We Can't Trust Labour on the Grooming Gangs Inquiry

Louise Casey's national audit has destroyed the rape gang denial narrative.

When Casey asked for data on child sexual exploitation from the Ministry of Justice, His Majesty’s Courts & Tribunal Service, and the Crown Prosecution Service, she was told “No data was available on numbers of child sexual exploitation or group-based child sexual exploitation cases in the criminal justice system.”

She also discovered “There is no data published by children’s services about group-based child sexual exploitation.”

“Despite reviews, reports and inquiries raising questions about men from Asian or Pakistani backgrounds grooming and sexually exploiting young White girls, the system has consistently failed to fully acknowledge this or collect accurate data so it can be examined effectively.”

But police data paints a different picture.

In Rotherham, ethnic Pakistanis make up 4% of the population, but 64% of child sexual abuse and exploitation perpetrators.

In West Yorkshire, 35% of child sexual abuse suspects are “Asian”, compared to 34% white. 24% percent of suspects did not have their ethnicity recorded, meaning Asians could be overrepresented by 2 - 4 times their share of the local population.

This corresponds with data reported exclusively by Courage Media, which found Pakistanis were 21.48% of all suspects, Asian offenders a possible 42.73%, and a fifth of all suspects had no ethnicity recorded, in West Yorkshire.

Casey wrote,

“we found many examples of organisations avoiding the topic altogether for fear of appearing racist, raising community tensions or causing community cohesion problems.”

These include the government, which voted against and sought to sabotage grooming gang inquiries at every opportunity.

Now, the same Labour MPs who dismissed the grooming gangs scandal as a "far right bandwagon" and racist "dog-whistle" are now meant to be trusted with supervising a national and statutory local inquiries?

We should be glad that Rupert Lowe and co. are continuing with their private inquiry, and intend to make all the evidence public, to hold the government to account.

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