Baroness Louise Casey’s report into group-based sexual exploitation pulls no punches in its description of the failures at all levels to tackle what it calls one of the most horrendous crimes in our society.
Now the question many will be asking is will her report bring about meaningful change?
Certainly, for survivors of abuse, who have often had to fight hard to get their voices heard, practical, on-the-ground change will be vital.
The report said the ethnicity of people involved in grooming gangs had been “shied away from” by authorities with ethnicity data not recorded for two-thirds of perpetrators. This meant the data was not robust enough to support conclusions about offenders at a national level.
The government accepted all Baroness Casey’s recommendations, but the grooming gangs report itself made the point that many of the problems highlighted have been known about for years – yet there was a failure to act over decades.
The government accepted all Baroness Casey’s recommendations, but the grooming gangs report itself made the point that many of the problems highlighted have been known about for years – yet there was a failure to act over decades.
The report said too often the children being abused were blamed, not helped.
“If we’d got this right years ago – seeing these girls as children raped rather than ‘wayward teenagers’ or collaborators in their abuse, collecting ethnicity data, and acknowledging as a system that we did not do a good enough job – then I doubt we’d be in this place now,” Baroness Casey said in her foreword to the report.
In fact, if you were to read many past reports, including Baroness Casey’s own 2015 investigation into the failure to tackle grooming gangs by Rotherham Council, you would find many of the same issues being raised.
For instance, ten years ago she recommended tighter checks on Rotherham taxis because of their use by grooming gangs. In Monday’s audit she called for legal loopholes to be closed nationally so cab drivers can’t simply move to another area to get a licence.
Overall, she described the lack of action by the authorities over the years as “denial” or a collective “blindness”, particularly when it comes to the ethnicity of perpetrators.
The report said “despite reviews, reports and inquiries raising questions about men from Asian or Pakistani backgrounds grooming and sexually exploiting young white girls, the system has consistently failed to fully acknowledge this or collect accurate data so it can be examined effectively.”
Her audit found there was enough evidence at a local level for three police forces – Greater Manchester, South Yorkshire and West Yorkshire – to show “disproportionate numbers of men from Asian ethnic backgrounds amongst suspects for group-based child sexual exploitation”.
The government has accepted her call for better data collection on the ethnicity of grooming gang suspects and has promised research into what that tells us about the factors driving exploitation.
Without reliable information, Baroness Casey argues there is a vacuum which different sides can use to “suit the ends of those presenting it.”
And at a briefing she rejected the idea that further investigation of the ethnicity of grooming gangs could cause unrest, responding that “if good people don’t grip difficult issues, bad people do.”
Baroness Casey said ethnicity data should be investigated as it was “only helping the bad people” not to give a full picture of the situation, adding: “You’re doing a disservice to two sets of population, the Pakistani and Asian heritage community, and victims.”
The national inquiry will be watched closely to again see if its recommendations are put into practice.
As one experienced lawyer put it, this can’t be another exercise in simply gathering evidence and producing recommendations that are quietly shelved.
