Does Elon Musk care about Rotherham? Probably not.

Dr Jess delivers her perspective on the richest man in the world, suddenly becoming invested in child sexual exploitation cases

Before I say what needs to be said, I want to give some background to my involvement in tackling child sexual exploitation and child trafficking in the UK.

I first worked on a case of child sexual exploitation and rape in 2010. A girl was walking down her own street when a car with three men inside stopped and asked her for directions. She was giving directions when she was grabbed and pulled into the back of the car. She was taken to an address in Derby, raped, beaten and abused for several days. At the time, I was only 20 years old, and working in specialist victim support. I supported her for months after the arrests of the men were made and in the run up to the court case. At the time, I didn’t specialise in sexual violence specifically, and took on all sorts of cases ranging from burglary to gang violence.

A year or so later, I started working full time in sexual violence support services, managed a rape helpline, and had a team of 30 counsellors and therapists delivering face to face services. We supported thousands of victims of rape, trafficking, CSE, CSA, sexual assault and sexual harassment. Our waiting list was huge. CSE was becoming more and more prominent, and in one particular case I recall, several young teen girls all became pregnant from adult perpetrators who were raping and abusing them - and the mess of that case and the way those girls were treated will never leave me. I will never forget the day the girls met face to face, and realised that professionals had forced some of them to have terminations, and supported some of them to keep their babies.

Later, I went on to specialise in child sexual exploitation and anti-child trafficking - and it was there that I really built my knowledge and experience. I went on to write the national evidence review on child sexual exploitation and abuse in 2017, which is still available. I ran a successful campaign to end the blaming of girls who had been sexually exploited - as the practice had become incredibly toxic. Girls who were being raped and abused were being forced to watch films of girls being raped in order to ‘get them to see the risk they were putting themselves at’ - instead of prosecuting perpetrators.

I personally know many of the victims of child sexual exploitation across the UK. Real human beings, real women from Rotherham. Rochdale. Derby. Newcastle. Peterborough. Oxford. Coventry. Stoke. Birmingham. Telford.

Some of these women I count amongst my closest friends.

I also undertook a review of Rotherham social services after they implemented important new frameworks and policies to stop the blaming of girls who were being raped and abused in the local authority area.

I challenged the use of incredibly dangerous ‘CSE risk assessment toolkits’, and consulted with police, health and social care leaders all over the UK to support them to address the way the CSE toolkits were missing children, and were contributing to significant harm and blame of girls being raped and abused.

Further than this, I have continued to train, consult and build resources for tens of thousands of professionals to challenge victim blaming and pathologisation of children being trafficked and sexually exploited in the UK.

Therefore, I have been in this work and around these cases for fifteen years this year - and - without going into any massive detail, I am also a victim of the same crimes - and I write as a professional, an academic, and a victim.

I was also raped, drugged, abused, exploited and beaten in similar circumstances whilst growing up in the Midlands. I became pregnant at 16, was attacked and miscarried, before coming pregnant again at 17, from which I had my first child a few months before the perpetrator was arrested.

(I will refrain from any further detail as my memoir ‘Underclass’ is widely available and became my second Sunday Times Bestseller in 2024 - and all detail is contained within that).

So - back to Elon Musk - and whether he really cares about Rotherham. Or any other CSE case for that matter.

For those of you who have missed the shitshow on social media in which Elon Musk suddenly started tweeting about CSE cases, grooming, trafficking, abuse and rape of teen girls in the UK - all I can say is, good for you - because it has been appalling - and has prompted me to have to write this article.

Here are some examples of what Elon Musk has tweeted in the last FOUR DAYS about CSE in the UK:

‘How the rape of Britain was covered up.’

‘Starmer is guilty of terrible crimes against the British people’

‘There must be justice for the hundreds of thousands of little British girls who were mercilessly targeted for gang rape and often murder’

‘This happened on a massive scale. Genocidal rape.’

‘Elon calls for king to dissolve parliament over grooming gangs’

‘Jess Phillips is a rape genocide apologist.’

‘Prison for Phillips now!’

‘FREE TOMMY ROBINSON NOW!’

‘Starmer is complicit in these crimes’

‘Prison for Starmer’

‘Starmer is evil’

‘Gordon Brown sold little girls for votes’

‘Starmer was deeply complicit in the mass rapes in exchange for votes’

‘The snivelling cowards who allowed the mass rape of little girls in Britain are still in power… for now’

‘Poll: America should liberate the people of Britain from their tyrannical government Yes/No’

‘Oh like when Starmer called Donald Trump a racist and said the British government should do everything to stop him?’

There are many things I want to say, but I will attempt to keep this concise.

1. Elon Musk does not care about the welfare, wellbeing, justice, rights or experiences of women and girls being raped, trafficked, exploited or abused. He is very clearly using this topic to interfere in British politics. You don’t need a PhD to perform a little discourse analysis on his tweets.

   He moves between extremely emotive (and factually incorrect) posts about rape and abuse of girls and women in the UK - but then moves quickly to calling for full dissolution of parliament, to Keir Starmer being removed, to targeting Jess Phillips, to calling for the release of Tommy Robinson, to probably the most telling tweets: the one running a poll asking if America should essentially colonise the UK and ‘liberate’ us from our government - and the one in which he reveals one of his real motives for attacking Keir Starmer - calling his pal Donald Trump a ‘racist’ and suggesting the British government should get involved in US politics.

2. Elon Musk has never used his platform or wealth to support victims of trafficking, rape, sexual violence, domestic abuse or any other form of VAWG. To believe he is suddenly committed to these causes is an error. You must see this for what it truly is - using victims of serious crime and trauma as a political pawn. He will eventually stop tweeting about this topic completely and move on, and his ‘support for victims’ will vanish.

3. Elon Musk and supporters are very clearly attempting to frame him as ‘exposing grooming gangs in the UK’ - despite the fact that we have had literally hundreds of cases, public headlines, inquiries, serious case reviews, independent reviews, national evidence scopes, documentaries, drama series, soap storylines, educational resources, charities set up, specialist CSE teams implemented in police and social care teams and countless other initiatives. He exposed nothing, but he did weaponise it.

   Everyone knows about the grooming gangs and large CSE cases. The headlines were constant for years. The cases were highly publicised and the sentencing was covered by every media outlet available. There was no cover up of the cases at all - in fact - many media outlets secured large commissions to make dramas and documentaries on the cases. Google each thing I’ve said here, it will all come up easily.

4. Despite his tweets suggesting he is deeply affected by the cases of CSE in the UK, and despite the fact that he is an extremely wealthy billionaire with global influence and power, as far as I am aware, he has never donated to any CSE charities that support victims of CSE anywhere in the UK. He has never elevated any CSE services profiles. He has never funded any legal battles of victims who needed legal support in cases in the UK. He has never done any voluntary work to support CSE victims.

5. Survivors and victims who have felt ignored, silenced, or never got real justice are being sucked into this narrative that Elon Musk cares about their trauma and their suffering - and this is something that troubles me greatly. You may not know this, but Tommy Robinson doxxed me back in 2018 because I dared say the same thing about him. Some of you will remember this, and why it happened. Tommy Robinson said he was setting up a helpline and was going to interview teenage girls and young women about CSE for his campaigns and activism.

   I posted (on my tiny social media at the time), not to let this man into your home, and not to let him interview children who had been raped and trafficked as it was a huge risk to their safety and wellbeing. I had advised several people to ignore his team contacting them and asking to speak to victims directly and film them speaking about being abused. Someone must have sent him my post, because on an afternoon that I was busy lecturing (ironically, on CSE), my phone was blowing up, my emails were full, my social media was going wild - and it was because Tommy Robinson had used his massive platform to target me and encourage his followers to ‘contact’ me.

   I was absolutely inundated with abuse, death threats, rape threats, and horrific comments and messages that lasted weeks. So, you’ll have to take my word for it when I say that I don’t think TR cares about any of us being abused or threatened - and I don’t think Elon Musk does either.

6. Actions speak louder than words. Elon Musk claims to care about VAWG suddenly, whilst publicly destroying Jess Phillips - to the point where a man has been charged this week for death threats and stalking of her. The abuse of Jess Phillips (whether you agree with her politics or not), is a form of VAWG.

   We all know this - and yet - the man claiming he cares about VAWG, is encouraging and perpetrating it on a global scale - against an MP who he didn’t even know existed a few weeks ago. He has not apologised or backed down, and has mocked Jess when she has spoken about his posts.

7. The enemy of your enemy is not your friend. Ever. This is something I learned the hard way several years ago in a different context - but the lesson applies here. Just became Elon Musk and Andrew Tate are pretending to care about CSE, and it is bringing attention to the topic, does not mean they are your allies or your friends. It doesn’t mean they actually care about you. Especially if you are a woman. Especially if you have been raped or abused. Neither of these men care about VAWG.

   Andrew Tate is currently facing huge criminal investigations into his sex trafficking crimes, and Elon Musk is supporting Donald Trump into US government, despite the fact that Donald Trump has been accused by at least 26 women of rape, sexual assault and upskirting. Elon has built a platform that spams everyone with porn on a daily basis. Andrew Tate built an empire teaching men and boys to treat women and girls like sex objects and commercial ventures to exploit, beat up if they don’t comply, and throw away like trash.

   Tommy Robinson, (real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) who Elon is also platforming as some form of CSE hero, has a criminal conviction list as long as my arm - which includes a nine month prison sentence back in 2019 for interfering in CSE and grooming gang criminal trial in Leeds - which he almost collapsed due to reporting on the trial during proceedings. These men do not care about victims and survivors. They care about whipping up rage so they can control narratives.

8. I am in no way a political expert, but my view on what is really happening here is that Elon Musk is simply utilising the biggest platform in the world, with the most amount of intelligent data, to play politics and see what happens. He’s a smart guy, and I noticed the other day that he tweeted that X/Twitter had become a collective of human consciousness. I think that is a very interesting comment to make, considering the power of harnessing literally trillions of data points to learn how to control the population.

   He also tweeted after the US election that his platform was the most powerful and influential outlet of information, and he claims, influenced the election to support the Republican win. Now consider what he is doing here. Calling for dissolution of our government, calling for our elected leader to be in prison, telling Nigel Farage to resign, claiming Tommy Robinson should be the leader of Reform - this is the same tactic but on a different country. Inflammatory tweets, pushed by his very own algorithm. Massive engagement farming. Hundreds of tweets per day.

   And have you even heard about the impact his tweets are having in Germany before their election? And Norway? Are you still sure this man cares about CSE, or are you beginning to realise that he is using the trauma, rape and death of girls for political gain? If he is so concerned about British politics, why are those tweets interwoven with posts about Germany and Norway? Why is he supporting the right wing in each country? Why is he attacking more left-leaning parties across the world (I say left leaning because the left in US can hardly be described as true left, and UK Labour are hardly hard left either).

9. Is this really about racism? One of the strongest narratives being pushed throughout this whole mess is that the CSE gangs were predominantly made up of Pakistani Muslim men. I cannot write an article without addressing this, as it would be disingenuous and cowardly to ignore this. Without a doubt, many of the largest cases were made up of South Asian men. Lots were Muslim. Lots were Pakistani. I saw the data at the time and I can tell you for certain that some of those men were Bangladeshi. Some were Black. Some were Polish. Some were Romanian. They were not all Muslim at all. They were not all Pakistani. Some stats from CEOP and NPCC actually suggested that Pakistani men made up around 3% of CSE specific sex offenders, with Bangladeshi men making up a further 3%.

   And lots - the majority - were White British. CEOP data showed that White British men made up over 87% of all CSE perpetrators prosecuted. This is in line with national population spread. In 2014, Aslan and Edelmann conducted a study of CSE offenders and found that 94% of them were White British men under the age of 26 years old. In 2017, the NPCC released statistics confirming that the majority of offenders of CSE were White British men, but that ethnicity was not actually collected in 66% of cases. Interestingly, they found that police are much more likely to put the ethnicity of a person of colour when arresting them (even if its a guess), than when they arrest a man who is clearly White British (which comes from the ‘white as default’ thinking thing). This suggests that the stats may be even more White than we currently think - but police don’t record Whiteness as much as they report any other ethnicity on arrest.

   Finally, and most importantly, the narrative that TR and others have pushed for years - the ‘white victims’ narrative. I have written and spoken on this many times over the years, and it is important to revive this point now: the victims of these grooming gangs were not just white girls. They were also Pakistani girls. Dual-heritage girls. Polish girls. Black girls. Muslim girls. Sikh girls. It will take you literally a few seconds to google this, and find cases in which Sikh and Muslim girls were the victims where groups of men were prosecuted for grooming, rape, and CSE. They were reported in mainstream media - but they never caused the outrage that the cases caused when the victims were white.

10. Yes, there were cover ups in local areas. Yes, the police did fail thousands of victims. Yes, social care did fail children and families, too. Yes, people were too scared to have the conversation about the role of ethnicity and religion in these crime types. All of those things are true, and they are true for many different reasons. Cover ups are common, I’m sorry, but this is true. Lots of institutions successfully cover up sexual abuse of children (the private schools haven’t even had their watershed moment yet, have they?). There certainly were people who were involved in trying to shut up social workers and support workers who kept raising concerns about CSE. This is all true, I knew some of those women personally. Police and other professionals saw the victims as prostitutes, whores, slags, attention seekers, troubled, wastes of time and all everything you can think of.

    Are the arguments around racism correct? Are Pakistani Muslim men specifically offending in a certain way? Are they more likely to rape and abuse girls? This answer is complicated but important: we cannot say that culture and religion do not play a role in offending, because they always do. Culture and religion play a role in everything - behaviour, attitudes, belief systems, decision making, and choices. There is no way we could say that cultures and religions are not playing a part in specific types of offending, just like we could not say this about White British culture. Or Afro-Caribbean culture. Or Romanian culture. Or Indian culture. Offenders are highly influenced by cultural norms, stereotypes, behaviours and their specific brand of misogyny - which every culture has. Were Pakistani Muslim offenders influenced by their cultural and religious beliefs and norms. Yes, of course they were. This isn’t particularly news. This is exactly the same for any sex offender, when you look at sex offender theory.

    However, we cannot say that CSE or grooming ‘gangs’ are specific to Pakistani Muslim culture, because they definitely are not, and we have many cases to prove that this behaviour towards girls occurs in many cultures and religions, including White British culture. The only solid trend we can say we definitely have is that the perpetrators are overwhelmingly MEN and the victims are overwhelmingly GIRLS - and yet, no one really wants to have that conversation!

11. By far the most despicable part of this sudden revival of conversations around CSE has been the use of victims’ trauma, rapes and deaths for shock factor, for clout, for social media engagement and for profit. Look at the biggest accounts. Look at them claiming they are ‘exposing’ grooming gangs. Look at them screenshotting old inquiries and evidence scopes, pretending they are brand new unearthed sources. Look at the celebs, journalists and politicians suddenly claiming they all care about CSE, and digging up old stories to make themselves relevant again. 20k likes. 100k likes. You do realise they are being paid for that level of engagement, right? Being paid to rehash the worst details of some woman’s pain and suffering, who is probably somewhere in the UK just trying to look after her kids and live a normal life. No one is showing any empathy or support for those victims at all. Are they okay? Are they coping? Are they angry? Are they being retraumatised? Who gives a fuck, right?*

    *I know several of these women personally, now in their thirties and forties, watching their trauma being used by Elon Musk for engagement, and no, they are not okay, if you want to know.

What Would Jess Say?

Lots of you have been writing to me this week asking me to write on this topic, and I hope I have gone some way to some easy-to-understand and concise answers, as I could literally write for the rest of my life on this topic. If you want to read my national evidence review or any of my reports on CSE investigations and evaluations, give me message and I can provide them to you.

My final thoughts are:

Do not get pulled into a social media storm by a small group of men with big platforms who don’t give a fuck about women and girls being raped and abused. Their true agendas will become clear with time, sit back and watch. They will do nothing more for victims of CSE than tweet. They will not help a cause, a charity or fund a single thing. They won’t set up trauma-informed services. They are playing a game, and at the moment, we are all just pieces of that game.

As those men would all say, ‘Step outside of the matrix’!

Written by Dr Jessica Taylor (PhD, CPsychol, AFBPsS, FRSA, PgDip.)

Dr Jessica Taylor is the CEO of VictimFocus, a trauma-informed Chartered Psychologist, bestselling author and researcher working with police, government and media to challenge victim blaming, pathologisation and retraumatisation of women and girls subjected to abuse, violence and trauma.