Ethnicity of child sex abuse suspects will be logged after truth about Asian grooming gangs was ‘dodged for YEARS'

The Sun

4 hours ago

AUTHORITIES will be forced to track the ethnicity of grooming predators after years deliberately covering up the "over-representation" of Asian rape gangs.
A damning report into the scandal lays bare catastrophic failings of the British state to stop the abuse of white girls - and calls for a national inquiry to 'draw a line in the sand'.
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Sir Keir Starmer has accepted Baroness Louise Casey's recommendations for the probe after previously batting away such demands as a 'far-right bandwagon'.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper told MPs today the government will also accept the other demands - including mandatory rape charges for any adult who penetrates a child.
She also issued an apology to the victims on behalf of the British state for "failing to to keep your safe".
In her three-month rapid audit, Baroness Casey laments how 'questions about ethnicity have been dodged for years'.
She says that there have 'been enough convictions across the country of groups of men from Asian ethnic backgrounds to have warranted closer examination.'
'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.'
As The Sun first revealed last week, her report also links illegal migration with the grooming scandal.
ABUSER CRACKDOWN
Baroness Casey's audit sets out 12 urgent recommendations to tackle the scandal of child grooming - which the Home Secretary says the government will accept in full.
The report calls for the law to be tightened so that any adult who has sex with a child under the age of 16 is automatically charged with rape, removing current legal grey areas that allow abusers to avoid proper punishment.
Grooming gang crackdown unveiled
BARONESS Casey's report sets out a series of recommendations, which the government has accepted in full
1. Strengthen the law: Tighten the law so that any adult who has sex with a child under the age of 16 is automatically charged with rape, removing current legal grey areas that allow abusers to avoid proper punishment.
2. Address Historical Failings: Through a national inquiry pursue justice for past cases and hold accountable those who failed to act.
3. Enhance Intelligence Gathering: Improve the collection and analysis of information to combat exploitation more effectively.
4. Improve Inter-Agency Collaboration: Foster stronger cooperation and information-sharing among agencies.
5. Mandatory Reporting: Require all services to share information when a child is at risk.
6. Introduce Unique Child Identifiers: Implement a system to ensure children are consistently and accurately identified across services.
7. Modernise Police Systems: Upgrade technology to enable seamless communication and prevent missed opportunities.
8. Treat Grooming Gangs as Serious Organised Crime: Employ the same robust strategies used to combat other forms of organised criminal activity.
9. Investigate Declining Reports: The Department for Education must examine why reports of child abuse are decreasing and take corrective action.
10. Understand the Underlying Drivers: Conduct in-depth research into the factors underpinning grooming gangs, including cultural and online influences.
11. Regulate the Taxi Industry: Prevent exploitation by restricting the use of 'out-of-area' taxi drivers.
12. Commit Government Resources: Ministers must allocate funding and ensure measurable progress is achieved.
It also recommends a national inquiry to bring more perpetrators to justice, including a fresh review of historic cases that were dropped or never fully investigated.
Agencies such as police forces, local councils, and social care bodies must be held accountable for past failures, with support given to local inquiries and renewed scrutiny of previous statutory reviews.
The audit stresses the importance of collecting more accurate and transparent data—particularly on the ethnicity of offenders—to fully understand and confront the patterns behind group-based exploitation.
To improve prevention and response, it urges better information-sharing between police, children's services, and health providers, ensuring warning signs are spotted and acted upon swiftly.
The report recommends treating child sexual exploitation with the same seriousness as major organised crime, using specialised investigation tactics and prioritising victim-centred approaches.
It calls for an end to the harmful "adultification" of teenage girls, especially those in care, who are too often judged as complicit rather than recognised as vulnerable children.
The government is also urged to close legal loopholes in taxi licensing that allow drivers to exploit inconsistent local regulation, often placing children at greater risk.
Victims should be offered trauma counselling immediately and without legal delay, with their recovery treated as a priority alongside any criminal investigations.
Finally, the audit calls for strong, coordinated national leadership and a long-term strategy to ensure group-based child sexual exploitation is properly addressed and never ignored again.
KIDS STILL ABUSED
Children across Britain are still being sexually abused in gangs and officials can't say how many.
The scathing audit by Baroness Casey found there's 'no recent study' and 'incomplete data' across police, councils and the justice system, meaning the scale of abuse is unknown.
In 2023, cops logged just 700 group-based exploitation crimes but the report warned this 'is highly unlikely to accurately reflect the true scale'
The report also said 500,000 kids are likely to be sexually abused each year, yet most cases are never reported or recognised.
On ethnicity, the report found two-thirds of perpetrators have no ethnicity recorded, making national data worthless.
But in three police force areas, local records showed 'disproportionate numbers of men from Asian ethnic backgrounds', including Pakistani communities among suspects.
Baroness Casey said the system has 'shied away' from the truth for year - allowing flawed data to mask patterns and leaving victims without answers.
She warned this failure has 'done a disservice to victims' and to 'law-abiding people in Asian communities' alike.