The United Kingdom’s report on grooming incidents found that discussion on ethnicity is a “major failing” of its contents.
“The question of the ethnicity of perpetrators has been a key question for this audit, having been raised in inquiries and reports going back many years,” the report 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.”
While there is a “lack of a full picture” in data sets, available data indicates “disproportionate numbers of men from Asian ethnic backgrounds amongst suspects for group-based child sexual exploitation, as well as in the significant number of perpetrators of Asian ethnicity identified in local reviews and high-profile child sexual exploitation prosecutions across the country, to at least warrant further examination.”
“Child sexual exploitation is horrendous whoever commits it, but there have been enough convictions across the country of groups of men from Asian ethnic backgrounds to have warranted closer examination,” it added.
A “significant number” of the ongoing police operations into exploitation cases “involve suspects who are non-UK nationals and/or who are claiming asylum in the UK,” the report adds.
The report called for a national criminal investigation into child sexual exploitation across England and Wales and urged authorities to approach the investigation like they would organized crime.
More than 800 sexual exploitation cases have been identified for review, although the number is expected to rise to more than 1,000, Baroness Casey of Blackstock said.
The U.K. government said in response to the report that it will “make it a requirement for the police to collect ethnicity and nationality data of perpetrators.”
Prime Minister Kier Starmer previously dismissed calls for the report, labeling it as being aligned with “far-right” narratives.
