JENRICK QUESTIONS WHY JUDGES ARE NOT RELEASING RAPE GANG COURT TRANSCRIPTS

Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick has said some judges are ‘almost covering up’ the trials of rape gang perpetrators.

Speaking to GB News, Robert Jenrick said:

“It’s deeply concerning that the public can’t access historic rape gang trial transcripts. These aren’t just legal documents, they’re historical documents that tell the story in detail, of some of the worst crimes in our recent history, how they were committed, how they were covered up and enabled and then belatedly, finally exposed and brought to justice.

“And the fact that some judges are choosing to deny organisations the right to have these, to put them in the public domain, despite the fact that these were trials that were heard in public anyway, this was all on the public record.

“I’s only when people hear the full, unalloyed details of these cases that actually it’s often brought home to people.

“At the beginning of the year, it was when court transcripts began to circulate on social media that people realized that ‘grooming gangs’ was really a euphemism and that this was absolutely abhorrent practices.

“There was a fantastic speech in the House of Commons the other day by my colleague Katie Lam, where very powerfully, she read out an extract from one of the transcripts, and the house was silent. Her speech has gone viral, and millions of people have watched it.

“So it’s incredibly important that the full details of these trials gets into the public domain so people can understand what’s happened, and the public and victims can get the transparency that they crave.

“Because some of these are being almost covered up by judges, the victims and the public, I think are right to ask, in whose interests are they serving? What possible rationale is there for doing this? And it just adds further insult to injury to the victims of these terrible crimes.

“It’s generally left to the individual judges to make their decisions. But what we’re seeing is that there’s almost a post code lottery where some judges are saying that the transcript should be released and some are not.”

“They’re applying the law in an uneven way in different parts of the country, which just once again, creates a sense of unfairness; ladling unfairness upon unfairness, in this most terrible situation of the grooming gang scandal.

“What I’m asking for is the Justice Secretary to intervene, maybe with the Lady Chief Justice as well, as the most senior judge in the country, release these transcripts so they can finally be in the public domain and can we have the disinfectant that comes through openness and transparency?

“I think that Shabana Mahmood should do this. I’ve written to her, asking her to do it.”

Shadow Justice Secretary: “I don’t care about the welfare of Islamist terrorists”

“I’m very worried about the situation in some of our prisons. Islamist gangs are ruling the roost, and governors and the Ministry of Justice have been appeasing them.

“The use of separation sense is clearly not working, because you’re seeing individuals living together, feeding off each other. The worst people radicalising others, and as we learned very tragically at the weekend, having access to materials that could be used as weapons to seriously assault prison officers.

“I think we need to have root and branch reform of the way in which we house these individuals so they’re genuinely contained because the safety of prison officers has to be put first every single time.

“I don’t, frankly, care about the welfare of Islamist terrorists who are in our prisons. I care about the brave men and women who are doing a tough job, often for not very much money, working in our prisons.

“They should be able to go to work every day knowing that they’re as safe as they can be, and that is not the case right now.

“I’ve spoken to prison officers, I’ve had contact from many over the course of the last 24 hours and some of them working in places like HMP Frankland feels scared, they feel underappreciated, and they don’t think their governors have their backs.”