Musk
accused of ‘politicising’ rape of young girls in UK to attack Starmer
Ex-health
worker who exposed paedophile ring says billionaire’s triggering of row ignores
plight of survivors
Rajeev Syal
Home affairs editor
Fri 3 Jan
2025 12.17 EST
Elon Musk
has “politicised” the rape of young girls in the UK in an attempt to attack
Keir Starmer, a former health worker who exposed a major paedophile ring has
told the Guardian.
Sara
Rowbotham, who gathered evidence that led to the imprisonment of nine men in
Rochdale, said the tech billionaire had launched a “political swipe” at the
prime minister that overlooked the plight of abuse survivors.
The Tesla
owner, who will have a key role in Donald Trump’s incoming administration, on
Friday called on King Charles to step in and dissolve parliament after Labour
rejected a call for a national inquiry into child grooming.
Musk
triggered the row on Thursday over Starmer’s handling of child abuse in Oldham
after he suggested the prime minister had failed to bring “rape gangs” to
justice when he was director of public prosecutions.
Elon Musk
walks through a US government building, wearing a suit and holding a disposable
coffee cup
Trolling the
UK: the issues enraging Elon Musk, world’s richest ‘pub bore’
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Rowbotham,
who made hundreds of referrals detailing the abuse and sexual grooming while
working for the NHS in Rochdale between 2005 and 2011, said: “What is [Musk’s]
motivation for interfering? It seems very political. The person he is trying to
go after is Keir Starmer – it is a political swipe that is nothing to do with
the women and girls who have been abused time after time.”
Musk, who
owns X, formerly Twitter, has used the social media site to post or repost
about child grooming in the UK more than 40 times over the past 24 hours.
Several
posts are from UK MPs including Reform UK’s Rupert Lowe and the Tories’ Robert
Jenrick, while others include a video featuring the far-right activist Tommy
Robinson, who in October was jailed for 18 months for contempt of court.
On Friday,
Musk shared a post asking whether the king “should dissolve parliament and
order a general election … for the sake and security” of the UK. He retweeted
the X thread with a one-word comment: “Yes.”
The
safeguarding minister, Jess Phillips, previously said in a letter to Oldham
council that instead of the government leading an investigation, Oldham must
follow in the footsteps of other towns such as Rotherham and Telford and
commission its own inquiry into the historical abuse of children.
A national
inquiry by Prof Alexis Jay concluded in 2022, and investigations into Greater
Manchester police’s handling of child sexual abuse cases in Manchester, Oldham
and Rochdale have also been carried out.
Rowbotham,
who was played by Maxine Peake in the award-winning BBC drama Three Girls,
dismissed Musk’s calls for another public inquiry, but said the UK still needed
to get to the bottom of the motivations of paedophile rings, which she said
were often dominated by Asian men.
“We need to
discover the motivations, not just sexual, behind this abuse, if we are going
to prevent it from happening again and again,” she said.
In a further
intervention, the father of a woman who was a main prosecution witness against
the Rochdale paedophile gang said it was “strange” that a US billionaire was
attempting to intervene in the UK.
The man,
whose eldest daughter was known as Girl A during court proceedings, said: “It
is strange that the richest man in the world has got time to start getting
involved in UK politics.”
Girl A was
groomed and abused in Rochdale by at least 50 men from the age of 12. Her
family discovered the abuse after she smashed up a restaurant at the age of 14.
While being interviewed by police, she told detectives how she and other girls
had been plied with drugs and drink and repeatedly raped and trafficked around
nearby towns and cities.
The comments
follow criticisms of Musk from two other key figures in the Rochdale inquiry.
Asked about
Musk’s comments on Friday, Wes Streeting, the health secretary, told ITV News
the criticisms were “misjudged and certainly misinformed”.
“Some of the
criticisms that Elon Musk has made, I think are misjudged and certainly
misinformed, but we’re willing to work with Elon Musk, who I think has got a
big role to play with his social media platform to help us and other countries
to tackle this serious issue.
“So if he
wants to work with us and roll his sleeves up, we’d welcome that,” he said.
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