Fury from online users has ensued after a Wikipedia editor changed the entry on Britain’s national grooming gangs scandal to describe it as a “moral panic” that has been “popularized from the Far-right.”
The Wikipedia entry in question was related to a national crisis which saw over 1,400 children systemically raped by predators who were primarily of Pakistani origin and Muslim faith. The scandal was first uncovered back in 2010, when it was revealed that men from Pakistan dominated court records for grooming gang abuse, particularly in the South Yorkshire town of Rotherham.
As noted in the “Jay Report,” five men from Rotherham’s Islamic community were jailed for sexual offenses against underage girls. The Times released an article based on a police report about the extent of the issue where it revealed children in Rotherham were being abused “on an unprecedented scale” by networks of Pakistani men, only to be met with silence when these crimes were notified to the councils and various police forces. It was later revealed that local police were too frightened to investigate the reports due to fears of being condemned as “racist.”
More of these pedophilic networks have recently been exposed in towns and cities such as Telford, Rochdale, Newcastle, Oxford and Bristol, and follow a similar pattern of Pakistani men abusing British girls.
Until today, the page on the scandal was titled “Muslim grooming gangs in the UK,” but it has now been renamed “Grooming gang moral panic in the United Kingdom.”
The introductory paragraph has been edited to describe it as a “moral panic alleging that Asian (specifically South Asian, Pakistani and Muslim) men, are sexually abusing young White girls in the United Kingdom.” It continues on to blame “right-wing and far-right activists” for “popularizing” the terminology.
Upon being noticed by netizens, whistleblowers and survivors of the scandal described the change as “repulsive and disgusting.”
The Wikipedia editor behind the change, known as Spectre, has been exposed as former Liberal Democrat activist Sarah Noble, a man who identifies as a transgender “woman.”
In his Wikipedia bio, Noble describes himself as “increasingly involved in progressive political activism, mostly transgender, LGB and feminist activism as a lesbian trans person.” He continues that his editing “tends to fall into one of two areas” including “transgender issues and helping to reduce the amount of cisgender, heterosexual and male systemic bias on the encyclopaedia.”
The former LibDem activist has previously come under fire for posts online where he wrote violent and derogatory slogans about males. The posts, one of which read “kill all men,” led him to be suspended as an Executive Committee member for the party.
After being called out for the edits he made to the grooming gang Wikipedia page, Noble, locked his account on X due to the high level of criticism.
Noble’s edit appears to have been approved by Wikipedia higher-ups, as the editing logs show that a site administrator, known as HJ Mitchell, locked the page from being edited further following Noble’s changes.
Mitchell, who has edited over 126,468 Wikipedia articles and has blocked over 38,864 users from participating in the online encyclopedia, writes in his bio: “I’m an administrator and an oversighter (which means I can hide grossly inappropriate content, like libel and personal information, even from other administrators). I like to think of myself as ‘keeping the wheels turning’ when I’m acting in those capacities—none of them grant me any sort of authority.”
The logs also show another user by the name of “Red Jay” added another entry that suggests conflating the grooming gangs scandal with an entry titled, “LGBTQ grooming conspiracy theory” purposely placed in the references tab within the article.
