A culture of “blindness, ignorance and prejudice” led to repeated failures over decades to investigate and prosecute grooming gangs that sexually exploited children across England, a landmark government-commissioned review has found.
Following mounting public pressure and the release of Baroness Louise Casey’s report, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has announced a full statutory national inquiry into grooming gangs. Speaking from the G7 summit in Canada, Starmer confirmed that the inquiry will be conducted under the Inquiries Act, giving it legal authority to compel witnesses and gather evidence. “I’ve read every single word of her report, and I’m going to accept her recommendation. That’s the right thing to do,” he said.
Initially, Baroness Casey did not support a national inquiry, but reversed her position after leading a rapid review launched in January. The decision marks a major policy shift for Labour, which had previously resisted calls for a broader inquiry, instead opting for a limited audit.
Ethnicity and data failures
The report criticised successive governments, police forces, and local authorities for failing to confront the role of ethnicity in these crimes. Casey stated it was “not racist to examine the ethnicity of the offenders,” adding that fears of appearing racist or inciting tensions contributed to the systemic denial of the disproportionate involvement of men of Asian, particularly Pakistani, heritage.
Local police data from Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire, and South Yorkshire revealed that Asian men were over-represented among suspects in group-based child sexual exploitation cases. Yet, nationally, two-thirds of suspects still have no recorded ethnicity because police forces and councils avoided collecting such data due to fears of raising community tensions.
Casey condemned this failure as enabling continued abuse, saying, “If good people don’t grip difficult issues, bad people do.” She warned that flawed or absent data allowed grooming gang abuse to be dismissed as a myth or as exaggerated racism, despite clear local patterns.
Systemic failures and victims’ experiences
The review examined about a dozen live investigations, revealing that many suspects are non-UK nationals, including asylum seekers. Casey emphasised the need for accountability and a “vigorous approach to righting the wrongs of the past.”
Adult abusers primarily targeted girls, some as young as ten, often already vulnerable due to prior abuse, neglect, or disabilities. Victims were often in care and many still live with the trauma of being disbelieved or forced to live alongside their perpetrators.
The report found that more than 800 cold cases have already been reopened, with the number expected to surpass 1,000 in the coming weeks. It described “group-based child sexual exploitation” as a sanitised term for the repeated sexual assault of children, including gang rapes and physical violence.
Casey also highlighted historic injustice: nearly 4,000 children between 10 and 18 received prostitution-related cautions in the 1990s. These young victims, many coerced into exploitation, still carry criminal records. One of the review’s key recommendations is to quash those convictions.
Twelve recommendations accepted in full
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper announced the government will adopt all 12 of Casey’s recommendations. Key measures include:
- Establishing an independent commission to coordinate five existing local inquiries with full statutory powers.
- Mandatory recording of ethnicity and nationality of suspects in child sexual exploitation and abuse cases.
- Changing the law so that anyone who penetrates a child under 16 is automatically charged with rape.
- National police reviews of past unprosecuted exploitation cases from the last 10 years.
- Research into the role of social media, cultural factors, and group dynamics in facilitating abuse.
- Quashing convictions of victims prosecuted while being exploited.
Cooper told Parliament, “We cannot and must not shy away from these findings… Ignoring the issues allows the criminality of a minority of men to be used to marginalise entire communities.”
Children’s Commissioner for England Rachel de Souza said the failures were a “source of national shame,” urging that this inquiry be a wake-up call, “We cannot be more afraid of causing offence than we are of speaking out to protect children from exploitation and corruption.”
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch and Reform UK leader Nigel Farage both described the reversal as overdue.
