AUTHORITIES will be forced to track the ethnicity of grooming predators after years deliberately covering up the “over-representation” of Asian rape gangs.
A damning report into the scandal lays bare catastrophic failings of the British state to stop the abuse of white girls – and calls for a national inquiry to “draw a line in the sand”.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper says the government will launch a grooming gang inquiry
PABaroness Louise Casey accused authorities of covering up the ethnicity of Asian rape gangs[/caption]
Sir Keir Starmer has accepted Baroness Louise Casey’s recommendations for the probe after previously batting away such demands as a “far-right bandwagon”.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper told MPs today the government will also accept the other demands – including mandatory rape charges for any adult who penetrates a child.
She also issued an apology to the victims on behalf of the British state for “failing to to keep your safe”.
In her three-month rapid audit, Baroness Casey laments how “questions about ethnicity have been dodged for years”.
She says that there have “been enough convictions across the country of groups of men from Asian ethnic backgrounds to have warranted closer examination.”
“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.
“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.”
As The Sun first revealed last week, her report also links illegal migration with the grooming scandal.
ABUSER CRACKDOWN
Baroness Casey’s audit sets out 12 urgent recommendations to tackle the scandal of child grooming – which the Home Secretary says the government will accept in full.
The report calls for the law to be tightened so that any adult who has sex with a child under the age of 16 is automatically charged with rape, removing current legal grey areas that allow abusers to avoid proper punishment.
Grooming gang crackdown unveiled
BARONESS Casey’s report sets out a series of recommendations, which the government has accepted in full
1. Strengthen the law: Tighten the law so that any adult who has sex with a child under the age of 16 is automatically charged with rape, removing current legal grey areas that allow abusers to avoid proper punishment.
2. Address Historical Failings: Through a national inquiry pursue justice for past cases and hold accountable those who failed to act.
3. Enhance Intelligence Gathering: Improve the collection and analysis of information to combat exploitation more effectively.
4. Improve Inter-Agency Collaboration: Foster stronger cooperation and information-sharing among agencies.
5. Mandatory Reporting: Require all services to share information when a child is at risk.
6. Introduce Unique Child Identifiers: Implement a system to ensure children are consistently and accurately identified across services.
7. Modernise Police Systems: Upgrade technology to enable seamless communication and prevent missed opportunities.
8. Treat Grooming Gangs as Serious Organised Crime: Employ the same robust strategies used to combat other forms of organised criminal activity.
9. Investigate Declining Reports: The Department for Education must examine why reports of child abuse are decreasing and take corrective action.
10. Understand the Underlying Drivers: Conduct in-depth research into the factors underpinning grooming gangs, including cultural and online influences.
11. Regulate the Taxi Industry: Prevent exploitation by restricting the use of “out-of-area” taxi drivers.
12. Commit Government Resources: Ministers must allocate funding and ensure measurable progress is achieved.
It also recommends a national inquiry to bring more perpetrators to justice, including a fresh review of historic cases that were dropped or never fully investigated.
Agencies such as police forces, local councils, and social care bodies must be held accountable for past failures, with support given to local inquiries and renewed scrutiny of previous statutory reviews.
The audit stresses the importance of collecting more accurate and transparent data—particularly on the ethnicity of offenders—to fully understand and confront the patterns behind group-based exploitation.
To improve prevention and response, it urges better information-sharing between police, children’s services, and health providers, ensuring warning signs are spotted and acted upon swiftly.
The report recommends treating child sexual exploitation with the same seriousness as major organised crime, using specialised investigation tactics and prioritising victim-centred approaches.
It calls for an end to the harmful “adultification” of teenage girls, especially those in care, who are too often judged as complicit rather than recognised as vulnerable children.
The government is also urged to close legal loopholes in taxi licensing that allow drivers to exploit inconsistent local regulation, often placing children at greater risk.
Victims should be offered trauma counselling immediately and without legal delay, with their recovery treated as a priority alongside any criminal investigations.
Finally, the audit calls for strong, coordinated national leadership and a long-term strategy to ensure group-based child sexual exploitation is properly addressed and never ignored again.
KIDS STILL ABUSED
Children across Britain are still being sexually abused in gangs and officials can’t say how many.
The scathing audit by Baroness Casey found there’s “no recent study” and “incomplete data” across police, councils and the justice system, meaning the scale of abuse is unknown.
In 2023, cops logged just 700 group-based exploitation crimes but the report warned this “is highly unlikely to accurately reflect the true scale”
The report also said 500,000 kids are likely to be sexually abused each year, yet most cases are never reported or recognised.
On ethnicity, the report found two-thirds of perpetrators have no ethnicity recorded, making national data worthless.
But in three police force areas, local records showed “disproportionate numbers of men from Asian ethnic backgrounds”, including Pakistani communities among suspects.
Baroness Casey said the system has “shied away” from the truth for year – allowing flawed data to mask patterns and leaving victims without answers.
She warned this failure has “done a disservice to victims” and to “law-abiding people in Asian communities” alike.
HARRY COLE: Grooming gangs scandal inquiry U-turn leaves tin-eared Starmer facing massive questions over his judgment
By Harry Cole, Editor-at-Large
WELCOME aboard the “far-right bandwagon” then, Prime Minister.
It’s been six months since Sir Keir Starmer airily dismissed those calling for a moment of reckoning over the wave of Asian rape gangs systematically attacking white British girls under the noses of officials and cops.
Six months since the PM whipped his Labour MPs to vote down an inquiry into the biggest scandal and cover-up in modern British history, yet mysteriously missed the toxic Commons vote himself.
And six months since our technocratic lawyer leader outsourced the problem to someone else, instead of gripping the issue from the centre.
Now Dame Louise Casey, the go-to woman to write long reports on issues ministers find too sticky, has reached the blindingly obvious conclusion that this blot on our national history deserves more than just mournful words and brushing under the carpet.
As one weeping survivor, Elizabeth, told GB News: “We’re not far-right — we were just children who were abused.”
We will find out what exactly Casey has unearthed later today when her report is published — but even on the facts as known already, the case for an inquiry is already overwhelming.
Hundreds of men of Pakistani origin, often working in cabs or takeaways, luring and drugging young girls with drink and drugs and subjecting them to the most horrific sexual abuse.
A generation of victims then failed by simpleton social services across dozens of mostly Labour-run local authorities.
Officials more worried about so-called community cohesion than rape, police forces suspiciously close to so-called community leaders, turning a blind eye or even returning young women into the hands of the evil perpetrators.
Girls branded slags and prostitutes rather than child-abuse victims — all in the name of multicultural harmony and cultural enrichment.
If you weren’t already angry about this before Elon Musk took the issue stratospheric last Christmas, then you were not paying attention.
The court transcripts alone, such as one case in Dewsbury where a victim was told, “we’re here to f*** all the white girls and f*** the Government”, should have been enough to trigger a wider review.
But the Labour Government again and again appeared to close the doors and windows to the much-needed disinfection of sunlight — in what could well be a brand-destroying inquiry into years of failure by the party across swathes of northern Britain.
To his credit, Sir Keir had a strong track record in beginning to crack this scandal as Director of Public Prosecution, banging up the first batch of abusers.
Which makes the lawyer leader’s obfuscation earlier this year even more baffling — and even more personally damaging.
Rightly or wrongly, it looked like a political leader — who in a past life knew the horrors and evil that was wrought across northern cities and towns — now in charge of a party at the centre of the scandal and doing his utmost to avoid scrutiny.
A regularly repeated tale from those who have worked closely with Starmer in both Opposition and government is that the lawyer leader often refuses to take advice from those who genuinely mean him well and want him to do the right thing. Instead, the barrister locks himself away from aides, reads his brief and makes his own decisions, thinking he knows best.
It’s said to be a trait the PM sticks to, despite the fact he has been shown time and again to suffer from a political tin ear, preferring the comfort of reviews and legalese over instinct and leadership.
And then the inevitable U-turns come when it turns out the lawyer did not know best, after all.
The case for an inquiry was as obvious in January as it is now, but the PM was clearly unwilling to be seen to be bounced into it by Musk, Reform or the Tories.
He could have shown a genuine moment of strong leadership and got on the front foot, but yet again could not see the chance.
So, the rug has now been pulled from under him by the very “audit” he clearly hoped would make this thorny issue go away.
And frankly, the PM has only himself to blame for looking like he’s been dragged into this kicking and screaming — once again facing massive questions over his judgment, nous or even emotional intelligence.
Plenty in Government saw an inquiry as not just the right thing to do, but a political no-brainer, given their hand would be forced eventually.
But it’s not too late for the PM to do the right thing now, as he sets up the probe.
No wishy-washy old human-rights lawyer mate from his past will do at the helm.
Instead, we need a proper judge with a track record of not caving in to politically correct trends.
No Labour council, official or local organiser spared from testimony.
No police force off-limits for a hauling over the coals.
And Covid Inquiry-style powers to have council emails, phone records and court papers turned over and published in full, however politically toxic for Labour.
This inquiry needs to be no-holds-barred and it must be televised.
The victims — and this country — deserve the whole truth about these horrors, however long it takes and however hard that is for the PM and his party.
Published: [#item_custom_pubDate]
