UK announces rapid review into scale of child sexual abuse by grooming gangs

On Thursday, the British government yielded to pressure Announce New investigations into child sexual exploitation and abuse, less than a month after Elon Musk, the billionaire tech mogul, used his social media platform X to highlight the issue in a series of scathing posts.

Speaking in Parliament, Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, said she had commissioned a rapid three-month audit into the “current scale and nature of gang-based exploitation across the country” that would examine data on the ethnicity of perpetrators.

She also said the government would support and help fund up to five local investigations into so-called grooming gangs, groups of men who were found to have sexually exploited thousands of girls, some as young as 11, in Britain. 2000 and early 2010. Most of the perpetrators were of British Pakistani heritage.

The scandal, which was widely covered by the British media in the 2000s, was already the subject of national and local criticism. patriotic The investigations extended to a number of towns and cities where white girls were exploited, assaulted, and raped by groups of men.

According to a number of investigations, victims and parents who sought help were often let down by the police and social services. Some police officers referred to victims as “pies” and to assaulting girls as a “lifestyle choice,” while other officials feared they would be labeled racist if they highlighted the ethnicity of the perpetrators.

Grooming bands represent a part Of the total number of cases of child sexual abuse recorded in England and Wales. Of the 115,489 child sexual assault crimes recorded in 2023, 4,228 cases – or 3.7 percent – Involved groups of two or more perpetrators, according to official data published in November. Of these cases, 1,125 cases were committed by relatives or family members at home.

But the issue is deeply emotive, raised by Mr Musk, who this month falsely accused Prime Minister Keir Starmer and other Labor lawmakers of enabling gangs. His social contributions included many Inaccuracies and smearsincluding accusing Mr Starmer, a former attorney general, of complicity in the “rape of Britain”. But his intervention reignited debate over sensitive issues including race, sexual assault and the cultural values ​​of some immigrant communities.

The government had previously rejected calls for a new national inquiry from Britain’s anti-immigration Reform Party and the main opposition Conservative Party, whose leader, Kemi Badenoch, said no one had “joined the dots” over the series of grooming cases. Including the involvement of men of Pakistani origin.

The government said it would instead focus on implementing the recommendations of Professor Alexis Jay’s previous national inquiry into child sexual abuse, which took a long time. Seven yearsIt processed more than two million pages of evidence and presented the voices of nearly 6,000 victims. This investigation concluded in 2022 and made a series of recommendations that the previous Conservative-led government failed to implement.

Mrs. Jay, who also He oversaw the 2014 investigation The “grooming” movement into gangs in Rotherham, a town in northern England where 1,400 minors were raped and trafficked by men of mostly Pakistani origin between 1997 and 2013, has opposed a new national inquiry, urging the Labor government instead to hold a new national inquiry. . To work on its previous recommendations.

On Thursday, Ms Cooper said she had asked Louise Casey, who had an operation Investigation 2015 In the authorities’ response to child sexual abuse in Rotherham, to undertake a review of the scale of gang exploitation and consider further evidence that was not previously available.

“It will properly consider the ethnic data and demographics of the gangs involved and their victims, and will consider the cultural and societal drivers of this type of crime, including among different ethnic groups,” Ms Cooper said of the new review.

Ms Cooper also announced plans to help Oldham North and up to four other municipalities carry out investigations “to get the truth and get justice for victims and survivors”. Police chiefs have also been asked to review previous gang exploitation cases in which no charges were brought and to reopen investigations where appropriate.

The government’s announcement on Thursday followed calls for action from a group of Labor lawmakers, including Sarah Champion, who represents Rotherham. She had proposed a five-point plan calling on ministers to “commission local investigations across the country to hold the authorities to account – which then report back to the government”, and to conduct a “national audit” to investigate whether grooming gangs still exist. process or whether cases have been missed.

Chris Philp, who speaks for the Conservative Party on home affairs, on Thursday rejected the initiative as insufficient. “The government’s announcement of only five investigations into local rape gangs is woefully inadequate,” he wrote on social media, saying many towns were affected. “What about the rest, aren’t they important?”