The Establishment has been in “denial” over the ethnicity of grooming gangs, a report has found.
Daily Telegraph 16/5/25
Baroness Casey of Blackstock found that flawed data were used by public bodies to dismiss claims about Asian grooming gangs as “sensationalised, biased or untrue”.
She also found that in too many cases, police forces and other organisations avoided pursuing perpetrators for fear of being viewed as racist.
Shockingly, Lady Casey found that information on the ethnicity of abusers was not recorded in two thirds of cases.
Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, told MPs that the Government would accept all the recommendations, including setting up a national inquiry into grooming gangs.
She said that rape laws should be tightened up and many girls convicted of child prostitution would be cleared.
Ms Cooper added: “This will mark the biggest programme of work ever pursued to root out the grooming gangs.
“Those vile perpetrators who have grown used to the authorities looking the other way must have no place to hide.”
She said 800 cold cases would be looked into and could rise to 1,000 cases, adding: “Perpetrators of these vile crimes should be behind bars and paying the price of what they have done.”
The Home Secretary said the report found a “deep-rooted failure to treat children as children”, adding: “A continued failure to protect teenage girls from rape, from exploitation and serious violence, and from the scars that last a lifetime.
“[Lady Casey] finds… too much reliance on flawed data, too much denial, too little justice, too many criminals getting off, too many victims being let down.”
Ms Cooper said the report found that children as young as 10 were singled out for grooming.
“Perpetrators [were] walking free because no one joined up the dots or because the law protected them instead of the victims that they had exploited,” she added.
“Blindness, ignorance, prejudice, defensiveness and even good but misdirected intentions all played a part in this collective failure.”
She said there had been a “continued failure to collect robust national data despite concerns being raised going back very many years”.
The report includes local data from three forces which show “clear evidence of over-representation among suspects of Asian and Pakistani heritage men” and Lady Casey “refers to examples of organisations avoiding the topic altogether for fear of appearing racist or raising community tension”.
Lady Casey’s report found: “Flawed data is used repeatedly to dismiss claims about ‘Asian grooming gangs’ as sensationalised, biased or untrue. This does a disservice to victims and indeed all law-abiding people in Asian communities.
“Instead of examination, we have seen obfuscation. In a vacuum, incomplete and unreliable data is used to suit the ends of those presenting it. The system claims there is an overwhelming problem with white perpetrators when that can’t be proved.”
The report added: “This does no one any favours at all, and least of all those in the Asian, Pakistani or Muslim communities who needlessly suffer as those with malicious intent use this obfuscation to sow and spread hatred.
“To prevent it we have to understand it. We have failed in our duty to do that to date.”
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