The ‘grooming gangs’ delusion is finally being shattered

The re-eruption of the rape gangs scandal has shone a dazzlingly bright light on the language that makes us flinch and fluster, and clutch at euphemistic straws. For years, the mass sexual abuse of thousands of vulnerable girls in towns across England has been blamed on ‘grooming gangs’. But this euphemism hardly does justice to this appalling scandal.

In the last fortnight, there has been a shift to a different, more accurate term – ‘rape gangs’ – that better describes who was responsible. This change in terminology is long overdue. And while it offers few crumbs of comfort to the victims, it is good that people are – finally – beginning to face up to the facts of a story that shames modern Britain.

The grooming aspect of the crimes is, no doubt, an important factor. But ‘grooming’ is too soft and obscuring and polite a term that allows us to bury our heads in the sand of what happened in living memory in our country.