11 hours ago
Grooming gangs reviewer Baroness Casey condemns woke 'do-gooders' who failed victims - revealing that she found 'Pakistani' Tippexed out of file
The architect of the bombshell grooming gangs review has condemned 'do-gooders' who ignored ethnic factors for fear of being branded racist.
Baroness Casey vented fury at the failure to tackle the issues over a decade, saying she was 'raging' on behalf of the victims.
Speaking following the publication of her report, the Whitehall troubleshooter revealed she had found the word 'Pakistani' Tippexed out of a child sex abuse file.
But Lady Casey said turning a blind eye to many offenders having Asian heritage only gave racists 'more ammunition'.
The long-awaited review was published yesterday, finding that councils, police forces and the Home Office repeatedly 'shied away' from dealing with 'uncomfortable' questions about the ethnicity of rapists preying on thousands of vulnerable girls.
Despite years of warnings, she said, the quality of data collected at a national level remained 'woeful and a dereliction of public duty'.
With ethnicity still recorded in only a third of cases, the baroness said it was impossible to be certain about patterns of offending at a national level.
The report said there was a 'blind spot' in the way institutions approached child sexual exploitation
But her report highlighted data collected by police in Rotherham, Greater Manchester and West Yorkshire which showed a 'disproportionate number of men from Asian ethnic backgrounds' among those suspected of grooming offences.
In Rotherham, an investigation into historic cases by the National Crime Agency found that two-thirds of suspects were of Pakistani heritage, despite them accounting for just 4 per cent of the local population.
The report also examined a dozen major live police operations into grooming gangs and found a 'significant proportion' of suspects are asylum seekers or were born abroad.
In interviews following the publication, Lady Casey said that 'establishing the facts' on ethnicity could 'take the pain out of this'.
'I think you've got sort of do-gooders that don't really want this to be found because, you know, 'Oh, God, then all the racists are going to be more racist',' she told Sky News.
'Well, actually, people that are racist are going to use this anyway. All you're doing with the hate mongers and the racists is giving them more ammunition.'
The cross-bench peer said she came across examples of people deliberately ignoring racial factors in Rotherham.
'I was following through on a children's file in archive and found the word 'Pakistani' Tippexed out,' she said.
'I thought whoever did that inadvertently was giving ammunition to the English Defence League that were every week, in and out, campaigning and doing their stuff in that town.
'I think the problem is that people are worried about being called racist.... if good people don't grasp difficult things, bad people will, and that's why we have to do it as a society.'
Lady Casey also swiped at the Tories for 'politicising' the response to the report, rather than 'coming together' to fix the issues.
Speaking on BBC Newsnight, the peer said: 'What really has got to me a bit about doing this particulatr report is that ten years ago I could have been clearer about what was happening in Rotherham.
'I said at the time there are national implications, this isn't the only place this is happening in.
'Over a long period of time there have been lots of initiatives, lots of reviews... and yet it doesn't feel it has come to anything.
She added: 'I am raging actually on behalf of the victims... it's been awful to realise that as a society we still don't see these girls as girls.'
In one case in Newcastle, an asylum seeker convicted of offences 'spoke in a derogatory way about lack of morals in British girls and the ease with which he was able to access sex, drugs and alcohol'.
Lady Casey said it was 'not racist to want to examine the ethnicity of offenders'. But she pointed to a culture of public bodies avoiding the issue 'for fear of appearing racist, raising community tensions or causing community cohesion problems'.
Her report said most local reviews had shown 'a palpable discomfort in any discussion of ethnicity'.
And it said 'flawed data' was being 'used repeatedly to dismiss claims about 'Asian grooming gangs' as sensational, biased or untrue'.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper issued a public apology on behalf of the state to the victims of the gangs.
She said she offered 'an unequivocal apology for the unimaginable pain and suffering that you have suffered, and for the failure of our country's institutions, over decades, to prevent that harm and keep you safe'.
Ms Cooper said she was accepting the recommendations of Lady Casey's 'damning' report in full – including ordering a public inquiry which Labour has resisted.
The report triggered angry clashes in the Commons, where Kemi Badenoch rounded on Keir Starmer for smearing those pressing for a public inquiry of jumping on a 'far-Right bandwagon'.
The national inquiry will be time-limited and is likely to investigate offending in only a handful of local areas, despite warnings that similar activity may have taken place in 50 towns and cities across the country.
But it will have the power to compel witnesses to give evidence.
