The northern English town of Oldham is used to outsiders exploiting it to “drive an agenda,” local councilor Abdul Wahid said.
But people here never expected to be the focus of Elon Musk, who spent much of early January posting about a historic child abuse scandal that plagued this community and many others across the United Kingdom more than a decade ago.
Oldham, home to a large British Pakistani community, has previously been a flashpoint for race riots, riven by divisions that extremists have sought to take advantage of. Now, it’s in the crosshairs of the far-right again over allegations of a cover-up of child abuse, amplified by the world’s richest man.
While Musk’s attention has seemingly shifted elsewhere – he’s since taken up his position in US President Donald Trump’s administration – in Oldham, those personally impacted by the abuse scandal say they are left with old wounds reopened and fading hopes for change.
Many worry Musk’s words have given new momentum to far-right figures bent on using the historic abuse, which was primarily carried out by groups of men of mainly Pakistani heritage, to stir racial hatred.
Musk’s flurry of messages, posted to his social media platform X, falsely accused Prime Minister Keir Starmer of covering up the abuse, called on King Charles III to dissolve parliament and order new elections, and attacked the country’s female safeguarding minister.
Far-right figures capitalized on the firestorm kicked up by the billionaire, with Musk also posting support for the imprisoned, anti-Islam far-right figurehead Tommy Robinson, who is currently serving an 18-months sentence for repeating false accusations about a Syrian refugee and who argues multiculturalism in the UK has failed.
While Musk’s comments have been condemned by many British politicians for spreading misinformation, some abuse survivors say they are grateful that Musk has renewed the focus on their plight.
Walker-Roberts, who has waived her right to anonymity, said that Musk’s interest in the scandal has helped to drive the issue of child sexual abuse to the top of the British political agenda.
If she could meet Musk, Walker-Roberts said, she would ask him to “please continue fighting for us and giving us a voice from your platform.”
Despite a burst of new measures and funding announced by the current UK government to tackle child sexual abuse and the institutional failings of the past, Walker-Roberts and others’ calls for a statutory government-led inquiry in Oldham – like previous inquiries that examined historical cases and compelled witnesses to appear – has not been met. Instead, a locally led review has been promised in Oldham and four other locations.
A national inquiry into historic child sexual abuse, including by gangs, concluded in 2022 that there had been “extensive failures by local authorities and police forces to keep pace with the pernicious and changing problem of the sexual exploitation of children by networks.”
Another government-commissioned inquiry in nearby Rotherham found that at least 1,400 children had been abused over a 16-year period by groups of men in the area.
“It’s really hard to justify why anybody would block a public inquiry of this nature (in Oldham),” local councilor Wahid said. “What we want to achieve is to get this dealt with and learn from it and see the back of it.”
Walker-Roberts still lives in the neighborhood where she was abused and believes that children from vulnerable backgrounds are still being groomed. While one of her abusers was jailed, others were never caught. She said that there are still too few safeguards in place to protect them and regularly speaks to community leaders and politicians about her story to raise awareness.
While she’s grateful that Musk’s intervention has thrust the issue of child sexual exploitation back into the spotlight, she worries that her suffering, her story, and her advocacy have now been overshadowed by those seeking to make the conversation about race.
Musk “needs to say that this is about survivors, not about everyone else. Too many people are jumping on this bandwagon,” Walker-Roberts said, noting that the far-right had hijacked the conversation.
“It’s the victims that need the help, not Tommy Robinson or any other political party,” she added.
Others wish Musk had stayed out of the debate altogether.
Nazir Afzal, who was the chief prosecutor in Northwest England from 2011 to 2015, when much of the abuse first came to light, describes Musk’s involvement as “misinformed and dangerous.”
“Unless Mr. Musk starts talking about the real issues, he’s just stirring up a racist pot,” he said.
Afzal, who successfully prosecuted numerous child abuse cases during his tenure, said that the vast majority of recorded child sexual abuse cases in the UK are carried out by White men.
“When you just focus on the brown guy, you’re telling girls: ‘Beware of the brown guy.’ You’re not telling them that they’re 40 times more likely in this country to be abused by a British White guy,” he said, citing the Centre of expertise on child sexual abuse (CSA Centre)’s most recent data on child sexual abuse in England and Wales that indicates 2% of perpetrators are of Pakistani backgrounds, whereas 88% are White. The dataset represents the three-quarters of cases where ethnicity was recorded.
But those facts are often drowned out by the “grooming gang” scandal, particularly in towns like Oldham, with larger than national average non-White populations and high rates of poverty.
While high-profile convictions in many historic child sex abuse cases have involved gangs of men from Pakistani or other Muslim immigrant backgrounds, recent police figures on group-based child sexual abuse cases indicate that around 7% of suspects self-reported their ethnicity as “Asian” in 2023, which is broadly in line with the national population ethnic breakdown for England and Wales. Still, data is incomplete and not routinely gathered – with only a third of suspects recording their ethnicity for the 2023 data.
The national child abuse inquiry report, published in 2022, made 20 recommendations for combatting child abuse, the first being the need to record better data on both victims and abusers, including their ethnicity.
As the current government, in power since last July, has yet to implement all of the recommendations, some far-right figures have taken advantage of what’s been perceived as ministers dragging their feet on the issue.
In his blizzard of posts on X, Musk wrongly accused Starmer of being “complicit in the rape of Britain.” Starmer, who was Director of Public Prosecutions at the time of the scandal, staunchly defended his record, saying that he had changed “the entire approach” that had stopped victims from being heard, and had “the highest number of child sexual abuse cases being prosecuted on record.”
“Those that are spreading lies and misinformation, as far and as wide as possible – they’re not interested in victims, they’re interested in themselves,” Starmer said last month.
That political backdrop is not lost on Oldham’s local councilors.
Like survivor Walker-Roberts, Councilor Brian Hobin welcomed the renewed attention prompted by Musk, but said that “the rhetoric of division, and the rhetoric of trying to pitch us against one another, needs to be taken out of it.”
“I think the excuse of community cohesion in the past has actually exacerbated the matter and made the communities feel as though they’re against each other,” he said. At times, he added, it has felt like everyone is “treading on eggshells” because abuse “could be a very divisive topic, and I think not knowing each other’s cultures is not helping that.”
Wahid, who is of Pakistani descent and represents a majority White ward, also supports Musk’s calls for a statutory Oldham inquiry. But the councilor said discourse around the scandal, amplified by the far-right on social media, had wrongly presented the ethnicities of the grooming gang as the central issue and made local “Muslim and Pakistani communities go on the defensive.”
Wahid said more open discussion was needed, but that South Asian-heritage and White communities realize a united front is key. “It’s not the race, it’s not the religion, and it’s not the culture, but there’s a problem, so we need to get to the (root of the) problem,” he said.
Meanwhile, survivors like Walker-Roberts say they are still waiting for justice and for effective action to be taken against child sex abuse.
“We can’t keep going on year after year… decades on and still get nowhere,” she said.