UK vows tougher laws to combat child grooming gangs

New Straits Times

7 hours ago

LONDON: The UK government announced Monday it would bring in tough new laws to "root out the scourge" of grooming gangs suspected of sexually exploiting thousands of girls and young women.
"We will change the law to ensure that adults who engage in penetrative sex with a child under 16 face the most serious charge of rape," interior minister Yvette Cooper told parliament, as authorities launched a nationwide crackdown on the gangs.
The announcement came as a damning report written by member of the upper house of the UK parliament Louise Casey was published.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Sunday announced a new national inquiry would be launched into the scandal, one of Casey's 12 recommendations.
The report "concludes that further local investigations are needed, but they should be directed and overseen by a national commission with statutory inquiry powers" to compel witnesses to give evidence under oath, said Cooper.
"We agree, and we will set up a national inquiry to that effect," she added.
The report found that the ethnicity of perpetrators was "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."
But Cooper said that Asian men, particularly from a Pakistani background, were "overrepresented" and that ethnicity and nationality of suspects in grooming cases will now be recorded on a mandatory basis.
The issue of UK grooming gangs was thrust into the international spotlight in January when tech billionaire Elon Musk launched incendiary attacks on his X platform against the UK government for resisting calls for a national inquiry.
Gangs of men targeted mostly white girls from disadvantaged backgrounds, some of whom lived in children's homes.
The gangs operated in several English towns and cities including Rotherham and Rochdale in the north, but also in Oxford and Bristol, for almost four decades.--AFP