Labour still doesn't know how to fight grooming gangs

Telegraph

01-05-2025

For fear of rocking the multicultural boat, last night's harrowing Channel 4 documentary Groomed may not elicit the kind of establishment support received by Netflix TV series Adolescence – but it has reinforced my view that a national statutory inquiry into the nationwide scourge of grooming gangs is needed.
Anna Hall's hard-hitting exposé reveals the gross institutional failures to protect some of the most vulnerable members of our society – school-aged girls, many of whom are in care and targeted at their under-regulated children's homes, falling prey to predatory male networks who coerced, intimidated, abducted, raped, and tortured them.
Often, these networks demonstrated the toxicity of biraderi-style clannishness which can be found in Britain's Pakistani-heritage population – multi-generational family enterprises in tight-knit communities with high rates of occupation in the so-called 'night-time economy.'
In some cases, victims were ferried around parts of England as gangs of men took turns on them in flats and apartments – subjecting them to forms of sexual brutality and torment which wouldn't be out of place on the history pages of Bangladesh's 1971 struggle for independence from what is now current-day Pakistan.
While known to some who are familiar with street-based grooming – formally known as group-localised child sexual exploitation (GLCSE) – some viewers of Groomed would have been taken aback by the victim-blaming culture which has taken root in public institutions that have a duty to protect.
One example highlighted in the documentary is the following: 'Chantelle…was misusing cannabis and alcohol…placing herself at risk of sexual exploitation' – a jaw-dropping sentence to find in a council's case summary about a child in its foster care system. Then there's this one, from an assessment record by children's services on the subject of 14-year-old Erin (not her actual name). 'Erin…is being exploited into prostitution. She hangs around with a number of men who take her money. She is a very promiscuous girl.'
This is not simply about dereliction of duty – it exposes a dark culture which, appallingly, holds vulnerable children responsible for their own misery and suffering at the hands of organised networks of child sexual exploitation.
Irrespective of the findings of Baroness Louise Casey's rapid national audit into the cultural and societal characteristics associated with group-based sexual exploitation of children, the current framework put in place by the current Labour Government – which includes a paltry pot of £5 million for 'locally-led work' into investigating the matter – is wholly insufficient.
Not only is it peanuts, the risk of local institutions – all too often eager to protect their own reputations – marking their own homework shouldn't be underestimated. Foxes guarding the henhouse springs to mind.
What is needed is a comprehensive independent investigation with the statutory powers to compel witnesses to attend and take evidence under oath.
Considering the rot is so deep, with various organs of the British state implicated – police forces, local councils, social services, safeguarding teams, even state schools – perhaps it would be best for a non-British judge from the Anglosphere to preside over a statutory inquiry into GLCSE (with an international panel of experts).
In the words of Labour peer Lord Glasman: 'the decades-long abuse of young girls and its cover-up is a sickness that must be exorcised from the body politic.' A national statutory inquiry focused on determining public-sector accountability would go some way towards this.
With cross-party demands for a national statutory inquiry into the grooming gangs now gathering pace, one can only hope that Groomed – where the bravery of survivors and the courage of whistleblowers must be saluted – will spur on the Labour leadership to grow a backbone and commit to one.
But considering it is a political party largely in thrall to multicultural ideology and emotionally disconnected from the white-British working classes, I won't be holding my breath.