POLICE IN ENGLAND AND WALES MANDATED TO COLLECT ETHNIC DATA IN CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE CASES
London – Police officers in England and Wales will now be required to collect data on ethnicity and nationality in child sexual abuse and exploitation cases. This follows a report that found the issue had been "ignored."
UK Home Secretary Yvette Cooper announced that this will become a mandatory requirement, accepting all twelve recommendations made by Louise Casey in her report on group child sexual abuse last Monday.
Casey observed that the term "group child sexual exploitation" downplayed what victims, some as young as eleven, endured: beatings, gang rapes, being impregnated, and having their children taken at birth. Perpetrators targeted girls from vulnerable backgrounds, including children in foster care, children with physical and mental disabilities, and children who had experienced neglect or abuse.
Scrutiny of Ethnic Data
The recommendation to collect targeted information came after the report highlighted the scarcity of national data on the ethnicity of perpetrators of group child sexual abuse—commonly known as "grooming gangs"—and their victims.
The report stated that insufficient information existed to draw national conclusions. However, Casey found that in three local police areas—Greater Manchester, West, and South Yorkshire—there was sufficient evidence to show "a disproportionate number of men of Asian ethnicity among those suspected of group child sexual exploitation." This pattern was observed in local data specifically concerning group child sexual exploitation, whereas more generally in child sexual exploitation cases, the ethnic profile was much closer to that of the local population.
The issue of ethnicity is the most sensitive and controversial aspect of the report, and Cooper stated that she had asked for it to be the focus of the analysis.
"While much more robust national data is needed, we cannot and must not shy away from these findings because, as Casey says, ignoring issues, not examining them, and not bringing them to light, allows the criminality and depravity of a minority of men to be used to marginalize entire communities," Cooper said. "The overwhelming majority of people in our British, Asian, and Pakistani communities continue to be appalled by these terrible crimes and agree that the criminal minority of sick predators and perpetrators in every community must be robustly tackled by criminal law."
Report Recommends Amending Child Violence Law
In addition to failing victims, neglecting the possible role of ethnicity "plays into the hands of groups with divisive political agendas who do not want these issues definitively examined or addressed," Casey wrote in the report.
Perpetrators groomed vulnerable girls with gifts and attention, before passing them to other men for rape, exploiting alcohol, drugs, and violence to keep them compliant and controlled. The audit found that "the grooming process is equally likely to begin online, and meeting points may have shifted from parks to vape shops and the use of hotels with anonymous check-in facilities."
Too often, child victims were blamed for their abuse and "criminalized for offenses committed while being groomed," Casey stated. The author recommended strengthening the law to clarify that children cannot consent when they are victims of violence, so that adults who penetrate a child under 16 (the age of consent in the UK) are mandatorily charged with rape. While this is already in place for those under 13, she noted that sometimes cases are dropped or charges are downgraded if the child, aged 13-15, was said to have been "in love" or "consented" to sex with the offender.
Among other recommendations, Casey also called for a review of the criminal convictions of child sexual exploitation victims.
Why the Report Was Released Now
The scandal, dating back more than a decade, returned to the political agenda after Elon Musk published a series of social media posts about it in January. His intervention came after it emerged that the UK's Minister for Children and Families, Jess Phillips, had rejected calls for a government-led inquiry, stating instead that it should be commissioned locally.
This is an issue that has been previously examined: in 2014, a report by Professor Alexis Jay estimated that approximately 1,400 children were sexually exploited in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013,
Initially, Labour had rejected calls for another inquiry, as successive Conservative governments had not implemented any of the recommendations made in the last national inquiry. The government then yielded to pressure to launch another national inquiry, despite Jay stating in January that victims "want action" rather than another inquiry.
