by Jim Chimirie on X
A state does not print guidance warning against rape unless it has identified a real risk. The Home Office’s own booklet for newly arrived asylum seekers does exactly that, stating that someone who is “asleep, drunk, or unable to respond” cannot consent, and that marriage does not entitle a man to sex without agreement every time. The warning was not issued in a vacuum. Sexual offence convictions among foreign nationals rose 62 per cent in four years, compared with 39.3 per cent among British nationals, with foreign nationals now accounting for one in seven convictions. The state identified the risk, put its warning in writing, then dispersed men whose backgrounds had not been fully established into communities across the country.
Week after week, the headlines bring another report of a woman or girl being sexually assaulted. Now elderly men are among the victims. Bruke Desalagne, an Eritrean man, dragged a pensioner behind a church hoarding in Harrow and raped him for twenty minutes while traffic passed within yards. Afghani Khan Agah and Noorullah Ahmdzai, one of whom arrived by small boat and was moved through two Home Office hotels while his asylum claim was pending, raped a woman at knifepoint in a London park while threatening to kill her date.
Look at how the state plans to act once these men are already inside the country. Shabana Mahmood’s proposed Community Sponsorship scheme would ask British families to house new arrivals directly, with responsibility for support transferring to the sponsor for the first year. When something goes wrong, the government is insulated. The sponsor carries the consequence. Rhiannon Skye Whyte was stabbed twenty-three times by a Sudanese man who had entered Britain by small boat three months earlier and was housed in a repurposed hotel, despite staff warnings and repeated police callouts before her death. The proposed sponsorship scheme does nothing to close that gap. It creates another means of transferring risk onto the public while distancing the state from the consequences.