It has taken decades, but we are just now beginning to learn the full extent of Britain’s grooming gangs.
Since at least the 1980s, white working-class girls have been subjected to rape, trafficking, kidnap, and torture at the hands of mostly Pakistani-origin men. The victims, who were in some cases as young as 10 years old, were manipulated by adult men claiming to be their ‘boyfriends.’ They would ply the girls with drugs, alcohol, clothes, and other ‘gifts’, before passing them around to be sexually assaulted by other men in the community. These girls almost always came from the most vulnerable sections of society. They lived in deprived and deindustrialised towns and cities like Rochdale, Telford, and Rotherham. They often came from broken families, and many lived in care. Time and again, local authorities—social workers, police officers, and care staff—failed to protect them, despite the abuse being as plain as day.
This was a scandal of unimaginable scale. Anger has rightly been simmering as activists and journalists have tried to bring greater attention not only to the fact that thousands of girls suffered horrific abuse, but also that local authorities turned a blind eye to these crimes.
Despite all this, UK prime minster Keir Starmer and his Labour MPs have spent the last six months denying that there is any need at all for a national inquiry into the grooming-gangs scandal. His safeguarding minister, Jess Phillips, kick-started the most recent debate over a grooming gang inquiry in January, when she rejected the calls of Oldham Council—an area that was home to a particularly nasty child-exploitation ring—to hold one. In response to the outrage this generated, Starmer accused those drawing attention to the issue as jumping on a “far-right bandwagon.” He then whipped his MPs into rejecting a proposal from the Conservatives that would have legislated for a national inquiry. Just recently, Labour MP Lucy Powell declared on BBC Radio 4 that focussing on grooming gangs was a “dog whistle.” Labour has repeatedly turned to look away from victims in the most shameful fashion.
Instead of launching the national inquiry that people were clamouring for, Starmer commissioned Baroness Louise Casey to conduct a “rapid audit” of gang-based child exploitation in the UK. It was this report, Starmer claims, that changed his mind. Last weekend, he announced that there would indeed be a national inquiry into the grooming gangs, as recommended by Casey. This would be overseen by an Independent Commission, with powers to compel witnesses to provide evidence. Starmer may defend this u-turn on the basis of Casey’s report having convinced him, but it is hard to ignore that it comes at a time when both the Conservatives and Reform UK are ahead of Labour in the polls. The two parties have, since last year’s election, pushed hard for a national inquiry. In January, the Tories attempted to legislate for one in parliament, which was rejected by Labour MPs. At the same time, Reform leader Nigel Farage pledged that his party would fund its own national inquiry if the government failed to.
The findings from that report, published in full this week, are nonetheless powerful. They lay bare both the negligence and outright cruelty that led to abusers going unpunished and victims being painted as untrustworthy. The level of betrayal of the victims is truly sickening. In one section, Casey points out that the girls involved were not treated as children, but as adults capable of being in sexual relationships with grown men. In some cases, rape charges were dropped or downgraded, as it was argued that the 13-to-15-year-olds were in consensual relationships with their abusers and “loved” them. Girls who went to the police about the sexual assault they suffered were often turned away and dismissed as “child prostitutes” who had put themselves in dangerous situations.
One of the most significant takeaways from Casey’s report is just how much the squeamishness over ethnicity stopped authorities from protecting abused girls. Police, social services, and local councils all tried to cover up or downplay the fact that the perpetrators were almost entirely Muslim men of Pakistani origin. Casey described how, in the file of one child, references to the abuser being “Pakistani” were censored out with Tippex. In fact, Casey found that ethnicity was not recorded for two-thirds of perpetrators of child sex exploitation.
Casey ultimately recommended that the UK government make recording the ethnicity and nationality mandatory in child sexual abuse and criminal exploitation cases. She also suggested that the state examines exactly why mass exploitation in the form of grooming gangs was able to thrive among one particular demographic. It is likely that the insular, tight-knit nature of the Pakistani in Britain that allowed these crimes to go on for so long, on such a large scale.
The reality that, up and down the country, an ethnic-minority group was engaging in horrific acts of abuse against white, working-class girls terrified the establishment. They were chiefly concerned not with protecting young girls, but with ensuring that so-called community tensions were not inflamed. Authorities in the affected areas were reluctant to take reports of Pakistani gangs seriously, terrified of being called racist. In the 2014 Jay Report on child exploitation, staff at Rotherham Council “described their nervousness about identifying the ethnic origins of perpetrators for fear of being thought racist” and some even “remembered clear direction from their managers not to do so.” As such, grooming gangs remained woefully underreported on, with many being allowed to continue with effective impunity.
The very concept of grooming gangs was roundly dismissed as a far-right conspiracy theory or moral panic, until the evidence became too clear to ignore. In the early days of investigations into this scandal, anyone who spoke out was charged with Islamophobia or racism. In 2011, the late Andrew Norfolk was one of the first journalists to uncover and report on what was going on in Rotherham. For this, he was smeared as “anti-Muslim” and “fuelling an emboldened racist agenda.”
When Labour MP for Rotherham, Sarah Champion, echoed Norfolk’s concerns about what had happened in her consistency, she was forced out of her position as shadow equalities minister in 2017. Likewise, Maggie Oliver, a former Greater Manchester Police detective who blew the whistle on the force’s inadequate investigation of grooming gangs in Rochdale in the 2000s, was sidelined from a report she was supposed to be a major contributor to.
Even now, after numerous reports have detailed the awfulness of these crimes, some still refuse to discuss the role that ethnicity or religion could have played in this. The Guardian mused aloud this week to Casey whether talking too much about these aspects could result in riots, reminiscent of those in Southport last year.
As the report points out, huge gaps in the data mean that we have no idea how many girls had to endure these horrors, or how widespread the problem was. But some estimates put the number of victims in the tens of thousands, across more than 50 towns and cities across the UK. Gangs are also likely to continue operating to this day, probably still being enabled by a culture of political correctness and fear of Islamophobia allegations.
Perhaps the most frustrating part about the Casey report is that none of it is news, per se. This review comes off the back of 15 years of reports and local inquiries into grooming-gangs across the country—all of which amounted to very little meaningful change. As of yet, the police officers, social workers, and local officials who chose to protect multiculturalism over vulnerable young girls still have not been held to account.
A national inquiry is welcome, of course. But after the sheer extent to which grooming gangs were ignored by successive governments, why would anyone trust that this time will be different? For decades, the British state—including both Labour and the Conservatives, as well as the legal and social-care apparatus—conspired to cover up one of the worst and widest-reaching crimes in recent memory. It willfully decided to sacrifice vulnerable young girls for the sake of promoting multiculturalism, and smeared anyone who cared as a racist Islamophobe. The victims of the grooming gangs desperately deserve justice. Will the same establishment that betrayed them really be able to deliver it now?
Can Britain Finally Reckon With Its Grooming Gangs?
Image for illustration purposes only
Pixabay
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It has taken decades, but we are just now beginning to learn the full extent of Britain’s grooming gangs.
Since at least the 1980s, white working-class girls have been subjected to rape, trafficking, kidnap, and torture at the hands of mostly Pakistani-origin men. The victims, who were in some cases as young as 10 years old, were manipulated by adult men claiming to be their ‘boyfriends.’ They would ply the girls with drugs, alcohol, clothes, and other ‘gifts’, before passing them around to be sexually assaulted by other men in the community. These girls almost always came from the most vulnerable sections of society. They lived in deprived and deindustrialised towns and cities like Rochdale, Telford, and Rotherham. They often came from broken families, and many lived in care. Time and again, local authorities—social workers, police officers, and care staff—failed to protect them, despite the abuse being as plain as day.
This was a scandal of unimaginable scale. Anger has rightly been simmering as activists and journalists have tried to bring greater attention not only to the fact that thousands of girls suffered horrific abuse, but also that local authorities turned a blind eye to these crimes.
Despite all this, UK prime minster Keir Starmer and his Labour MPs have spent the last six months denying that there is any need at all for a national inquiry into the grooming-gangs scandal. His safeguarding minister, Jess Phillips, kick-started the most recent debate over a grooming gang inquiry in January, when she rejected the calls of Oldham Council—an area that was home to a particularly nasty child-exploitation ring—to hold one. In response to the outrage this generated, Starmer accused those drawing attention to the issue as jumping on a “far-right bandwagon.” He then whipped his MPs into rejecting a proposal from the Conservatives that would have legislated for a national inquiry. Just recently, Labour MP Lucy Powell declared on BBC Radio 4 that focussing on grooming gangs was a “dog whistle.” Labour has repeatedly turned to look away from victims in the most shameful fashion.
Instead of launching the national inquiry that people were clamouring for, Starmer commissioned Baroness Louise Casey to conduct a “rapid audit” of gang-based child exploitation in the UK. It was this report, Starmer claims, that changed his mind. Last weekend, he announced that there would indeed be a national inquiry into the grooming gangs, as recommended by Casey. This would be overseen by an Independent Commission, with powers to compel witnesses to provide evidence. Starmer may defend this u-turn on the basis of Casey’s report having convinced him, but it is hard to ignore that it comes at a time when both the Conservatives and Reform UK are ahead of Labour in the polls. The two parties have, since last year’s election, pushed hard for a national inquiry. In January, the Tories attempted to legislate for one in parliament, which was rejected by Labour MPs. At the same time, Reform leader Nigel Farage pledged that his party would fund its own national inquiry if the government failed to.
The findings from that report, published in full this week, are nonetheless powerful. They lay bare both the negligence and outright cruelty that led to abusers going unpunished and victims being painted as untrustworthy. The level of betrayal of the victims is truly sickening. In one section, Casey points out that the girls involved were not treated as children, but as adults capable of being in sexual relationships with grown men. In some cases, rape charges were dropped or downgraded, as it was argued that the 13-to-15-year-olds were in consensual relationships with their abusers and “loved” them. Girls who went to the police about the sexual assault they suffered were often turned away and dismissed as “child prostitutes” who had put themselves in dangerous situations.
One of the most significant takeaways from Casey’s report is just how much the squeamishness over ethnicity stopped authorities from protecting abused girls. Police, social services, and local councils all tried to cover up or downplay the fact that the perpetrators were almost entirely Muslim men of Pakistani origin. Casey described how, in the file of one child, references to the abuser being “Pakistani” were censored out with Tippex. In fact, Casey found that ethnicity was not recorded for two-thirds of perpetrators of child sex exploitation.
Casey ultimately recommended that the UK government make recording the ethnicity and nationality mandatory in child sexual abuse and criminal exploitation cases. She also suggested that the state examines exactly why mass exploitation in the form of grooming gangs was able to thrive among one particular demographic. It is likely that the insular, tight-knit nature of the Pakistani in Britain that allowed these crimes to go on for so long, on such a large scale.
The reality that, up and down the country, an ethnic-minority group was engaging in horrific acts of abuse against white, working-class girls terrified the establishment. They were chiefly concerned not with protecting young girls, but with ensuring that so-called community tensions were not inflamed. Authorities in the affected areas were reluctant to take reports of Pakistani gangs seriously, terrified of being called racist. In the 2014 Jay Report on child exploitation, staff at Rotherham Council “described their nervousness about identifying the ethnic origins of perpetrators for fear of being thought racist” and some even “remembered clear direction from their managers not to do so.” As such, grooming gangs remained woefully underreported on, with many being allowed to continue with effective impunity.
The very concept of grooming gangs was roundly dismissed as a far-right conspiracy theory or moral panic, until the evidence became too clear to ignore. In the early days of investigations into this scandal, anyone who spoke out was charged with Islamophobia or racism. In 2011, the late Andrew Norfolk was one of the first journalists to uncover and report on what was going on in Rotherham. For this, he was smeared as “anti-Muslim” and “fuelling an emboldened racist agenda.”
When Labour MP for Rotherham, Sarah Champion, echoed Norfolk’s concerns about what had happened in her consistency, she was forced out of her position as shadow equalities minister in 2017. Likewise, Maggie Oliver, a former Greater Manchester Police detective who blew the whistle on the force’s inadequate investigation of grooming gangs in Rochdale in the 2000s, was sidelined from a report she was supposed to be a major contributor to.
Even now, after numerous reports have detailed the awfulness of these crimes, some still refuse to discuss the role that ethnicity or religion could have played in this. The Guardian mused aloud this week to Casey whether talking too much about these aspects could result in riots, reminiscent of those in Southport last year.
As the report points out, huge gaps in the data mean that we have no idea how many girls had to endure these horrors, or how widespread the problem was. But some estimates put the number of victims in the tens of thousands, across more than 50 towns and cities across the UK. Gangs are also likely to continue operating to this day, probably still being enabled by a culture of political correctness and fear of Islamophobia allegations.
Perhaps the most frustrating part about the Casey report is that none of it is news, per se. This review comes off the back of 15 years of reports and local inquiries into grooming-gangs across the country—all of which amounted to very little meaningful change. As of yet, the police officers, social workers, and local officials who chose to protect multiculturalism over vulnerable young girls still have not been held to account.
A national inquiry is welcome, of course. But after the sheer extent to which grooming gangs were ignored by successive governments, why would anyone trust that this time will be different? For decades, the British state—including both Labour and the Conservatives, as well as the legal and social-care apparatus—conspired to cover up one of the worst and widest-reaching crimes in recent memory. It willfully decided to sacrifice vulnerable young girls for the sake of promoting multiculturalism, and smeared anyone who cared as a racist Islamophobe. The victims of the grooming gangs desperately deserve justice. Will the same establishment that betrayed them really be able to deliver it now?
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