UK to Launch National Inquiry into Grooming Gangs

The United Kingdom will launch a full statutory inquiry into grooming gangs across England and Wales, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer announced over the weekend, marking a reversal of the government’s earlier position after coming under intense pressure from the public and high-profile figures such as Tesla CEO Elon Musk, the BBC reported. 

Speaking ahead of the Group of Seven summit in Canada, Starmer said he would implement the recommendation of Baroness Louise Casey’s audit, which examined the nature and scale of group-based child sexual abuse.  

The nearly 200-page audit – set to be published this week – is expected to outline institutional failures and missed opportunities to protect young girls over the past decade.  

Sky News reported that the document is also likely to link illegal immigration to patterns of exploitation in grooming gangs and outline institutional failures and missed opportunities from an earlier report, the Jay Review, set up in 2014 to investigate grooming gangs in the English town of Rotherham. 

Calls for a national inquiry gained traction earlier this year when billionaire Musk criticized the British government for ignoring the victims of the grooming gangs.  

A public fight between the prime minister and Musk centered on high-profile cases where groups of men, mainly of Pakistani descent, were convicted of sexually abusing and raping predominantly young white girls in towns such as Rotherham and Rochdale, the BBC said. 

Musk criticized Starmer for not backing a national inquiry into the matter following a request from the local authority in the northern English town of Oldham, where police found girls under 18 were sexually exploited by groups of men in the 2000s and 2010s. Musk also alleged that Starmer failed to bring perpetrators to justice when he was England’s chief prosecutor between 2008 and 2013, a charge that the prime minister vigorously denied. 

Because the cases in Oldham and similar ones in several other towns involved predominantly white girls abused by men largely from Pakistani backgrounds, the issue has been used to link child sexual abuse to immigration, and to accuse politicians of covering up the crimes out of a fear of appearing racist, the Associated Press wrote. 

In January, the government had stopped short of launching a national inquiry despite internal and external pressure, citing the Jay Review as having already examined the issue in depth. 

Baroness Casey also initially dismissed the need for a national inquiry but changed her position after reviewing evidence of institutional failures and unaddressed abuses.  

The national inquiry’s announcement was met with a mix of praise and criticism by Starmer’s opponents. 

Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch called the decision “too little, too late,” accusing Starmer of only acting when directed by an official report. However, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage hailed it as a “welcome U-turn” and emphasized that the inquiry “cannot be a whitewash.”