people who receive that similar treatment from the police and they don't have the public profile of an award-winning journalist to uh to to to you know uh stir up a a backlash and a an outcry so that there there is a real problem with free speech on campus it's very scary to be Jewish on campus these days um it's very difficult to be a conservative on campus these days it's very scary we've had cases where uh Christian um Christian uh followers um or Believers have prayed silently outside abortion clinics they're not waving a placard they're not being aggressive they're not um intimidating anyone but they've been arrested and prosecuted by the police and the CPS just for for doing that so I I think it's um incredibly worrying that we are sliding down this orwellian slope towards a dystopia is there a way out of this well I think first of all the non-crime hate incidents should be scrapped um as Home Secretary I tried to get rid of them but unfortunately I didn't have the political support to go as far as I wanted to so I had to settle on issuing some clarificatory guidance we need better protections for students on campus when it comes to free speech I was actually cancelled myself a few months ago I was invited to speak at Cambridge University my uh former University the event was shut down because of the mob the pro Palestinian mob um you know mobilized and they got their activists together and said we're going to protest very heavily and very reciprocally outside this event I I I wasn't bothered by that I was happy to go ahead with the event but the police got involved and they instructed us to cancel the event because they couldn't guarantee my security and their advice was this shouldn't go ahead and so on arguably over cautious police advice but it's very difficult to disagree with the uh security agencies law enforcement agencies we were cancelled and the event didn't go ahead on that particular night we rescheduled it another uh for another day and it did go ahead but that's an example of what's happening on campus that um there are um um extremists whether they're Eco extremists Pro Palestinian extremists um you know leftwing extremists largely who are militant such that they don't want to allow entertain uh respectful challenge or other people having a different point of view if uh students and academics are feeling um silenced out of fear then that is a very very very damaging place for our country to be in so you're here in the US um you know you as I understand it you were invited to come um so what are your plan what are your next plans well it's been brilliant to um I'm incredibly honored and grateful to have been invited to come to the inauguration to attend the victory rally the Liberty ball yesterday great atmosphere great to be part of it all um I'm very keen to build relationships with um people in the US Administration I have some colleagues and friends who are going in to work for president Trump and vice president's team um and I think there's um huge potential for the ukus relationship I think we need to work on a free trade agreement between the two Nations we need to look at what further security and uh military collaboration can be secured um and you know I I will keep flying the flag for um uh you Common Sense conservatism I very much believe in the virtue of the Patriotic law-abiding Common Sense majority and I think for too long they've been dismissed and they've been smeared in the United Kingdom and they need their voice needs to be heard and there's a lot of wisdom in uh in in that you know in the British people in the hearts and the minds of the British people and we just need to listen to them a bit more and that's what I will keep doing well sella Braverman it's such a pleasure to have had you on thank you my my pleasure too and uh all the best to the epoch times thank you all for joining former Home Secretary of the United Kingdom soel Braverman mp on this episode of American thought leaders I'm your host y Kellick [Music]