Rochdale grooming case: Trevor Phillips insists race relevant However Mr Phillips told BBC1's The Andrew Marr Show: "Anybody who says that the fact that most of the men are Asian and most of the children are white is not relevant - that's just fatuous. These are closed communities essentially and I worry that in these communities there are people who knew what was going on and didn't say anything, either because they're frightened or because they're so separated from the rest of the communities they think 'Oh, that's just how white people let their children carry on. We don't need to do anything."' He said it was important also that the role played by the authorities in the area was properly investigated. "If anybody in any of the agencies that are supposed to be caring for these children - schools, social services and so on - took the view that being aggressively interventionalist to save these children would lead to the demonisation of some group because of the ethnicity ... then it is a national scandal and something that would need to be dealt with urgently," he said.