Mark Humphrys (politics)

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The "Welsh Refugee Council" story is fake

In January 2025, there was a (long overdue and welcome) resurgence of interest in the scandal of Muslim grooming gangs in UK towns. The new surge of interest seems to have begun with a tweet by Elon Musk on 31 Dec 2024.

During this surge of interest, the Internet went mad about a claim that the "Welsh Refugee Council" was using young girls to "entice" migrants to Wales.

The "Welsh Refugee Council" story is a fake story. I have put together all the evidence for that on this page.




The story.
From here on 11 Jan 2025.
Last I looked it had got up to 5.9 million views.
And tens of thousands of other posts and comments.


  

The real story: 1. School invites WRC to give talk

Here is the real story.

On Fri 2 Dec 2022, Brynteg School in Bridgend, Wales, invited the Welsh Refugee Council (WRC) to give a talk.

The kids heard from refugees from Ukraine. This is in the context of the barbaric Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.




Video shown by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to U.S. Congress in March 2022.
Everyone in the world should support Ukraine and Ukrainian refugees.


  

2. The kids make videos

After the talk, the kids (both boys and girls) made a variety of videos welcoming refugees, as part of a class project.
  

Folder of the videos on Google Drive.
Timestamps are 7 Dec 2022.





3. WRC praises kids and links to videos

  

The WRC put up a page praising the kids and linking to the videos.
The page was here. After online abuse they took down this page.
Here is the page archived as at Feb 2023.
They link to the Google Drive.



The WRC apparently made a Facebook post on 16 Dec 2022 promoting the kids and including one of the videos.
I say "apparently" because apparently it was here and then deleted after online abuse.
But it does seem to have existed. "Voice of Wales" has a video capture of it, from which comes the above screenshot. It looks real.




4. Internet people claim the WRC is using girls to "entice" migrants

At some point, Internet people took one of the videos that was made only by girls, and claimed the WRC was making videos using underage girls to "entice" migrants to Wales.

This is a fake story. Shame on all the people spreading it without asking for proof.




The fake story goes viral in Jan 2025, and is spread by lots of people who should know better, including Elon Musk (see "Elon Musk reposted").


  

Fake image

Here is an alleged "Welsh Refugee Council" image doing the rounds at the same time. I call it as fake.

  

The alleged "Welsh Refugee Council" image.
Posted by "UltraDane" on 11 Jan 2025.
No link to source.
It has a link to the WRC site but needless to say, the picture does not appear on that site.
I call it as fake.


  

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