The British government gave in to pressure on Thursday and announcement new investigations into child sexual exploitation and abuse, less than a month after billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk used his social media platform vitriolic messages.
Speaking in Parliament, Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, said she had ordered a rapid three-month audit into “the current scale and nature of exploitation by gangs across the country ”, which would examine data on the ethnic origin of the perpetrators.
She also said the government would support and help fund up to five local investigations into the issue of so-called grooming gangs – groups of men who sexually exploited thousands of girls in Britain, some aged up to ‘just 11 years old, in the 2000s and early 2010s. Most of the authors were of British and Pakistani origin.
The scandal, widely publicized in the British media in the 2010s and which has already been the subject of local criticism and national The investigations covered a number of towns in which girls, mostly white, were being exploited, assaulted and raped by groups of men.
According to several investigations, victims and parents who sought help were often rejected by the police and social services. Some police officers had described the victims as “whores” and the violence inflicted on the girls as a “lifestyle choice”, while other officials feared being labeled racist if they highlighted the ethnic origin of the attackers.
Grooming gangs represent a fraction of the total number of recorded cases of child sexual abuse in England and Wales. Of 115,489 child sexual abuse 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. And of these cases, 1,125 were perpetrated by loved ones or family members in the home.
But the issue is deeply sensitive and has been fueled by Mr Musk who this month falsely accused Prime Minister Keir Starmer and other Labor Party lawmakers of enabling grooming gangs. Her social media posts included many inaccuracies and smearsnotably accusing Mr Starmer, a former chief prosecutor, of being complicit in the “rape of Britain”. However, his intervention reignited a debate on sensitive issues, including race, sexual abuse and the cultural values of certain immigrant communities.
The government had previously rejected calls for a new national inquiry from the anti-immigration Reform UK party and the main opposition Conservative Party, whose leader, Kemi Badenoch, said no one would had “joined the dots” regarding the series of grooming cases. , including the participation of men of Pakistani origin.
The government had said it would instead focus on implementing the recommendations of a previous national inquiry led by Professor Alexis Jay into child sexual abuse, which took seven yearsprocessed more than two million pages of evidence and heard the voices of some 6,000 victims. That inquiry concluded in 2022 and made a series of recommendations that the previous Conservative-led government failed to implement.
Ms. Jay, who also oversaw an investigation in 2014 in grooming gangs in Rotherham, a town in northern England where 1,400 minors were raped and trafficked by men of mainly Pakistani origin between 1997 and 2013, had opposed a new national inquiry, instead urging the Labor government act on its previous recommendations.
On Thursday, Ms Cooper said she had asked Louise Casey, who led a 2015 survey on the authorities’ response to child sexual abuse in Rotherham, to undertake an audit of the scale of gang exploitation and examine more evidence that was not previously available.
“It will properly examine the ethnic data and demographics of the gangs involved and their victims, and examine the cultural and societal factors of this type of offending, including among different ethnic groups,” Ms Cooper said of the new audit.
Ms Cooper also announced plans to help the northern town of Oldham and up to four other municipalities undertake investigations “to achieve truth and justice for victims and survivors”. . Police chiefs have also been asked to review previous cases of gang exploitation where no charges were laid and reopen investigations where appropriate.
The government’s announcement on Thursday follows calls for action from a handful of Labor lawmakers, including Sarah Champion, who represents Rotherham. She had proposed a five-point plan which called on ministers “to order local inquiries across the country to hold the authorities to account – who would then report to the government”, and for a “national audit” to determine whether drug gangs grooming were always present. operation or if any cases were missed.
On Thursday, Chris Philp, Conservative Party spokesperson for home affairs, judged the initiative insufficient. “The government’s announcement of only five local rape gang investigations is completely inadequate,” he wrote on social media, saying many other towns were affected. “And the rest doesn’t matter?”
