Britain’s broken borders are endangering children

It has become a depressing pattern. In London this week, a Pakistani asylum seeker was charged with allegedly raping an eight-year-old girl. It follows two Afghan asylum seekers being charged in connection with the rape of a 12-year-old in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, and the alleged attempted kidnapping of a 10-year-old in Stockport, Greater Manchester by a Sudanese migrant. There are now near-daily reports of men seeking asylum in Britain accused of depraved sexual crimes.

Kamran Khan, a Pakistani asylum seeker, appeared in court in London this week to face several charges. He’s accused of raping an eight-year-old girl – twice – and of making her watch a third person engage in sexual activity on multiple occasions. It is also alleged that he placed his hand and penis on her genitals, and forced the child to make him ejaculate. With the aid of an Urdu interpreter, Khan pleaded not guilty. He will face trial on 5 January next year.

This case immediately brings to mind the charges brought against those two 23-year-old Afghan asylum seekers – both living in taxpayer-funded accommodation in Nuneaton. Ahmad Mulakhil faces two rape charges against a 12-year-old girl. Mohammad Kabir has been charged with abetting rape, kidnapping and strangulation.

The Sun revealed this week that Sudanese migrant Edris Abdelrazig allegedly attempted to kidnap a 10-year-old girl in Stockport. It’s claimed that Abdelrazig, who was living in a £100-a-night hotel in the suburb of Wilmslow, tried to lure the girl away from a children’s playground last month. In Epping, Essex, around the same time, Ethiopian migrant Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu was charged with three counts of sexual assault, reportedly within days of arriving in the UK by small boat.

In some cases, as in Epping, these reports of sexual abuse have sparked local protests outside asylum hotels. But there has been a notable lack of national discussion. The political class has not only remained silent – it has tried to silence the public’s concerns, too. Warwickshire Police actively tried to cover up the Nuneaton suspects’ immigration status, supposedly to avoid ‘inflaming community tensions’. In Epping, peaceful protesters, many of them mothers, have been smeared as ‘far right’ and met with ‘anti-fascist’ counter-protests.

All this has grim echoes of the grooming-gangs scandal – a decades-long cover-up of sexual abuse against thousands of working-class children, disproportionately perpetrated by Pakistani Muslim men. Complaints from victims were dismissed. Crimes were swept under the carpet to avoid accusations of racism. Even as recently as January, UK prime minister Keir Starmer was still accusing those demanding a national inquiry into the rape gangs of jumping on a ‘far-right bandwagon’, before he was compelled to order an inquiry himself. Clearly, the culture of silencing that enabled those crimes to continue is alive and well.

It is no surprise that ordinary people are angry about all this. When the safety of children is put at risk, parents are not likely to pull any punches – particularly when those accused are undocumented males who should, by law, never have entered the country in the first place.

Mums and dads are demanding that the government ‘protect our kids’. But the main response from the authorities has been to try to shut them up. If the political class hopes this will all blow over, then it is in far more trouble than it realises.

Georgina Mumford is a spiked intern.