THE predatory behaviour behind grooming gangs is “not a pattern of offending confined to any particular ethnic, cultural, or religious group”, the Bishop of Manchester, Dr David Walker, said this week — contrary to the views of the independent auditor of these crimes in England and Wales.
He was speaking on Monday, the day that the Government announced a new national inquiry on grooming gangs in response to Baroness Casey’s audit of group-based child sexual exploitation.
In her report, Baroness Casey says: “We found that the ethnicity of perpetrators is shied away from and is still not recorded for two-thirds of perpetrators, so we are unable to provide any accurate assessment from the nationally collected data.”
Her report also found that there was a “disproportionate” connection between British Asian men and grooming gangs in data from three police forces in the north of England— West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, and Greater Manchester — something she says that should be further investigated.
In an interview with Sky News, Baroness Casey said: “Just to give some sort of balance, in Greater Manchester I asked for data on child sexual exploitation that took me to Asian heritage. I asked for data on child abuse and that took me to the general population, which is largely white.”
There were “do-gooders” who did not want this information to be found, Baroness Casey suggested, for fear that this would incite racism. But she continued, “people that are racist are going to use this anyway. All you’re doing with the hate mongers and the racists is giving them more ammunition.”
But Dr Walker, in his Thought for the Day on Radio 4 on Monday morning, was cautious about this connection. Greater Manchester, where he lived, had, he said, “seen more than its fair share” of grooming-gang cases. “In the last three months two gangs have been convicted and sentenced. One, in Rochdale, comprising men of Pakistani origin, the other, in Bolton, all with names and appearances that suggest a White British background.
“This is not a pattern of offending confined to any particular ethnic, cultural or religious group. I hope that the forthcoming Inquiry will help us find ways to keep young girls safe from groups of predatory older men, whatever their origin.”
Giving the example of abuse perpetrated within religious communities, about which he had given evidence to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), he continued: “It’s a natural human tendency to want to think that such horrendous crimes are only carried out by people who are not like us.”
Dr Walker went on to say that, while “gangs may dominate the news headlines, Child Protection experts affirm that the vast majority of child sexual exploitation is committed by the victim’s close family members or friends, something which accords with my own experience over 24 years as a bishop. It is here, where children should be safest, that harm is most likely to go unreported. It is here, where the words of Jesus might be hardest to hear.
“Protecting young girls from the predations of gangs is a laudable aim, one that has my wholehearted support. But just as vital is the challenge which remains, of keeping all our children, boys and girls, safe in the home and family.”
The new public inquiry on grooming gangs — one of the Casey report recommendations — was announced by the Home Secretary Yvette Cooper “to direct local investigations and hold institutions to account for past failures”. This is a U-turn on Ms Cooper’s previous child-protection announcements (News, 10 January; 11 April).
On Friday, seven men who groomed and sexually abused two girls in Rochdale between 2001, when the girls were just 13, and 2006, were found guilty of 50 offences, including rape and indecency with a child. The men were prosecuted at Manchester Minshull Street Crown Court in a four-month trial.
In a statement to the House, Ms Cooper said that “the perpetrators included taxi-drivers and market-traders of Pakistani heritage, and it has taken 20 years to bring them to justice. . . These despicable crimes have caused the most unimaginable harm to victims and survivors throughout their lives and are a stain on our society.”
Ms Cooper, who commissioned Baroness Casey to investigate, said that she had “specifically asked her to look at the issue of ethnicity, and the cultural and social drivers for this type of offending” and that the findings were “damning” and not new. There had been 15 reports, reviews, and investigations into the exploitation.
She accepted the 12 recommendations, including “new ethnicity data and research so we face up to the facts on exploitation and abuse”; new laws to protect children and victims from being “blamed for the appalling crimes committed against them”; new police operations; and further action to support child victims and tackle new forms of exploitation and abuse online.
Ms Cooper also reiterated her commitment to implement the 20 core IICSA recommendations. This was welcomed by the Survivors Trust, which urged her “to do so without delay, and to publish a clear timetable for delivery”. The Trust’s chief executive, Fay Maxted said: “There is no hierarchy of abuse, and no survivor should be left behind because their experience does not fit a political narrative.”
The IICSA inquiry ran for eight years at a cost of £185 million, and involved more than 7500 of testimonies from survivors, including in a church context.
