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Labor has voiced alarm after a series of conservative MPs, including a health minister, shared a video tweeted by a far-right Twitter account falsely claiming that Sir Keir Starmer obstructed the goal of grooming gang victims when he headed the Crown Prosecution Service.
The tweeted video was shared by Nadine Dorries, who is now minister of health, as well as Telford MP Lucy Allan and Maria Caulfield, who represents Lewes. Everyone commented on what the video was intended to show, with Dorries calling it “revealing.”
The 2013 22-second clip shows Starmer apparently recounting reasons why grooming gang victims might not be credible, speaking of “the assumption that a child sexual abuse victim will quickly report to police what they are doing. It happened; you will be able to give a coherent and consistent account, the first time, that they themselves will not have engaged in any crime or other behavior, and that they will not have abused drugs or alcohol at any stage. “
The original tweeter, which also regularly posts anti-Islam messages and other far-right content, titled the clip: “Keir Starmer explains why he did not prosecute grooming gangs when he was head of the Crown Prosecution Service.”
However, a more complete version of the video shows that this is completely misleading. In fact, Starmer is explaining why he had changed the standards of prosecution, to get away from “a series of assumptions, which did not withstand scrutiny.”
Allan wrote in his re-tweet: “This suggests a complete failure in the understanding of cleanliness, a derogatory attitude towards CSE [child sexual exploitation] victims and the belief that the victims brought it upon themselves “
Caulfeld re-tweeted the video with the message: “True face of the # shameful Labor leader.”
A Labor source said: “This is a rigged video tweeted by a far-right social media account. As government minister, we hope that Nadine Dorries will recognize and eliminate it.
Dorries then deleted her tweet, as did Allan. However, Allan did not delete a previous response to another tweet referring to the video in which the MP said: “Incredible. This is what the victims of CSE were facing. “
Caulfield seemed to delete his entire Twitter account. Neither has apologized for sharing the misleading message.
As director of public prosecutions, Starmer ordered a general overhaul of how CPS handled grooming cases, saying the legal system had failed the victims.
The topic of preparing gangs and authorities who do not adequately attack abusers has been regularly used by far-right activists like Tommy Robinson to campaign against Muslims.
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