UK announces 'rapid' review of sexual exploitation of children by grooming gangs

UK Interior minister Yvette Cooper also said several new local inquiries into cases of abuse would be launched, bowing to political pressure for further action but stopping short of demands for a new nationwide inquiry. 

In Short

• Local inquiries to be launched in UK amid political pressure
• Issue of sexual exploitation was a recent row between Elon Musk, Keir Starmer
• Gangs targeted primarily white British girls for decades

The UK government announced Thursday a "rapid" national review of the extent of sexual exploitation of children by grooming gangs, recently the subject of a row between US billionaire Elon Musk and Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

Interior minister Yvette Cooper also said several new local inquiries into cases of abuse would be launched, bowing to political pressure for further action but stopping short of demands for a new nationwide inquiry.

The issue was at the centre of a political firestorm earlier this month when the Tesla boss posted a series of incendiary comments about Starmer on his X platform.

The Labour leader then hit out at those spreading "lies and misinformation" online, in a thinly veiled rebuke of Musk.

The row relates to sex offences going back decades against primarily white British girls by men of mostly South Asian origin in various northern English towns.

The issue has long been seized upon by far-right UK figures, including notorious agitator Tommy Robinson, but has been adopted by the Conservatives and Nigel Farage's hard-right Reform UK party.

They and other more centrist critics, including whistleblowers, have argued child sexual exploitation by grooming gangs remains ongoing.

The UK government announced Thursday a "rapid" national review of the extent of sexual exploitation of children by grooming gangs, recently the subject of a row between US billionaire Elon Musk and Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

Interior minister Yvette Cooper also said several new local inquiries into cases of abuse would be launched, bowing to political pressure for further action but stopping short of demands for a new nationwide inquiry.

The issue was at the centre of a political firestorm earlier this month when the Tesla boss posted a series of incendiary comments about Starmer on his X platform.

The Labour leader then hit out at those spreading "lies and misinformation" online, in a thinly veiled rebuke of Musk.

The row relates to sex offences going back decades against primarily white British girls by men of mostly South Asian origin in various northern English towns.

The issue has long been seized upon by far-right UK figures, including notorious agitator Tommy Robinson, but has been adopted by the Conservatives and Nigel Farage's hard-right Reform UK party.

They and other more centrist critics, including whistleblowers, have argued child sexual exploitation by grooming gangs remains ongoing.

Cooper told MPs that she had ordered a three-month "rapid audit of the current scale and nature of gang-based exploitation across the country" to be led by Baroness Louise Casey.

The review will look at "cultural and societal drivers" of child sex abuse and "properly examine ethnicity data and the demographics of the gangs involved and their victims", she added.

Previous inquiries have found that the authorities and the police shied away from taking victims' claims seriously, in part to avoid seeming racist and for fear of raising community tensions.

Cooper announced that several new local reviews would also be launched.

"As we have seen, effective local inquiries can delve into far more local detail and deliver more locally relevant answers, and change, than a lengthy nationwide inquiry can provide," she added.

Thousands of girls and young women are believed to have been abused over several decades in towns across England, although the toral number of victims is unknown.

Gangs of men, often from Pakistani backgrounds, targeted mostly white girls from disadvantaged backgrounds, some of whom lived in children's homes.

The gangs operated in several English towns and cities, notably in Rotherham and Rochdale in the north, but also in Oxford and Bristol, for almost four decades.

SHOCKING ABUSE

In Rotherham, a town of 265,000 inhabitants, a gang drugged, raped and sexually exploited at least 1,400 girls over a 16-year period from 1997, a public inquiry concluded in 2014.

The Jay Report from the inquiry severely criticised police and local authorities over the scandal, which shocked the country.

It has also prompted some, particularly on the political right, to argue there is a "two-tier" justice system that treats ethnic minority communities differently.

Other local inquiries were held in Rochdale and Oldham, near Manchester, as well as Telford, northwest of Birmingham.

The National Crime Agency launched Operation Stovewood, the largest of its kind in the UK, to probe the Rotherham gangs and has so far secured long prison terms for around 30 individuals.

Musk and opponents of Labour see the issue as a way of trying to weaken Starmer, who was chief state prosecutor between 2008 and 2013, which coincided with the scandals.

Starmer says he dealt with the problem "head-on" as a prosecutor and oversaw "the highest number of child sexual abuse cases being prosecuted on record".

The Conservative Party have called for a new national inquiry with the power to compel witnesses to testify.

Labour, which ousted the Tories from power last July, says a new inquiry would be costly and time-consuming and its focus is on implementing the almost two dozen recommendations made by the Jay report a decade ago.

Last week, Cooper announced new curbs to crack down on child abuse including prosecuting professionals who fail to report claims of sexual abuse against children.