Why we must not shy away from difficult questions of grooming gangs while clamping down on inflammatory language - Dr Mohammed Ali

Technology billionaire Elon Musk’s posts alleging that child grooming is perpetrated by mainly Asian gangs against predominantly white young women touch a particularly raw nerve here in Yorkshire.

In 2014 the report of an independent inquiry by Professor Alexis Jay found that at least 1,400 children, some as young as 11, had been raped and trafficked by men of mainly Pakistani heritage in Rotherham. In 2018 the spotlight fell on Huddersfield. And now Keighley and Ilkley MP Robbie Moore has told Parliament that many people fear the scale of abuse in Bradford district could ‘dwarf’ that in South Yorkshire.

In fact, there is very little statistical evidence of a link between ethnicity and child sexual exploitation – but there can be no doubt that unfounded claims tear communities apart.

While high-profile cases involving grooming gangs of mainly Pakistani or South Asian heritage in Rotherham, Rochdale and Telford have attracted much media attention, others – such as the 2010 convictions of a group of white men and one woman in the Camborne area of Cornwall – have tended to go under the radar. What data we do have concerning links between child sexual exploitation and ethnicity is conflicting, inaccurate and out of date. More importantly, it’s an irrelevant, but dangerous, distraction from the issue that really matters, which is the safeguarding of vulnerable young people.

The most recent information comes from the Vulnerability and Knowledge Practice and Hydrant programmes. This shows that less than five per cent of cases of child sexual abuse recorded in 2022 and 2023 were group-based. Of these, white people were overrepresented as suspects and Asians underrepresented. In any case, the most widespread form of CSE takes place in a family environment and children are the perpetrators in more than half of reported cases.

What is indisputable is that this most despicable of crimes is on the rise. More than 115,000 cases were recorded in 2023, compared with just 20,000 in 2013. Whilst some of this increase could be due to improvements in police reporting, it highlights the need to focus our efforts on protecting potential victims and not allow ourselves to be distracted into speculating on the ethnic origin of offenders.

This will make our streets safer for everyone. Thankfully, the wave of Far Right riots that swept the UK last August, and included violent confrontations outside a hotel used to house asylum seekers in Rotherham, was quickly snuffed out. But the widespread nature of the unrest highlighted the vulnerability felt by so many ethnic minority communities in the current political climate, with concerns about illegal immigration dominating debate in the run-up to the last election and deflecting attention from pressing issues such as falling household incomes and overstretched, under-funded public services.

British Pakistanis in particular are easy targets for Far Right activists, who have often capitalised on misleading and inaccurate media portrayals, particularly in the aftermath of the 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers and the London bombings of July 2005.

Focusing attention on particular grooming gangs, rather than on the causes and prevention of child abuse, simply enables those with vested interests to make political capital by extrapolating the criminal actions of a small group of people to whole communities.

Elon Musk is not the first person to seek to jump on the bandwagon. In 2023 the Independent Press Standards Organisation ruled that then Home Secretary Suella Braverman should apologise for misleading claims that child grooming gangs were ‘almost all British-Pakistani men’.

A senior politician recently alleged that some immigrants come from ‘countries and cultures that have backward attitudes to women’ and white working-class victims of child sexual exploitation are viewed as ‘worthless’.

We should not, as some commentators have suggested, shy away from asking difficult questions due to political correctness. But we must clamp down on such inflammatory speech that makes whole communities fearful for their safety.

Our first duty is to protect the victims, and potential victims, of abuse. Speculating about the identity of the perpetrators is a distraction from this. And putting even more innocent people at risk by recklessly stirring up community tensions is a crime against the peaceful and tolerant society that we all wish for.

Dr Mohammed Ali OBE is the founder and CEO of QED Foundation, a national charity that works to promote the social and economic advancement of disadvantaged communities.