The author of a major report on grooming gangs told MPs yesterday that people should "keep calm" over ethnicity data on child sexual exploitation.
So what? There is little chance of that. Baroness Louise Casey's audit is a careful and damning assessment into the nature and scale of gang-based abuse in the UK. It found that institutions failed to protect young girls from widespread exploitation. It is also destined to be a powder keg for those who think there has been an organised cover-up for race reasons, including
- Tommy Robinson, who was jailed in 2019 for interfering with a grooming gang trial;
- Elon Musk, who earlier this year called an MP a "rape genocide apologist"; and
- local activists and the resurgent far-right who are claiming overdue vindication.
Flip. Until this week, Keir Starmer has resisted calls for a national inquiry. In January he accused political rivals of jumping "on a bandwagon of the far-right" and said there had "already been a lot of reviews". This is correct: there have been several local inquiries and one national inquiry investigating child sexual abuse and the role of grooming gangs.
Flop. Starmer announced this week there would be a national inquiry specifically focused on grooming gangs. Left in the cold is Alexis Jay, who chaired the seven-year national inquiry into the broader issue of child sexual abuse. She said that a new investigation wasn't necessary and that victims needed "action" on her recommendations.
What changed. Starmer said that having read "every single word" of Baroness Casey's report, he would accept her recommendation for a national inquiry. It would have been hard to say no.
What the audit shows. The report found that in a sample of three police force areas there was "clear evidence of over-representation among suspects of Asian and Pakistani-heritage men" in grooming gangs. Baroness Casey said incomplete data had led to claims that "there is an overwhelming problem with white perpetrators when that can't be proved".
What the audit can't show. This lack of data meant that the report made no conclusions about offenders on a national level. Baroness Casey said this was due to authorities who "shied away" from the ethnicity of suspects, which was only recorded in a third of cases. She said some organisations avoided the subject "for fear of appearing racist".
What will follow is a new statutory inquiry, which promises to
- specifically focus on "group-based" child sexual exploitation;
- seek accountability at a local level and take individual agencies to task; and
- improve data collection around ethnicity to support a proper analysis of its significance.
The challenge is to honestly assess the role of ethnicity in grooming gangs while trying to prevent any findings being deliberately misinterpreted by the far-right to cause civil unrest.
What we know about gang abuse. Baroness Casey cited a police dataset that identified roughly 700 recorded offences of group-based child sexual exploitation in 2023. She said this was very unlikely to reflect the true level of abuse.
What we know more generally. NSPCC research suggests roughly one in 20 children in the UK have been sexually abused, the vast majority by a family member or someone they know.
Prosecutions and convictions. The increased attention paid to child sexual abuse appears to be having some results in court. The CPS secured 7,371 convictions last year, 13 per cent more than in the year before. It tracked more than 5,000 prosecutions flagged as involving child sexual abuse offences, and found that 81 per cent ended with a conviction.
What's more... Baroness Casey said poor data on grooming gangs is "used to suit the ends of those presenting it". The hope is that a national inquiry will close the book on Britain's struggle to resolve anger and polarisation over the abuse. But even reliable data can be weaponised.
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