Delayed Home Office report dispels myths about sexual grooming
Delayed Home Office report dispels myths about sexual grooming
25th Dec 2020
Photo: headlines exclusively focused on the ethnicity and religion of child abuse offenders when they are of Asian and Muslim origin.
Hamed Chapman
The majority of child sexual abuse gangs are made up of white men under the age of 30, according to a delayed Home Office report about the ethnicity of offenders that dispels racist smears linking most grooming to Asian men.
The long-awaited official paper was promised by former Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, in 2018 after a series of high-profile cases of group-based child sexual exploitation (CSE) focused on the involvement of mainly Pakistani-heritage offenders but found no evidence to prove a link to ethnicity.
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The Home Secretary has today published a paper on the characteristics of group-based child sexual exploitation offending making clear that more will be done by government, law enforcement and partners to better safeguard children and tackle perpetrators.
The findings provide safeguarding partners with an overview of the current evidence in relation to group-based offending.
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.
An External Reference Group, consisting of independent experts on child sexual exploitation, reviewed and informed this work. Members included Labour MP for Rotherham Sarah Champion, Conservative MP for Wakefield Imran Ahmad Khan, survivor and campaigner Sammy Woodhouse, and Simon Bailey, National Police Chiefs Council lea
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.