Ethnicity of grooming gangs 'shied away from', Casey report says

BBC News

a day ago

The ethnicity of those involved in grooming gangs has been "shied away from" by authorities, according to a new report by Baroness Louise Casey.The finding comes after the peer was tasked with producing an audit on the nature and scale of group-based child sexual abuse in England and Wales.The report said ethnicity data is not recorded for two-thirds of grooming gang perpetrators, meaning it is not robust enough to support conclusions about the ethnicity of group-based child sexual exploitation offenders at the national level.Home Secretary Yvette Cooper apologised to the victims as she presented the findings to MPs and gave details about a new national inquiry into grooming gangs.
In the report, Baroness Casey said: "We as a society owe these women a debt. "They should never have been allowed to have suffered the appalling abuse and violence they went through as children," it added.On the question of ethnicity, the report said: "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".However it added that at a local level for three police forces, there was enough evidence to show a "disproportionate numbers of men from Asian ethnic backgrounds amongst suspects for group-based child sexual exploitation".The report criticised the "failure" of the authorities to "understand" the nature and scale of the problem to date."If we'd got this right years ago – seeing these girls as children raped rather than 'wayward teenagers' or collaborators in their abuse, collecting ethnicity data, and acknowledging as a system that we did not do a good enough job - then I doubt we'd be in this place now," the report stated.Cooper told the Commons the government would follow all 12 of the report's recommendations, including suggestions to:Ensure adults who engage in penetrative sex with a child under 16 "face the most serious charge of rape".Review the criminal convictions of victims of child sexual exploitation and quashing any convictions where the government finds victims were criminalised instead of protectedLaunch a new national criminal operation overseen by the National Crime Agency to tackle grooming gangsOversee further inquiries to get "accountability" in local areasCooper said: "Baroness Casey's first recommendation is we must see children as children. She concludes too many grooming cases have been dropped or downgraded from rape to lesser charges because a 13 to 15-year-old is perceived to have been in love with or had consented to sex with the perpetrator."The report is focused on "group-based child exploitation" by grooming gangs, a crime which is defined as involving "multiple perpetrators coercing, manipulating and deceiving children into sex, to create an illusion of consent".
Before the publication of the report, the Home Office confirmed that a nationwide policing operation to bring grooming gang members to justice would be led by the National Crime Agency (NCA).According to the Home Office, the NCA will work in partnership with police forces to investigate cases that "were not progressed through the criminal justice system" in the past.Downing Street has said the full national statutory inquiry into grooming gangs would look "specifically at how young girls were failed so badly by different agencies on a local level".A national statutory inquiry is an investigation set up by the government to respond to events of major public concern - in this case grooming gangs - that has legal powers to compel witnesses to give evidence.