The state has for a decade failed to find justice for grooming gang victims while leaving an information vacuum has allowed “nasty” people to “sow division”, a damning review has found.
Baroness Casey’s audit was critical of governments, the police and local authorities and agencies, who she said had “stuck their head in the sand”.
She called for a statutory inquiry to bring about a “national reset” on group-based child sexual exploitation.
Sir Keir Starmer at the weekend U-turned to back a national inquiry into grooming gangs after learning of Casey’s recommendation. Previously he had said there was no need for a national inquiry as there would be a series of local inquiries.
But Casey’s report said just one council, Oldham, had stepped forward to hold one.
“I thought…. we cannot carry on like this… we need to force these people into a room,” Casey told reporters in Westminster.
Responding, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper told MPs that “we cannot and must not shy away from these findings” because “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”.
Police forces will now be made to gather data on the ethnicity and nationality of child abusers, and rules for the licensing of taxis will also be tightened to stop drivers operating outside the area where they are licensed, Cooper said.
She also repeated a pledge to exclude convicted sex offenders from the asylum system and ordered the National Crime Agency (NCA) to carry out a nationwide operation targeting people who have sexually exploited children, and follow up on an estimated more than 1,000 cold cases where no one was convicted.
The Government also accepted Casey’s recommendation that any adult man who has penetrative sexual activity with a child under 16 will face a mandatory rape charge, while making allowances for consensual teenage relationships.
Her report was particularly damning of an “appalling” failure to collect data on the ethnicity of abusers, as officials “dodged” the issue for fear of being called racist.
Just 37 per cent of suspects have had their ethnicity recorded, which Casey said was a dereliction of public duty”.
It left an information “vacuum” allowing those with “malicious intent” to “sow and spread hatred” against Asian, Pakistani and Muslim communities.
While saying it was impossible to draw any firm conclusions about the ethnicity of the abusers, Casey looked at local police data in three forces – Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire and South Yorkshire – which suggested “disproportionate” numbers of suspects of Asian and Pakistani ethnicity.
Casey rejected suggestions that focusing on ethnicity would trigger social unrest, suggesting not collecting fuller data on ethnicity of grooming gangs would do a “disservice” to the Pakistani community.
“If for a minute you had another report that ducked the issue, what do you think is going to happen? Do you think they [those sowing unrest] are not going to use that as well?”
“If good people don’t grip difficult issues, in my experience bad people do,” she added.
Findings could inflame tensions
However, in findings that could inflame tensions over the Channel small boats crisis, Casey 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”.
Last week seven men were found guilty of sexually exploiting two teenage girls between 2001 and 2006 in Rochdale.
Children’s Commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza said: “The girls at the heart of this scandal have been failed by every professional in their lives.
“They, and the institutions that were intended to protect them, ignored their voices and sidelined their experiences.
“They must be held accountable for turning a blind eye to a sustained campaign of violence against young girls by predatory men. This is a source of national shame.”
Conservative Leader Kemi Badenoch has accused Sir Keir Starmer of “an extraordinary failure of leadership”.
She told the Commons: “The Prime Minister’s handling of this scandal is an extraordinary failure of leadership. His judgment has once again been found wanting. Since he became Prime Minister, he and the Home Secretary dismissed calls for an inquiry because they did not want to cause a stir.
“They accused those of us demanding justice for the victims of this scandal as and I quote ‘jumping on a far right bandwagon’, a claim the Prime Minister’s official spokesman restated this weekend, shameful. It has been left to Conservatives time and time again to force this issue.”
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