The ‘disappointing’ grooming gang report
by Tim Dieppe, Christian Concern:
The government finally released its long-awaited report into the characteristics of grooming gangs this week.
The research the government wanted to hide
Then Home Secretary, Sajid Javid commissioned a government review into the characteristics of street grooming gangs back in 2018, saying that they should leave “no stone unturned.” That research has never been published. The Home Office claimed earlier this year, in response to a Freedom of Information Request, that publishing the research would ‘not be in the public interest’.
A government petition asking the government to release its research into grooming gangs then attracted over 130,000 signatures. An initial response to the petition from the Home Office in April singularly failed to respond to the petition request. After some pressure, The Petitions Committee then wrote to Home Secretary Priti Patel expressing dissatisfaction with the response to the petition. The Committee requested a revised response to the petition which it said should directly respond to the petition request. The government then responded with a promise to publish a paper on group-based child sexual exploitation by the end of this year. This is the report released this week.
The government went to quite some lengths to avoid publishing its research into the characteristics of grooming gangs. Why was this? What did the government want to hide?
What does the report say?
Child Sexual Abuse (CSA) is a big problem. The report notes that in the year to March 2020, over 83,300 CSA offences were recorded by police, an increase of nearly 270% since 2013. Not all of these will have been group-based [read gang] Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE), however.
The headline result of the research is that “group-based CSE offenders are most commonly white.” This was inevitably the headline picked up by mainstream media, and outlets like the Guardian distorted this to claim that “most child sexual abuse gangs made up of white men.” But the report carefully does not say that. It says “most commonly white” which is not the same as saying most offenders are white. As we shall see, even this conclusion is doubtful. I suspect the report was carefully worded to avoid saying most offenders are white, whilst leaving that impression.
But the data is inadequate
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