Police ‘avoided grooming gang investigations over racism fears'

Telegraph

5 hours ago

Police avoided pursuing child sex grooming gangs for fear of being viewed as racist, a report has found.
Even though there was evidence that a disproportionate number of Asian men had been responsible for grooming gangs, their role was covered up by successive governments and authorities over concerns about raising community tensions, Baroness Casey's review found.
The report found that flawed data had been used repeatedly to dismiss claims about Asian grooming gangs as sensationalised, biased or untrue, while an institutional view persisted that there was an overwhelming problem with white perpetrators when 'that can't be proved'.
Lady Casey pointed to a culture of denial under which governments, police, local authorities and other institutions had avoided the ethnicity issue 'for fear of appearing racist, raising community tensions or causing community cohesion problems'.
The data hunt
Lady Casey was commissioned to establish the scale of grooming gangs, officially termed group-based child sexual exploitation. But she said that instead she found a 'confusing picture of inconsistently applied definitions and data sets' across police, local councils, health and criminal justice.
The report estimated that around 500,000 children a year were likely to experience child sexual abuse, with police recording some 100,000 offences in 2024. Of these, an estimated 17,100 were flagged as child sexual exploitation. The only figure for gang grooming came from a new police database which totalled just 700. Lady Casey said it was 'highly unlikely' that this accurately reflected the true scale of grooming gangs.
'It is a failure of public policy over many years that there remains such limited, reliable data in this area,' said her report.
'We found that the ethnicity of perpetrators is shied away from and is still not recorded for two-thirds of perpetrators, so we are unable to provide any accurate assessment from the nationally collected data.'
Despite the lack of a full picture, however, Lady Casey said there was enough evidence available in data from three police forces, local reviews and high profile prosecutions to show 'disproportionate numbers of men from Asian ethnic backgrounds amongst suspects for group-based child sexual exploitation.'
Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, accepted her recommendation for the compulsory collection of ethnicity and nationality data for all suspects in child sex abuse and criminal exploitation cases.
Denial and cover-up
Lady Casey said the 'appalling' lack of data on ethnicity in crime recording was a ' major failing ' over the past decade and amounted to a culture of denial and cover-up.
'Questions about ethnicity have been asked but dodged for years. Child sexual exploitation is horrendous whoever commits it, but there have been enough convictions across the country of groups of men from Asian ethnic backgrounds to have warranted closer examination,' she said.
'Instead of examination, we have seen obfuscation. In a vacuum, incomplete and unreliable data is used to suit the ends of those presenting it. The system claims there is an overwhelming problem with White perpetrators when that can't be proved.
'This does no one any favours at all, and least of all those in the Asian, Pakistani or Muslim communities who needlessly suffer as those with malicious intent use this obfuscation to sow and spread hatred.'
She revealed that police forces had told her local councils would discourage officers from publicising successful convictions of grooming gangs 'due to fear of raising tensions', even though this was a well-established method for encouraging other victims to come forward.
'Instead of examining whether there is disproportionality in ethnicity or cultural factors at play in certain types of offending, we found many examples of organisations avoiding the topic altogether for fear of appearing racist, raising community tensions or causing community cohesion problems,' she said.
Adultification of victims
Lady Casey also expressed concern about the 'ambivalent' attitude of agencies and society towards adolescent girls who were judged as adults because of the way their life in care had forced them to 'grow up before their time.'
'Nevertheless, they cannot consent to their own abuse – they remain children. One effect of this is that children are still criminalised for offences they committed while being groomed,' the report said.
'Adults who were victims of abuse as children, are still fighting today to be believed and there is palpable frustration that the organisations, their leaders or sometimes the individuals working for them, are so rarely held to account for wrongdoing.'
Her recommendation – accepted by the Government – will mean the criminal convictions of victims of child sexual exploitation will be reviewed and quashed in cases where it is found they were 'criminalised instead of protected.'
Age of consent
Despite the age of consent being 16, Lady Casey found too many examples of child sex abuse criminal cases being dropped or downgraded from rape to lesser charges where a 13 or 15 year-old had been 'in love' with or had 'consented' to sex with the perpetrator.
This was because of a 'grey area' in the law where, although any sexual activity with those aged 13 to 15 was unlawful, the decision on whether to charge and which offence to charge with was left open to interpretation.
This was usually aimed at avoiding criminalising someone who reasonably believed a child was older than they were, or criminalising relationships between teenagers. In practice this nuance in law was being used to the benefit of much older men who had groomed underage children for sex.
Her proposed law change, accepted by the Government, will mean that adult men who groom and have sex with those aged 13 to 15 receive mandatory charges of rape, mirroring the approach taken in countries such as France.
Taxis
A lack of national consistency on taxi licencing has led to abusers gaining a licence in areas of the country with less stringent rules. The report said this allowed men to continue the abuse of children.
Local authorities issued taxi licences in line with statutory guidance but in some areas, especially those that had recognised problems of child sexual exploitation, local authorities went beyond this statutory guidance to provide additional protection for children.
However, they were being hindered by a lack of stringency elsewhere in the country and legal loopholes which meant drivers could apply for a licence anywhere in the country and then operate in another area.
Lady Casey called for the Department for Transport to close this loophole immediately and introduce more rigorous standards.
The inquiries
Lady Casey admitted she started her review without believing a national inquiry was necessary but was persuaded when she found only one area was 'getting on' with setting up a local inquiry into child-grooming gangs. Another local inquiry had faltered because of the lack of statutory powers.
It means a new national inquiry, lasting three years, will be set up to co-ordinate a series of targeted local investigations focused on areas where there have been grooming gang cover-ups.
Overseen by a new independent commission, they will have full statutory inquiry powers to compel witnesses to attend.
The new commission will draw on criminal investigations including a new nationwide probe by the National Crime Agency (NCA) and submissions from victims and witnesses. This will enable it to 'review cases of failures or obstruction by statutory services' to identify areas where local inquiries should be set up.
The NCA's nationwide operation will target people who have sexually exploited children, and follow up on an estimated more than 1,000 cold cases where no one was convicted.
We've heard it all before, says Rotherham victim
A victim of child sexual exploitation at the hands of grooming gangs has said the Government must finally act to tackle the scandal.
Sammy Woodhouse, a survivor of a Rotherham grooming gang, who now campaigns for the rights of victims, said: 'I of course welcome anything that is going to tackle this problem but I have heard all these promises before. I feel I am living in Groundhog Day. Reports come out, politicians jump up and say how terrible it is and how things must change.
'And then nothing does. We are still waiting for recommendations from IICSA to be implemented.
'Also this is going to be Labour investigating Labour because lots of this was happening under their councils.
'The issue about data on ethnicity not being collected was something we exposed years ago but nothing was done
'I also want to hear more details about the recommendation that victims should have their criminal convictions cancelled because there are thousands of girls who have been criminalised so that needs to be cleared up.
'I haven't seen anything yet about abusers losing parental rights to children who are born as a result of rape and that is something I have been campaigning on so I would like to see that cleared up.
'I won't rest until every council and every police force in the country has been investigated for their part in this scandal.'
Ms Woodhouse was sexually abused as a 14-year-old by Arshid Hussain, the ringleader of a grooming gang.
She was subjected to abuse including rape, assaults and coercion with threats to kill her family, and became pregnant with Hussain's baby in 1999 when she was just 15.
She later waived her anonymity as a rape victim to expose the gang.
Hussain was imprisoned for 35 years, His brothers Banaras and Basharat were handed 19 years and 25 years respectively and their uncle, Qurban Ali was jailed for 10 years.
Ms Woodhouse has written a book, Just A Child, about how she became trapped in Rotherham's web of crime and sexual exploitation.