Public bodies covered up sickening evidence about Asian grooming gangs ‘for fear of appearing racist’, a major report found yesterday.
The long-awaited review by Whitehall troubleshooter Louise Casey found that councils, police forces and the Home Office repeatedly ‘shied away’ from dealing with ‘uncomfortable’ questions about the ethnicity of rapists preying on thousands of vulnerable girls.
Baroness Casey last night hit out at ‘do-gooders’ who tried to bury the facts of such cases, yet only ended up giving racists ‘more ammunition’.
Despite years of warnings, she said, the quality of data collected at a national level remained ‘woeful and a dereliction of public duty’.
With ethnicity still recorded in only a third of cases, the baroness said it was impossible to be certain about patterns of offending at a national level.
But her report highlighted data collected by police in Rotherham, Greater Manchester and West Yorkshire which showed a ‘disproportionate number of men from Asian ethnic backgrounds’ among those suspected of grooming offences.
In Rotherham, an investigation into historic cases by the National Crime Agency found that two-thirds of suspects were of Pakistani heritage, despite them accounting for just 4 per cent of the local population.
The report also examined a dozen major live police operations into grooming gangs and found a ‘significant proportion’ of suspects are asylum seekers or were born abroad.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper (pictured) issued a public apology on behalf of the state to the victims of the gangs
Pictured: Samantha Walker-Roberts, an Oldham grooming gang survivor, whose ‘whole life was smashed apart’ after she fell into the evil clutches of a paedophile ring aged just 12
In one case in Newcastle, an asylum seeker convicted of offences ‘spoke in a derogatory way about lack of morals in British girls and the ease with which he was able to access sex, drugs and alcohol’.
Lady Casey said it was ‘not racist to want to examine the ethnicity of offenders’. But she pointed to a culture of public bodies avoiding the issue ‘for fear of appearing racist, raising community tensions or causing community cohesion problems’.
Her report said most local reviews had shown ‘a palpable discomfort in any discussion of ethnicity’. And it said ‘flawed data’ was being ‘used repeatedly to dismiss claims about ‘Asian grooming gangs’ as sensational, biased or untrue’.
The crossbench peer told Sky News that establishing the facts can ‘take the pain out of this’.
She said: ‘I think you’ve got sort of do-gooders that don’t really want this to be found because, you know, ‘Oh, God, then all the racists are going to be more racist’.
‘Well, actually, 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 and more ammunition.’
Lady Casey added: ‘Follow the facts and if anything is ever difficult, have a really good look at it.’
The report also accused the authorities of failing to take victims seriously, saying many girls who tried to report abuse had been ‘ignored, treated like criminals and often arrested themselves’.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper issued a public apology on behalf of the state to the victims of the gangs.
She said she offered ‘an unequivocal apology for the unimaginable pain and suffering that you have suffered, and for the failure of our country’s institutions, over decades, to prevent that harm and keep you safe’.
Ms Cooper said she was accepting the recommendations of Lady Casey’s ‘damning’ report in full – including ordering a public inquiry which Labour has resisted.
The report triggered angry clashes in the Commons, where Kemi Badenoch rounded on Sir Keir Starmer for smearing those pressing for a public inquiry of jumping on a ‘far-Right bandwagon’.
Baroness Casey (pictured) hit out at ‘do-gooders’ who tried to bury the facts of such cases, yet only ended up giving racists ‘more ammunition’
Ms Cooper (pictured) said she was accepting the recommendations of Lady Casey’s ‘damning’ report in full – including ordering a public inquiry which Labour has resisted
The baroness said it was time to end the ‘sanitised’ language around so-called grooming gangs.’
I want to set it out in unsanitised terms,’ she wrote. ‘We are talking about multiple sexual assaults committed against children by multiple men on multiple occasions; beatings and gang rapes.’
The national inquiry will be time-limited and is likely to investigate offending in only a handful of local areas, despite warnings that similar activity may have taken place in 50 towns and cities across the country. But it will have the power to compel witnesses to give evidence.
