The UK has announced a rapid review of the scale of child sexual abuse by care teams

The British government bowed to pressure on Thursday and announced Billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk has used his social media platform X to highlight the problem in a series of vitriolic posts, less than a month after new research into child sexual abuse and exploitation.

Speaking in parliament, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said she had commissioned a three-month fast-track review into “the current scale and nature of gang-based exploitation across the country”, which would examine data on the ethnicity of criminals.

He also said the government would support and help fund up to five local inquiries into so-called grooming gangs across Britain, groups of men found to have sexually abused thousands of girls, some as young as 11. 2000s and early 2010s. Most of the perpetrators were of British Pakistani heritage.

In the 2010s, which was widely covered in the British press and already local and national surveys covered a number of towns and cities where mostly white girls were exploited, assaulted and raped by gangs of men.

According to several studies, victims and parents seeking help are often failed by the police and social services. Some police officers described the victims as “cakes” and the girls’ violence as a “lifestyle choice,” while other officials feared that highlighting the perpetrators’ ethnicity would be labeled as racist.

Maintenance teams a cuts Of the total number of reported cases of child sexual abuse in England and Wales. Of the 115,489 child sexual abuse crimes registered in 2023, 4228 cases or 3.7 percent — according to official data published in November, involved groups committing two or more crimes. And 1125 of these cases were committed at home by relatives or family members.

But the issue is deeply emotional and has been fueled by Mr Musk, who this month accused Prime Minister Keir Starmer and other Labor MPs of creating gangs. His social posts were numerous inaccuracies and stainsincluding accusing former attorney-general Mr Starmer of complicity in the “rape of Britain”. However, his intervention has reignited debate on sensitive topics, including race, sexual violence and the cultural values ​​of some immigrant communities.

The government previously rejected calls for a new national inquiry from England’s anti-immigration reform party and the main opposition Conservative Party, whose leader Kemi Badenoch said no one was “joining the dots” on a range of care jobs. , including the involvement of men of Pakistani heritage.

The government said it would instead focus on implementing the recommendations of an earlier national inquiry into child sex abuse by Professor Alexis Jay. seven yearsprocessed more than two million pages of evidence and included the voices of nearly 6,000 victims. That inquiry concluded in 2022 and made a number of recommendations that the previous Conservative-led government failed to implement.

Mrs. Jay, who too Supervised the 2014 survey They opposed a new national inquiry into gangs in the northern English town of Rotherham, where 1,400 minors were raped and trafficked by men of mainly Pakistani heritage between 1997 and 2013, instead calling on the Labor government. to move based on previous recommendations.

On Thursday, Ms Cooper said she asked Louise Casey 2015 study Examining the authorities’ response to child sexual abuse in Rotherham, examining the scale of gang abuse and looking at more evidence not previously available.

“It will properly examine ethnicity data, the demographics of the gangs involved and their victims, and look at the cultural and social causes of these types of offences, including across different ethnic groups,” Ms Cooper said of the new audit.

Ms Cooper also announced plans to help the northern city of Oldham and four other municipalities carry out investigations to “get truth and justice for victims and survivors”. Police chiefs have been asked to review past gang exploitation cases where no charges have been brought and reopen investigations where necessary.

The government’s announcement on Thursday followed calls for action from several Labor lawmakers, including Sarah Champion, who represents Rotherham. He offered ministers a five-point plan calling for “local inquiries across the country to be held accountable to the authorities and then report back to the government” and a “national audit” to investigate whether barber gangs are still in the country. whether transactions or cases are omitted.

On Thursday, Conservative home affairs spokesman Chris Philp dismissed the initiative as insufficient. “It is completely inadequate for the government to announce only five local gang-rape inquiries,” he wrote on social media, adding that many more cities were affected. “And the rest – they don’t matter?”