The British government has launched a national inquiry into organised child sexual abuse, following a damning report by Baroness Louise Casey that exposed decades of institutional failure in protecting children from so-called “grooming gangs.”
Commissioned earlier this year by Keir Starmer, the Casey Review examined how authorities in England and Wales responded to group-based child sexual exploitation. Its findings triggered a major policy reversal from the Labour government, which had previously resisted calls for a fresh inquiry—preferring instead to implement recommendations from the earlier seven-year Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA).
Starmer’s earlier reluctance was widely seen as an attempt to shield Labour’s electoral coalition and avoid further amplifying far-right narratives, particularly given Labour’s longstanding support within British Muslim communities. The political sensitivity around the issue was further complicated by the fact that many of the areas where grooming gangs operated have been under Labour control for decades, and most still are, making the party accountable,
In January, Asian Voice reported growing discomfort within South Asian communities over how the scandal was being portrayed. The use of the broad term “Asian” to describe perpetrators, many of whom were of British Pakistani heritage, has drawn criticism for unfairly stigmatising all South Asian men, including communities that have no connection to the crimes. Women from these same backgrounds have also been among the victims, further complicating the narrative.
The IICSA had noted that political and institutional hesitancy to label offenders as “British Pakistani” was driven by fear of being seen as Islamophobic. Now, Baroness Casey’s findings have revealed that authorities have consistently avoided addressing the ethnicity of grooming gang offenders, over the fear of being termed racist. The audit revealed that ethnicity data is missing for two-thirds of known perpetrators, making it impossible to draw accurate conclusions at a national level.
Presenting the findings to Parliament, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper apologised to victims and announced a new national inquiry into grooming gangs. “We as a society owe these women a debt. They should never have been allowed to suffer such appalling abuse and violence as children.”
The report also found that many organisations, including schools and social services, avoided confronting the abuse due to fears of being labelled racist or damaging community relations. This failure, it said, led to missed opportunities to protect children.
“If we had seen these girls as victims rather than troublemakers and collected proper ethnicity data, we might not be in this position today,” the report concluded, criticising the system for failing to understand and respond adequately to the scale of the abuse.
One such victim is Samantha Walker-Roberts who was just 12 when she was gang-raped in a house in Chadderton, Oldham, in 2006. Only one of her attackers, Shakil Chowdhury, was convicted and served just three years of a six-year sentence. The others were never brought to justice.
She, rejects the far-right’s attempts to exploit grooming scandals for political gain, stressing that the focus must remain on survivors and insists a national, survivor-led inquiry with full statutory powers is essential to compel testimony, uncover the truth, and deliver justice. Without it, Samantha says, the system continues to fail victims like her, and the culture of denial remains unbroken.
Casey’s most stinging indictment comes in her warning that this deliberate evasion doesn’t just protect abusers, it betrays communities. "You're doing a disservice to two sets of population,” she says, “the Pakistani and Asian heritage community, and victims.”
Voices from within the community
For the wider South Asian community, the concern isn’t just about demonisation—it’s about being unfairly associated with these crimes simply due to shared ethnic and regional identity. This becomes even more painful when women from within the same communities have also been victims, yet their suffering is sidelined. The dominant narrative has reduced a complex, tragic issue to one of “brown men grooming white girls,” erasing the full scope of abuse and ignoring victims and perpetrators who don’t fit that frame.
The Hindu Community Organisations Group (HCOG) Leicester called on media, policymakers, and public institutions to end the careless use of the term "Asian" in discussions and reporting of grooming gang crimes, which has caused deep distress across Hindu, Sikh, and Buddhist communities in the UK.
According to the organisation, reports have consistently shown that many of the perpetrators in these cases were of Pakistani Muslim background. Yet the repeated use of the blanket term "Asian" has unfairly and inaccurately implicated entire communities who have no connection whatsoever to these crimes.
"This is not just a matter of semantics-it has real-world consequences," said a spokesperson for HCOG Leicester. "British Hindus, Sikhs, and Buddhists are wrongly stigmatised and associated with heinous acts they have no part in. It's time the language used in public dialogue reflected the truth and respected the diversity within the Asian diaspora."
The organisation further added that within Asian communities, distinctions of culture, name, and religion are immediately recognisable. What may seem like generalisation to outsiders can feel like discrimination to those unfairly lumped together under the same label.
Previously, there was serious backlash about Keir Starmer and other authorities and media using the term “South Asian” to address what were accused mostly from the Pakistani community.
Krishna Bhan, Chair, Hindu Council UK commenting on this issue, previously told Asian Voice that, “Hindu Council UK has long campaigned to the media for not using the word ‘Asian’ to describe these gangs as our Hindu and Sikh girls were also their victims and given the present lash-back on the ‘X’ platform, the BBC, finally refrained from using the word Asian in their news reports for a more accurate description of the gangs, but we are dismayed that the Prime Minister still chose to whitewash this heinous atrocity with the word ‘Asian’ in his press conference.”
Experts weigh in
Professor Aisha K. Gill, Ph.D. FRSA CBE, Professor of Criminology, University of Bristol, Head of Centre for Gender and Violence Research had previously told us that linking ethnicity to child sexual exploitation overlooks the complexity of these cases, favouring ethnicity over the broader statistics and causal socioeconomic factors, such as poverty and neglect, that are often at the root of sexual exploitation.
She further added, “Raising moral outrage over the issue of child sexual abuse and exploitation is a matter of priority, but it should be achieved without recourse to racial stereotyping—this is helpful to no one, least of all the victims of such crimes.”
As Asian Voice reached out to Prof Gill again about her opinion on the audits finding and course of action, she said that there is widespread mistrust in the government's ability to act meaningfully and public frustration has been exploited by far-right groups. “One of the problems facing this new inquiry is how to address the current crisis of confidence and doubt whether the government will heed these calls for change. As recently as January 2025, many survivors and practitioners questioned whether a national inquiry was the most effective way to address the inherent problems associated with investigating and prosecuting the perpetrators, as well as supporting the victims of, child sexual exploitation (CSE).
“Indeed, the IICSA findings revealed ample evidence that schools, police officers, council chiefs and social services acted improperly by failing to protect victims and those at risk of becoming victims, victim blaming or turning a blind eye— since Professor Alexis Jay’s report was released, no disciplinary action has been taken against these professionals. CSE victims/survivors thus remain inadequately supported, which has compounded the distrust of, and dissatisfaction with, the police and local systems of government. Alarmingly, some of that anger has fed attempts by the far right to weaponise the issue for political ends.”
Furthermore, she pointed out that , many victims are now afraid to report abuse, fearing they won’t be believed or will be blamed and that the inquiry must tackle this fear head-on to restore trust and encourage reporting.
She further said, “Several actions are already underway (i.e., reopening cases), and Casey’s report has prompted further action (i.e., the National Crime Agency working with local police forces). In the case of the latter, the NCA have been tasked with working with police forces to deliver “long-awaited justice” for victims whose cases have not yet progressed through the criminal justice system. Their operational remit aims to “put an end to the culture of denial in local services and authorities about the prevalence of this crime” and also improve how local police forces investigate such crimes.
“Other factors must also be considered as part of these processes, however; adequate training and data collection are integral. Knowledge about the perpetrators is essential. Baroness Casey has recommended that police forces in England should improve how they collect ethnicity data in CSE and child exploitation cases: mapping the characteristics of individuals who perpetrate CSE is vital to understanding the recruitment tactics they may use, both online and offline, and examining how CSE occurs on a continuum.”
According to Dr Rima Saini, Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Middlesex University London, collecting information about people’s ethnicity when studying crime is very important, but also complicated and sensitive. She told Asian Voice, “Collecting robust ethnicity data on a national scale, especially to map a particular criminalised subset of the population, is both methodologically difficult (how granulated would/should that data be, how accurate is self-reported let alone police recorded data, can sufficient resources and expertise be allocated to do this well etc.) and ethically fraught.
“On a basic level it is fundamentally important to collect and use ‘good’ demographic data to better understand the prevalence of, and tackle, particular crimes, as well as support victims of crime. The data must, however, be collected ethically, be as comprehensive as possible, used responsibly. and contextualised historically, and in relation to other existing, relevant data sets and data sources (both quantitative and qualitative) to further broaden our picture of the scope and nuance of the crimes in question.
“Incomplete data is never ideal but the communication of data outputs must also not be reduced to simplistic, erroneous headlines (which may e.g. essentialise ‘ethnicity’ or ‘race’ as a sole, causative driver). This can risk further fuelling media sensationalism rather than tackling it.
Why ethnicity can’t be the whole story
Over the past year, any public discussion involving ethnicity—regardless of accuracy—has often triggered extreme reactions, both verbal and physical. In this case too, shortly after presenting data showing a disproportionate data of ethnicity, Baroness Casey had to urge the public to “stay calm” when addressing the ethnicity of grooming gang offenders. She warned that some police data is being misused in public debate and could lead to harmful generalisations.
Her report looked at police figures from areas like Rochdale and Oldham, where grooming gangs have been convicted. In one set of cases involving multiple victims and offenders, 52% of suspects were of Asian background and 38% were white. However, when looking at all child sex abuse cases, not just group exploitation, the data showed that most suspects were white (44%), 16% were Asian, and 32% had unknown ethnicity.
Lady Casey stressed that while some crimes may show a higher number of 'Asian suspects', broader data on child abuse does not. She urged people to look at the data carefully and avoid jumping to conclusions based on ethnicity alone.
Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch, responding to Home Secretary Yvette Cooper’s statement announcing the new inquiry, emphasised that the forthcoming national inquiry into grooming gangs must place survivors at its core, not political agendas.
She pointed out that when analysing the testimonies of victims of child sexual abuse in other contexts, often the ethnicity of the perpetrator remains vague, citing the example of the 2015 inquiry’s Truth Project. She further added, “One reason is that whiteness goes unremarked upon in many areas of life in a majority-white country such as the UK. Another serious issue is the poor levels of reporting of child sexual abuse in general in ethnic minority communities. Overall, we lack a good understanding of both victim and perpetrator characteristics.”
“If coming from a particular community is a risk factor for perpetration of a certain form of child sexual abuse, more accurate data is needed to say this confidently and in a way that can engage communities rather than alienating them. It is our hope that this new inquiry can do that.”
