Grooming gangs come from “diverse backgrounds”, a long-awaited review by the Home Office has concluded.
Prompted by high-profile cases of sexual grooming in towns including Rochdale and Rotherham, the work was commissioned by former Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, to better understand the scale and nature of group-based child sexual exploitation, including the characteristics of offenders, victims and the context in which these crimes are committed.
The research was published on Tuesday (15 December) after the Home Office had initially said releasing the paper 'would not be in the public interest'.
The paper sets out the limited available evidence on the characteristics of offenders including how they operate, ethnicity, age, offender networks, as well as the context in which these crimes are often committed, along with implications for frontline responses and for policy development.