⁴Pilate questioned him again: ‘Have you nothing to say in your defence? You see how many charges they are bringing against you.’ ⁵But to Pilate’s astonishment, Jesus made no further reply.’

Mark 15:4-5 – Revised English Bible

¹⁸In love there is no room for fear; indeed perfect love banishes fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and anyone who is afraid has not attained to love in its perfection.

1 John 4:18 – Revised English Bible

¹³As it was near the time of the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. ¹⁴In the temple precincts he found the dealers in cattle, sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers seated at their tables. ¹⁵He made a whip of cords and drove them out of the temple, sheep, cattle and all. He upset the tables of the money-changers, scattering their coins. ¹⁶Then he turned on the dealers in pigeons: ‘Take them out of here,’ he said, ‘do not turn my Father’s house into a market.’

John 2:13-16 – Revised English Bible

And there’s another country, I’ve heard of long ago
Most dear to them that love her, most great to them that know
We may not count her armies, we may not see her king
Her fortress is a faithful heart, her pride is suffering
And soul by soul, and silently her shining bounds increase
And her ways are ways of gentleness, and all her paths are peace.

(Sir Cecil Spring Rice, 1921)

I was born just five and a half years after the end of the Second World War. As a boy, I became aware of the sacrifices that had been made by my parents’ generation; all of us knew someone who had fought and, in some cases, received awards for bravery. I remember when I was at school, one subject that occasionally cropped up was whether we thought that we could go ‘over the top’ as in the First War, or ‘run towards machine-gun fire’ as in the Second. I still have no idea how I might act in such a situation. But I do know that bravery was a highly ranked virtue in our little world at that time, and we were only too aware of what we owed to those who had gone before us.

But since those distant days, it seems to me that bravery and self-sacrifice have become less and less respected and admired. The verse above, which comes from the hymn: ‘I vow to thee my country’ has been banned in many churches, for being too patriotic and speaking of sacrifice in the context of war, which is considered by some to be unacceptable. How any Christian minister could state that self-sacrifice was unacceptable is beyond me; surely all our belief is based on Christ’s self-sacrifice? To me, this comment shows how far we’ve drifted away from basic Christian beliefs, that were once taken for granted.

The range of Biblical quotations listed above show to what extent bravery coloured Our Lord’s life, but in the research that I’ve done, bravery is hardly ever mentioned as a Christian virtue. Why is this? Are we now embarrassed by bravery? Is self-sacrifice now a negative attribute?

Recently, I had the honour to meet two extremely brave women: Samantha Smith and Sammy Woodhouse, who are both survivors of what I will call the ‘grooming, racism, torture and rape gangs.’ Their cases are not as well-known as they should be, which is why I felt the need to give them coverage here. I can’t hope to cover all of the details in one short article, but here are some facts to shock you, by way of background to this story which has, at long last, become front page news:

Samantha Smith

Samantha grew up in Telford. She was first sexually assaulted when she was 5. No, that’s not a misprint – I do mean 5, not 15. Her abuse, at the hands of multiple different men of Pakistani origin, continued throughout her childhood and teen years. When, approximately ten years later aged 15, she reported the abuse to the Children’s home that was supposed to have the responsibility of looking after her, she was told that she was lying and seeking attention. Later, when trying to train as a journalist, she was told not to talk about her own experience; she describes herself as being treated as belonging to a class of victims ‘who didn’t deserve justice.’ Her Labour-led council has tried to block an independent inquiry into Child Sexual Exploitation in Telford for years and their Council Leader (who is now the MP for Telford; you couldn’t make it up), along with 10 other powerful local men, even wrote a letter to the Home Secretary saying they felt an inquiry would be ‘unnecessary.’

When she was 15, Samantha was challenged by a social worker about whether she had ever consented to sexual activity. The Sexual Offences Act makes it crystal clear that no under-age child can consent to sexual activity. How therefore could our Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, have the gall to tell the House of Commons only this week that rape laws will be changed so that: ‘Penetrative sex with a child under 16 will automatically be treated as rape, even if the child is perceived to have consented.’ Yvette Cooper’s statement has not been challenged in the press; it should have been howled down!

When Samantha went on national TV to talk about Pakistani grooming gangs (a scandalous euphemism, as so many cases have involved both physical torture, and racial abuse, in addition to rape), she was immediately visited by her local Police, who told her that she should not be talking about her experiences. They tried to intimidate her for talking about their failings over many years and instructed her to delete her social media posts. Again, you couldn’t make it up.   

Samantha’s abusers have never been prosecuted; she was told that there was an unrealistic prospect of conviction against any of them, due to the ‘historic’ nature of her case. She is now 21 years old. Her early experiences ‘broke’ her and she spent years in silence because she thought she would somehow be judged or penalised for the abuse that she’d suffered. She’d been conditioned to feel she was responsible for her own abuse.

We need to thank God that Samantha is now able to talk openly about her case.

Despite the many acts of bravery that I’ve witnessed personally over my lifetime, I don’t think that I’ve ever met anyone braver than Samantha Smith. Her case, and those of many tens of thousands of young girls like her, many of whom have been broken for life, must now be heard, and those responsible, and guilty of covering it up, must feel the full weight of the law. I genuinely believe that this is the greatest national scandal of my life. As a nation we should hang our heads in shame at how we have thrown away our duty of care towards our children and young women. This may be yet another example of how we have thrown away Christianity and have left a gaping hole, where Christian values used to be. Jesus used the phrase about child abuse:

‘It would be better for (the child abuser) to be thrown into the sea with a millstone round his neck than to cause the downfall of one of these little ones.’ (Luke 17:2)

Sammy Woodhouse

Sammy’s story helps to underline the length of time that these most distressing cases have been going on, and hence the massive number of girls who have been abused (it may be as many as 100,000; both Samantha and Sammy also stress that this is not historical; there’s massive evidence that it’s still going on now.)

Sammy Woodhouse came from a good family in Rotherham. When she was 14, (she is now 40) she met the suave but brutal leader of a Pakistani drugs gang in the town, known as ‘Mad Ash’. He was then 24. She was entrapped by his showering gifts on her, but almost immediately he started to subject her to violent abuse. He would rape and beat her until she was unconscious and make threats against her and her family.  

When she fell pregnant to this brutal man at 15 and gave birth to a son, she reported Hussein to the Police; they refused to check for DNA evidence from her baby that the father was Hussein and that by implication, he must have been guilty of a sexual offence against a 14-year-old girl. Her life was wrecked and, like Samantha, she was told that she had brought her situation on herself. Once again, we have the story, repeated again and again all over the country, of the Police and authorities blaming the victims, rather than prosecuting the rapists, racists and torturers.  

Eventually, and with almost unbelievable bravery, she managed to get her story told with the help of the late journalist Andrew Norfolk of The Times. Her story resulted in her abuser being prosecuted and finally convicted of 23 charges against nine under-age girls and sentenced to 35 years in prison.

Sammy is now a campaigner, having eventually, but with great difficulty, gained the confidence to speak out. She’s recently lost her case to have a conviction struck off, that she gained from a fight in her school that was caused by her abuser, but she continues to campaign against such convictions. And she has also campaigned for a change in the law concerning parental access by rapists. I remember how utterly shocked I was to hear that her jailed rapist had been contacted by the Social Services and encouraged by them to demand access to Sammy’s son! Sammy was not even informed that this was about to happen. Sammy believes that rapists should not be given access to the children born of such violent acts. I doubt that many members of the public would disagree with her, but progress on this front is desperately slow, and Sammy has had to sacrifice her life to her campaigning.

Sammy has said that one of the paedophiles involved in the Rotherham rape gangs now sits in the House of Lords……..

Sammy Woodhouse is also one of the bravest people I’ve ever met and is subject to routine death threats from those who support her abusers. Why do we tolerate this in our country? Allison Pearson of The Daily Telegraph has reported that a Police ‘insider’ told her that Chief Constables ‘would prefer to screw up a mass murder investigation’ than be accused of being a racist.

One of the questions that are routinely asked in Evangelical circles is ‘Why did Jesus die?’ The anticipated answer is: ‘For my sins.’ Those who read my scribblings here routinely, will know that I’m not a fan of what is called ‘Substitutionary Atonement’ ie that Jesus was sent by his father to suffer death so that our sins could be forgiven. My own answer is: ‘Because Jesus bravely challenged both the Romans and the Jewish Establishment of the time in a way that guaranteed that those authorities would have to eliminate him. It’s a story that should inspire us all to shout and keep on shouting about injustice in our world, particularly against the most vulnerable in our communities. And we need to draw on that reservoir of bravery that we all know, in our heart of hearts, defines who we are.

Jesus encourages us to look at His example and to speak out and speak up, like Samantha and Sammy are doing, at huge risk to themselves. It is our Christian duty to do so.