The courage to name evil

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NICK EICHER, HOST: Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. 

I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

This story contains subject matter that may not be appropriate for all audiences, so we will take a pause for about 10 seconds.

Britain’s governing Labor Party is searching for a new leader after Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced his resignation.

EICHER: But even as British politics enters a new chapter, another crisis is demanding the nation’s attention.

A newly released parliamentary report alleges that organized grooming gangs operated across the United Kingdom for decades while many of the institutions charged with protecting children failed to intervene.

WORLD commentator Joe Rigney says the scandal reveals something deeper than criminal depravity.

JOE RIGNEY: Parties rise and fall. Prime ministers come and go—particularly in the United Kingdom, which has had seven prime ministers in the last 10 years.

But a nation’s deepest problems are rarely political. They are moral.

This week, Member of Parliament Rupert Lowe released the findings of an independent inquiry into Britain’s grooming gang scandal.

Its conclusions are staggering.

But perhaps more staggering is what the report says about the institutions that allowed these crimes to continue.

LOWE: This report is over 200 pages long, and it goes into the root causes of probably the most extensive, widespread scandal that has ever beset Britain. It goes to every corner of the country ... and it involves failure by the British establishment. And by the British establishment I mean government ministers, the civil service, local government, social services, the police, the judiciary, the NHS, and the media...

For years, victims spoke. Parents warned. Whistleblowers raised alarms. And yet the machinery of a modern Western nation repeatedly failed to protect vulnerable girls and young women.

The report argues that these crimes were not isolated. They were systematic.

And many survivors describe the same pattern of grooming, exploitation, violence, and institutional indifference. Here’s MP Lowe reading the shocking testimony of a young person:

LOWE: Another: "He put a cigarette out on the baby’s face." Another: "It started when I was 13. I was r***d by probably about six or seven hundred different men over three years." Another: "They would toot the horn of the car and then a child would be taken…"

Those words are almost impossible to comprehend. But the deeper question is not what the perpetrators did. The deeper question is why so many people refused to stop them.

The report points repeatedly to a toxic mixture of multicultural dogma, political calculation, and fear. 

Fear of being called racist … of offending protected communities … of telling uncomfortable truths.

Scripture has a simpler name for that disease: The fear of man. 

And the fear of man lays a snare.

When leaders fear public condemnation more than they fear God, justice collapses. 

When institutions prize social harmony above truth, the innocent suffer. 

And when a nation loses the courage to name evil, evil flourishes.

Christians should not respond to such wickedness with apathy. 

The Bible gives us language for moments like this. The Psalms teach God’s people to pray: “Break the teeth in their mouths, O God.” And: “O LORD, God of vengeance, shine forth. Rise up, O Judge of the earth.”

These are not prayers for personal revenge. They are prayers that God would bring hidden darkness into the light and establish justice for the oppressed.

Britain does not merely need another prime minister: It needs repentance. Repentance for multicultural illusions … for cowardice disguised as tolerance … for every public official who chose career advancement over protecting children and young women. 

And repentance for every institution that preferred a lie that preserved social peace to a truth that demanded action.

The Polish people once confronted a corrupt and failing system through solidarity, courage, and sacrifice. The British people may soon face a similar choice. 

Will they accept another round of official promises? Or will they demand accountability, truth, and justice?

As Rupert Lowe told Parliament:

LOWE: Stop being so scared. I could continue for hours and hours. All of us in this building have a responsibility to finally act—not to talk, but to act.

A nation cannot survive indefinitely on evasions. Sooner or later, reality arrives. 

For Britain, that moment appears to have come.

For WORLD, I’m Joe Rigney.

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