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Evelyn Ball's avatar

Thank you for drawing this parallel with such clarity and boldness.

In the U.S., many people still haven’t heard of the grooming gang scandals in the UK—coverage is scarce, and when it appears, it’s usually minimized. But the pattern of institutional complicity you describe—of adults looking away, minimizing, silencing—is disturbingly familiar.

We’ve grown up hearing horror stories of grooming by priests, coaches, and cult leaders. Yet the two forms of mass grooming happening today—through ideology and through calculated exploitation—are being enabled under the banner of “inclusion” and “progress.” And social justice slogans have trained parents, educators, and clinicians to suspend instinct, judgment, abandon discernment, and ignore red flags.

I couldn't help but think that parents aren’t just watching this unfold—they’re being groomed too. Just as individual groomers don’t only groom children—but often groom as much of their family circle as possible—our cultural institutions have played a similar role. In many high-profile abuse cases, perpetrators have formed close relationships with parents, offering friendship, financial perks, or social credibility while simultaneously targeting their children. Michael Jackson, for instance, is one of many alleged groomers known to have charmed families as a strategic means of access. The pattern is clear: gain the parents’ trust, disarm their instincts, and then exploit the gap.

Our society is now seeing this replicated on a systemic level. At least when it comes to gender ideology, parents are reassured with words of "inclusion" and "progressive care." As you well know, they’re told not to question, to affirm without hesitation, to medicate without delay. Like all grooming, it works best when those in charge make us doubt our own instincts. In the current scandals, we’re encouraged to believe that skepticism is bigotry and that silence is virtue. All while children are being offered up to institutions and ideologies that are causing them lifelong physical and psychological harm, and most of society is walking by it completely unfazed, or even cheering it on.

I've said this before, but It reminds me of the classic sci-fi film, Invasion of the Body Snatchers. In it, people are slowly replaced by emotionless replicas—and hardly anyone notices. The most chilling part isn’t just the takeover, but how quietly it happens…how ordinary people surrender their humanity while those trying to warn others are cast as unstable or extreme. It’s a story about what happens when conformity silences instinct and critical thinking.

In a very similar way, those of us raising the alarm today are the ones trying to keep something deeply human alive. Ironically, we are the actual “woke” ones—not in the current ideological sense that props up gender identity and queer theory, but in the original, human sense of being awake. Awake to danger, dangerous ideas and dangerous people. Awake to the real human, relational and developmental needs of children. Awake to the cost of staying silent. And still choosing to show up—present, discerning, courageous and protective.

Thank you again for making this very important connection. You are helping so many people, like myself, gain the courage to face and speak about reality. And, as you state, the courage to face what is happening is what will one day help us stop the grooming and exponential harm being done.

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Liverpool Mary's avatar

Thankyou Stella

We Need to name the horrors and the parallels are so clear

So much double speak and obfuscation in professions and wider culture

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