SOMETHING is rotten in the state of England. At the highest level, a rigid political policy which declares that ethnic and religious minorities must not be offended has ensured that for decades untold thousands of children have been sexually abused.

This means that the largely imaginary crime of “Islamophobia” is officially regarded as a more heinous offence than the rape of children.

In 2001, a Home Office researcher in Rotherham was sent on an “ethnicity and diversity awareness course” and told that she must “never, ever” repeat her findings that child molestation on a massive scale was being perpetrated in the town and the culprits were mainly gangs of Muslim men.

Speaking to the BBC’s Panorama programme under the condition of anonymity, the researcher said that she had identified more than 270 victims of trafficking and underage prostitution by Muslim men in Rotherham.

Her report – based on interviews with underage girls who had been molested - was sent to Rotherham Council but never published.

The official censorship and cover-up went further: when the researcher resisted pressure to change her findings and come to the approved politically correct conclusions instead, the council tried unsuccessfully to sack her.

So now we know that not only sections of local government but the Home Office itself operate according to a system of institutionalised deceit, lying.

There are layers upon layers of this rottenness.

First, the highly-paid directors of social services and the council officials who knew that this abuse and trafficking had been going on for years have never been called to account: not even in one court case. Indeed, many of these social workers have gone on to even more senior posts in public service.

Secondly, as a direct consequence, none of the perpetrators, abusers and rapists has been brought to justice.

But the true depth of this corruption lies in the fact that the sexual abuse of children – and Rotherham is not an isolated scandal – is still going on, all unchecked. There are scores of documented incidents in which it is reported that when perpetrators cry “Islamophobia” the police back off.

Shockingly, this means that in our country today not everyone is equal under the law.

We hear a lot about “discrimination.” Discrimination is indeed taking place, but it is not discrimination against an ethnic and religious minority, but in their favour.

So what next? There are two possible outcomes: either Britain continues to sacrifice the rule of law to illusory concerns that to expose and prosecute the gangs of traffickers and rapists amounts to “racism,” or else, by some miracle, authority decides to face the barbaric truth and does something about it.

If that particular researcher had not got in touch with Panorama, and if newspaper editors in general were so cowed by authority that they feared to publish the truth, then we should all find ourselves powerless in a kingdom of lies. The words for this are “totalitarianism” and “dictatorship.”

Meanwhile, all the political parties in Westminster are in denial.