Sex abuse hero says Labour was wrong to force out Sarah Champion over Sun article
Sara Rowbotham said the MP should not have been forced out for highlighting the plight of abused girls
THE HERO whistleblower of the Rochdale sex abuse scandal claims Labour were wrong to force out MP Sarah Champion over a race row.
Sara Rowbotham – who exposed a criminal gang abusing young girls - said people shouldn’t be shut down “because we don’t like what they are saying”.
Ms Champion had to resign as a shadow minister after writing in The Sun that Britain had a problem with “British Pakistani men” raping white girls.
Ms Rowbotham said the “sweeping statement” should not have been made.
But she said: “We should be exploring all the issues.
“If the Labour Party is a broad church then those views should be allowed to be heard, but also be heard with something substantial that argues back against it. [Champion] is a knowledgeable, articulate woman.
“We benefit from having that debate with her.”
Ms Champion was arguing last month that the Government had to try and understand why a portion of convicted perpetrators of gang-linked sexual exploitation were of Pakistani heritage.
Some Labour supporters branded the former Shadow Minister for Women and Equalities “racist” and Jeremy Corbyn ask her to resign.
But Ms Rowbotham, now a Labour councillor, told Huffington Post: “I think [Champion] said something which I had been saying for quite some time, which is that nobody has done any research into the modus operandi of these criminal gangs.
“Only some of the men who were perpetrators were earning money from the situation and monetarising it.
“The rest of them were fellas who had poisoned children to have sex with them, and no one has done any particular research into why those attitudes of those particular men exist.”
Sara Rowbotham’s comments come two weeks after religious groups rushed to the defence of Sarah Champion.
A number of Sikh, Hindu and British Pakistani groups praised her “courageous stand”.
And they said victims were being “sacrificed on the altar of political correctness”.
Trevor Phillips, the former chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, added: “I am absolutely gobsmacked, this is not the Labour Party I know.”