As a good liberal, I trusted the paper and shared its alarm that claims that large-scale abuse was being committed by groups of predominantly Pakistani-heritage men were racist inventions.
Unfortunately, they weren’t.
The ‘r’ word buried this story for years. When Labour MP Ann Cryer raised the issue in 2003, she was howled down.
In 2004, Channel 4 documentary Edge of the City highlighting abuse in Bradford was pulled after pressure from anti-racism groups.
The result? Countless girls, mostly white, working-class teenagers, remained at the mercy of abusers.
It took a meticulous, deeply humane reporter, Andrew Norfolk from The Times, to finally bring the scandal to light.
As the BBC reported, The Times was called racist and Islamophobic for pursuing the investigation.
Norfolk pressed on, warily. His tireless work, alongside whistleblowers like Jayne Senior and Maggie Oliver, changed everything.
But not for everyone.
I’ve been watching how The Guardian has responded over the years, and the pattern hasn’t changed.
Even today, they would rather attack Nigel Farage and others for raising the issue, rather than the issue itself. The ‘r’ word is never far away.
PM Keir Starmer has done the same, blaming the far right while ducking the real issue.
Yes, the left has a point when saying many on the right have exploited the issue for political gain, and haven’t worried about the plight of children in care before.
But too many on the left go the other way, downplaying or denying the problem altogether. Sometimes, they don’t seem to care about the abused children either.
This risks corroding trust between communities and fuelling resentment, exactly what extremists want.
It’s also deeply inconsistent.
When the perpetrators are white, there’s no such reluctance to draw racial conclusions. On Thursday, for instance, The Guardian newspaper’s Comment is Free section ran a piece on the Ballymena riots.
The author framed the violence, linked to far-right protests over immigration to Northern Ireland, as part of a wider history of “white violence” that has “blighted Britain for years”.
I find that phrase “white violence” jarring.
You won’t find equivalent labels like “brown violence” or “black violence” used in mainstream commentary. Nor should you.
But somehow, “white violence” is fair game.
If the left is quick to explore structural racism in white communities, why the unease when discussing similar patterns elsewhere?
The article also noted that “most of the people attacking immigrants and police were Protestants”. That’s a very specific identity call-out.
Yet when it comes to grooming gangs, the same publication has repeatedly argued that identifying the ethnicity or background of perpetrators is dangerous and divisive.
It’s a double standard.
We all want positive race relations. Most British people are tolerant, fair-minded and loathe extremism. That’s why honesty is vital.
When people feel certain truths are being hidden or distorted for ideological reasons, it breeds cynicism and division. And it pushes decent people into the arms of those with more dangerous agendas.
The vast majority of British-Pakistanis have nothing to do with the gangs and are as horrified as the rest of us. Many now fear the backlash.
The left doesn’t need to give up on anti-racism. It’s right to push back on some of the narratives surrounding grooming gangs, when plenty of abusers are white.
But there’s nothing progressive about ignoring abuse when it’s uncomfortable to do so.
And there is nothing anti-racist about suggesting white people are inherently violent towards other races.
Nor is there anything “far-right” about asking why this was allowed to happen, and most importantly, how we can make sure it doesn’t happen again. Whatever the race of the abuser.