Grooming gangs inquiry: how will it help victims and affect the law?

The Guardian

4 hours ago

The home secretary, Yvette Cooper, has said she will commission a national inquiry into child sexual exploitation by grooming gangs and enact a series of law changes. It comes after a 197-page report by Lady Casey examining what more could be done to bring perpetrators to justice. Here are the key points from the report.
Casey said that local inquiries should be coordinated by an independent commission which has full statutory inquiry powers. It would be time limited and targeted.
The report said that the inquiry would set strict timescales and terms of reference for the local investigations, and be able to compel witnesses where they refuse to cooperate. There should be a charter for victims about what they should reasonably expect from this process, Casey said.
Cooper said the national inquiry will go ahead, with details of the chair and funding announced in due course. It will not be the kind of overarching inquiry like the one into child sexual abuse conducted by Prof Alexis Jay. The purpose would be to combat 'denial, resistance and legal wrangling among local agencies'.
Casey said there should be 'a vigorous approach to righting the wrongs of the past' and state agencies should be held to account for any part they played in allowing these crimes to go undetected and unpunished.
'Blindness, ignorance, prejudice, defensiveness and even good but misdirected intentions, all play a part in a collective failure to properly deter and prosecute offenders or to protect children from harm,' she said.
Data from three police forces had identified 'clear evidence of over-representation among suspects of Asian and Pakistani heritage,' Cooper said, citing the report.
The collection of ethnicity and nationality data for all suspects in child sexual abuse and criminal exploitation cases will be made mandatory. In her report, Casey said that 'there had been enough convictions across the country of groups of men from Asian ethnic backgrounds to have warranted closer examination'.
She said that obscuring the data was also unfair on Asian, Pakistani and Muslim communities because they 'needlessly suffer as those with malicious intent use this obfuscation to sow and spread hatred'.
'It is not racist to want to examine the ethnicity of offenders,' Casey wrote, saying it was vital to understanding offending.
She said that common assertions that the majority of child sexual abuse offenders are white 'even if true, are at best misleading', and that given that 80% of the UK population is white, it should always be seen as a 'significant issue when [an ethnicity] appears disproportionately over-represented'.
But she also warned against this being used by a 'minority of people who pretend to be on the side of victims but are using them – and others who genuinely care about the plight of victims and the need for tougher action – to spread division and hate across communities'.
Casey's report found that abused victims were considered wayward or even dubbed 'child prostitutes'. She said that the current law meant in many cases abusers received lesser charges in cases where children aged between 13 and 15 were seen to be 'in love' with the perpetrators.
The law should be tightened to ensure there is no exception to those who sexually penetrate a child under 16 being charged with rape, she said.
Casey said she believed the public would be horrified to realise this was not the case already. 'I believe many jaws across the country would drop if it was widely known that doing so is called anything but [rape],' the report said. Cooper has said this law will be changed as soon as possible.
Above all, Casey said this was a recognition that victims should be treated as children, having been dismissed as promiscuous or wayward. She said they were 'ideal victims, ready to be tricked into thinking they are loved, worthy of their attention – before turning that against them'.
She cited cases as recently as 2024 where victims were blamed for their actions – including where a judge in the case of a 13-year-old remarked that the girl 'appeared older than 13' and pointed out what he called her 'promiscuous behaviour'.
Cooper said she would add another law change: any asylum seekers who are found guilty of grooming children or committing sexual offences will have their applications rejected.
Cooper said more than 800 grooming and sexual exploitation cases will be reviewed – and she expects the figure to rise to more than 1000.
In her report, Casey said every local police force in England and Wales should review records to identify cases of child sexual exploitation that have not been acted upon, including a review of cases that have been reported but which have not resulted in prosecutions over the last 10 years.
She said there should also be a review of police and children's services records to identify children who have been at risk of or harmed by sexual exploitation over the last 10 years. Potential victims identified from police and children's services records should be approached and investigations taken forward on their behalf.
Cooper said the government will ensure that convictions of the young victims, many of whom say they still face appalling discrimination because of their convictions, will be quashed.
Casey cited police figures from the 1990s which found almost 4,000 police cautions were given to children between 10 and 18 for offences relating to prostitution. It took until 2015 for the term 'child prostitution' to be dropped and replaced with the term 'child sexual exploitation', when the legislation was changed in the Serious Crime Act.
She said that victims had regularly been re-traumatised over the years, from the shame of their convictions and the anger and not being believed or living alongside their perpetrators.
'Sometimes they have criminal convictions for actions they took while under coercion,' Casey said. 'They have to live with fear and the constant shadow over them of an injustice which has never been righted – the shame of not being believed.'