As a result, it has been estimated that over 1,400 girls were sexually abused from 1997 to 2013—and the Rotherham case is not an isolated incident. There have been at least eight other cases of sexual abuse networks in Britain, all of them involving Muslim men from immigrant communities who, often with the help of drugs, raped underprivileged British girls. How could this happen in an enlightened, civilized country?

Review of Roger Scruton’s “The Disappeared”

In September 2012, the Times of London reported that authorities in Rotherham, England, had intentionally ignored reports about child sexual abuse for fear of being labeled racists. The reports were about British men of Pakistani descent, and local law enforcement feared prying too much into the affairs of an immigrant community.

As a result, it has been estimated that over 1,400 girls were sexually abused from 1997 to 2013—and the Rotherham case is not an isolated incident. There have been at least eight other cases of sexual abuse networks in Britain, all of them involving Muslim men from immigrant communities who, often with the help of drugs, raped underprivileged British girls.

How could this happen in an enlightened, civilized country? The United Kingdom is the nation that, in practice, invented the separation of powers, parliamentary democracy, and the rule of law; and it has exported these values around the globe to India, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and America among others. From Britain springs civilization, not barbarism. Yet there are few words more apt than “barbaric” to describe the cases of abuse now coming to light.

So what’s rotten in the state of Britain?

Roger Scruton, writer, philosopher, and a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., takes up this question in his new novel, The Disappeared. In addition to his extensive non-fiction writings on contemporary culture, philosophy, beauty, architecture, politics, and religion, Scruton has also published a handful of novels, including Notes from Underground, based on his experiences working in the dissident subculture of Soviet-ruled Czechoslovakia in the mid-1980s.

In The Disappeared, Scruton tells the stories of three principal characters. There is Laura Markham, a consultant who is kidnapped from her rented apartment; Justin Fellowes, a young man who falls in love with Muhibbah Shahin, an Afghan refugee; and Stephen Haycraft, a literature teacher at St. Catherine’s Academy who tries to protect one of his students who lives with her foster mother in local public housing, and who is being sexually abused. Scruton rounds out the cast with various other characters, including Muhibbah’s brothers, a sexually abusive foster father, and a social worker whose belief in multiculturalism makes distinguishing between good and evil impossible.

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