The lack of data showing the ethnicity and nationality of sex offenders in grooming gangs is “a major failing over the last decade or more”, a new report has found.
Officials have dodged the issue of ethnicity among the groups of sex offenders for fear of being called racist, even though available data showed suspects were disproportionately likely to be Asian men, the Home Secretary told the House of Commons.
Speaking as a review of grooming gangs by Baroness Casey was published on Monday, Yvette Cooper told MPs: “While much more robust national data is needed, we cannot and must not shy away from these findings, because, as Baroness Casey says, ignoring the issues, not examining and exposing them to the light, allows the criminality and depravity of a minority of men to be used to marginalise whole communities.”
She said Baroness Casey found examples of organisations “avoiding the topic altogether for fear of appearing racist or raising community tensions”.
Ms Cooper said: “These findings are deeply disturbing, but most disturbing of all, as Baroness Casey makes clear, is the fact that too many of these findings are not new.”
Currently ethnicity is only recorded for around 37% of suspects.
The report found that: “The appalling lack of data on ethnicity in crime recording alone is a major failing over the last decade or more. Questions about ethnicity have been asked but dodged for years.
“Child sexual exploitation is horrendous whoever commits it, but 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.”
Yvette Cooper unveiled the findings from the rapid national audit to MPs, after the Prime Minister committed to launching a national inquiry into the abuse.
She repeated previous apologies for abject failures to protect victims.
Ms Cooper told MPs: “On behalf of this, and past governments, and the many public authorities who let you down, I want to reiterate an unequivocal apology for the unimaginable pain and suffering that you have suffered, and the failure of our country’s institutions through decades, to prevent that harm and keep you safe.”
The rapid national audit looking at the scale of grooming gangs across the country was first announced in January as part of a series of measures to tackle the issue.
The Home Office has also said the National Crime Agency (NCA) will carry out a nationwide operation targeting people who have sexually exploited children, and follow up on more than 800 cold cases.
According to the Home Office, the NCA will work in partnership with police forces to investigate cases that “were not progressed through the criminal justice system” in the past.
On Monday, Ms Cooper said that the number of cold cases to be reviewed again over child sex abuse by grooming gangs is expected to rise to more than 1,000 in the coming weeks.
The harrowing crimes targeted children, mainly girls, as young as 10, some of whom were in care, had physical or mental disabilities, or who had already suffered neglect or abuse.
Baroness Casey’s review looked at around a dozen live investigations into grooming gangs, and found “a significant proportion of these cases appear to involve suspects who are non-UK nationals and/or who are claiming asylum in the UK.”
The Home Secretary has pledged to exclude convicted sex offenders from the asylum system.
In her report, Baroness Casey said it is time to draw a line in the sand and take action over the issue, which she called “one of the most heinous crimes in our society”.
Her report concluded: “These actions need to be accompanied by commitments to honesty, transparency and to prioritising the safety of children above all else; by an apology to all the victims of child sexual exploitation who have been let down in the past and by a more rigorous and relentless pursuit of the minority of men who have preyed on vulnerable children and looked for gaps in our safeguarding systems to commit heinous crimes.
“Unless government and all the organisations involved are able to stand up and acknowledge the failures of the past, to apologise for them unreservedly, and to act now to put things right, including current cases, we will not move on as a society.”
The Government has accepted her recommendation that any adult man who has penetrative sexual activity with a child under 16 will face a mandatory rape charge.
Police forces will be made to gather data on the ethnicity and nationality of child abusers, and rules for the licensing of taxi drivers will also be tightened to stop drivers operating outside the area where they are licensed.
The report also recommends that police forces should look at cold cases from the past 10 years to find missed chances for prosecutions and children who may have been abused.
