Latest news with #institutionalfailure
Al Jazeera
8 hours ago
- Politics
- Al Jazeera
What is the Casey report on UK grooming gangs – and why did Labour U-turn?
The British government has announced a national inquiry into organised child sexual abuse following the release of a damning report by Baroness Louise Casey that criticised decades of institutional failure to protect children from so-called 'grooming gangs'. It marks a remarkable U-turn by the Labour Party government of Prime Minister Keir Starmer, which had resisted months of calls for an inquiry, stating that it was focusing on recommendations already made in an earlier seven-year probe. But what exactly is the Casey Report, and what drove Labour's abrupt change of course? Commissioned earlier this year by Starmer, the Casey Report is a review of how United Kingdom institutions have tackled child sexual exploitation. The review focused on 'grooming gangs' – groups of men who targeted vulnerable girls for sexual abuse, often over extended periods of time. The report identified an institutional failure to protect children and teenage girls from rape, exploitation and serious violence. Among its recommendations, the Casey Report suggested a change in the law so adults in England and Wales face mandatory rape charges if they intentionally penetrate a child under age 16. In her report, Casey concluded that too many grooming cases have been dropped or downgraded from rape to lesser charges because a 13- to 15-year-old is perceived to have been 'in love with' or have 'consented to' sex with the perpetrator. Her review also highlighted reluctance by the authorities to 'examine the ethnicity of the offenders', saying it was not racist to do so. In the local data that the audit examined from three police forces, they identified clear evidence of 'over-representation among suspects of Asian and Pakistani-heritage men'. However, the review also criticised the ongoing failure to collect ethnicity at a national level, with it not recorded for two-thirds of perpetrators, making it impossible 'to provide any accurate assessment from the nationally collected data'. Yes. The UK's Home Secretary Yvette Cooper confirmed the government would accept all 12 recommendations in the Casey Report. This means the police will launch a new national criminal operation targeting grooming gangs, overseen by the National Crime Agency (NCA). This operation would be overseen by an independent commission with powers to compel witnesses to provide evidence. It would also go ahead with a national inquiry, with Starmer stating that he had read 'every single word' of the report and would accept Casey's recommendation for an investigation. Richard Scorer, the head of Abuse Law and Public Inquiries at Slater and Gordon, a law firm, told Al Jazeera that the sheer size of the scandal and the fact that it had affected thousands of children made it 'inevitable' that there would need to be a public inquiry about it at some point. US billionaire Elon Musk's online references to the grooming scandal that emerged a decade ago in several towns and cities in northern England had also pushed the 'issue up the political agenda', he said. In June 2022, an independent review found that the police and local council had failed to prevent sexual exploitation of young girls by gangs in Oldham, a town in Greater Manchester in England. Two years later, political leaders in Oldham Council called for the government to investigate further, but then-Home Office Minister Jess Phillips rejected the council's request, saying it should lead an investigation itself. In January this year, Musk threw his weight behind far-right activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, who goes by the name Tommy Robinson and had been outspoken on the issue. He called for Robinson, a controversial political figure, then serving an 18-month jail term for contempt of court, to be freed, writing on his own social media platform X, 'Why is Tommy Robinson in a solitary confinement prison for telling the truth?' Musk also accused Starmer of failing to prosecute child rapists when he was director of public prosecutions between 2008 and 2013. He also took aim at Minister for Safeguarding Jess Phillips, calling her 'a rape genocide apologist'. Starmer responded at the time, without mentioning Musk by name. 'Those that are spreading lies and misinformation as far and as wide as possible are not interested in victims, they are interested in themselves,' the PM said. Experts say it's certainly a positive step. William Tantam, a senior lecturer in anthropology at the University of Bristol, who has worked on a previous independent inquiry into child sexual abuse, said that from a researcher's perspective, the main positive was that there would be more consistency and clarity in data. He said that another positive is that inquiry panel will have the authority to compel agencies to participate. Scorer noted that bringing in the NCA to investigate cases that haven't progressed in the past is also a very welcome outcome of the report. He said in the UK, different police forces have not always succeeded in coordinating their efforts to tackle grooming gangs, so a more centralised overview from the NCA might secure 'a better coordination of police activity'. Cooper told Parliament on Monday that more than 800 cases have now been identified for formal review, and she expects that figure to rise above 1,000 in the coming weeks. But Scorer warned that the government would need to assign an additional budget for the implementation of the changes recommended by Casey. 'If you are asking the NCA to reopen and investigate, potentially up to 1000 cases, that's going to require a huge amount of resources,' he said. 'Who's going to pay for that? That's one of the questions that the government is going to need to answer.'
The Guardian
10 hours ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
Dear Yvette Cooper, let the Casey review lead to justice – not the scapegoating of British Pakistani culture
Dear home secretary, Monday's publication of the national audit on group-based child sexual exploitation and abuse, led by Louise Casey, marked a pivotal moment. Not only in confronting the horrific crimes committed against vulnerable girls in towns such as Rotherham, Rochdale, Oxford and Telford, but in deciding how we respond to them as a country. The Casey review offers a sobering account of institutional failure. These girls were not simply let down. They were failed by systems and individuals tasked with their protection. That must never happen again. Justice, accountability and reform are essential. I write to you as a British Muslim, a third-generation British Pakistani woman, and someone who has worked with communities across the country, to express deep concern about how this issue is being spoken about and misrepresented. You asked Lady Casey to examine ethnicity alongside 'cultural and social drivers'. The review identifies disproportionate numbers of Asian men among suspects in Greater Manchester, South Yorkshire and West Yorkshire. At the same time, it stresses that national data is incomplete and inconsistent. These findings are in tension. Yet the media and political response has amplified a simplified message: that there was a cover-up and that ethnicity itself was the cause. In areas where British Pakistani communities are more populous, over-representation may reflect local demographics, not cultural traits. Without that context, statistics are easily distorted. Crime patterns often follow social conditions. They do not reveal cultural predisposition. The way this has been framed has caused widespread fear and alarm. Over the past few days, I have received messages from friends and colleagues anxious about the direction of the national conversation. Terms like 'Pakistani rape gangs' or 'Asian grooming gangs' have dominated headlines. Social media are awash with commentators calling for the death penalty and a ban on Pakistani migration, while a sitting MP has called for deportations in the 'many, many thousands'. A complex issue is being reduced to harmful generalisations. The claim that British Pakistani culture itself is to blame for these crimes is not only untrue – it is a dangerous distortion, when child sexual exploitation and abuse affects the entire country. There is no credible evidence to suggest that ethnicity or religion are driving factors in this form of abuse. Turning this into a question of identity rather than accountability shifts attention away from the very systems that failed to protect vulnerable girls. It allows prejudice to masquerade as policy, and that cannot go unchallenged. When culture is invoked without evidence or definition, it does more than obscure the facts – it casts entire groups of people under suspicion. This has real consequences for people like me, my family and neighbours, who are being viewed not as citizens, but as potential threats. The risk now is that prejudice is embedded into policy. Institutional failures in safeguarding and accountability thus become repurposed to legitimise the collective blame of British Muslims. We have already seen what this kind of framing can provoke. Last summer, riots erupted in cities across England and Northern Ireland, stoked by misinformation and inflammatory rhetoric. Mosques and community centres were attacked. Vehicles were stopped because drivers 'looked Asian'. Just days ago, in Ballymena, there were racially motivated attacks on foreigners that 'left families cowering in their homes', according to the police, after days of disorder that left communities in fear and distress. Even in Liverpool, after a car was driven into fans gathered for a football parade, police were quick to confirm the suspect's ethnicity, a reflection of how heightened the atmosphere has become, and the fear that misinformation could spark race-related unrest. This is the climate in which any government intervention now sits. The need for not just reason and calm but a principled defence of minority communities, of fairness and proportion, is urgent. The pain of the survivors must remain at the centre of this conversation. Justice for them is non-negotiable. We must also not forget that some victims came from the very minority communities that are now under scrutiny. Their experiences are often erased. The perpetrators did not care who their victims were. Their motives were abuse, control and exploitation. The Casey review presents an opportunity to strengthen safeguarding and rebuild trust. We can only do that if we stay grounded in evidence, not prejudice, and in responsibility, not rhetoric. The forthcoming inquiry must examine how these crimes were allowed to happen, how institutions failed to respond and how to prevent such abuse in future. It must not allow the story to become one of racialised suspicion. That path leads not to justice, but to division. British Muslims, like all citizens, want justice and safety. We want our institutions to act fairly and with integrity. What we do not want is to be made to feel complicit in crimes we did not commit. Criminals must face the law, whoever they are. Zara Mohammed is former secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
