 "A 2023 report reveals that were 4,228 instances of abuse carried out by grooming gangs. Representational image/Pixabay")
“True,” said billionaire and Tesla chief Elon Musk, responding to a post by Shiv Sena (UBT) MP Priyanka Chaturvedi on X on the grooming gangs scandal that has overtaken the United Kingdom. Earlier, the Indian lawmaker had written, “Repeat after me, they aren’t Asian grooming gangs but Pakistani grooming gangs. Why should Asians take the fall for one absolute rogue nation?”
As the controversy of Britain’s grooming gangs continues to gather moss, we take a closer look at what the data reveals about the ethnicity of the men in these so-called gangs and try to attempt to answer — Are members of grooming gangs in the UK predominantly Pakistani?
UK’s grooming gang scandal
First things first: what is this grooming gang scandal all about? In 2011, T_he Times of London_ published a series of investigative articles on the sexual exploitation of girls by criminal gangs in England’s north and Midlands from 1997 onward. One detective at the time, Chief Inspector Alan Edwards, told the paper: “Everyone’s been too scared to address the ethnicity factor.” The cases came to be known as the “grooming gangs” scandal.
The report revealed a similar pattern: men choosing girls in fancy sports cars, wooing them as boyfriends and then sending them to older men. It alleged that the victims were drugged at the time of being passed on from man to man. One of the survivors, Christina O’Connor, recounts how it all happened to her. As a young girl of 13 in Huddersfield, she was at the bus station when she met a group of men. “We started smoking with them and then met them again that night and that day it went from a normal childhood to a messed up one.”
She recounts that after spending time with them and partying. However, she started getting beaten up and raped and passed around and treated like a human toy. “I drank and took drugs to block what was happening in my life out.”
According to the investigative report, there was a secret police document, which claimed that at least 1,400 children over a decade and a half had been systematically abused by these gangs. The victims, some as young as 11, suffered rape and trafficking.
This issue was raked up again now when billionaire Elon Musk accused UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer of failing to curb the menace of the grooming gangs. He also asked Starmer to quit as he failed to prosecute these gangs during his tenure as Director of Public Prosecutions from 2008-2013. He went as far as saying that Safeguarding Minister Jess Philips should be jailed for refusing to sanction a government inquiry into such cases in the town of Oldham.
Pakistani or Asian grooming gangs
In an attempt to defend himself, Starmer, on Monday, used the generalised term ‘Asian grooming gangs’. This has led to an outrage from many, including British-Indians, arguing they are being unfairly smeared for crimes in which they have no involvement.
Krishna Bhan, chair of Hindu Council UK, was quoted as saying, “We are dismayed that the PM chose to whitewash this heinous atrocity with the word ‘Asian’. “Our Hindu and Sikh girls were also their victims.”
Echoing similar outrage, Jay Shah, spokesperson for Friends of India Society International UK, told Times of India, “Asian means Vietnamese, Sri Lankan, Japanese, Indian, etc. Why should we be classified as part of these gangs? They should specify who they are. It’s an insult to every Asian otherwise.”
He further noted, “When it comes to grooming gangs, we are Asian, when they talk about Kashmir, we are suddenly Indian. Politicians seem to be protecting the perpetrators rather than the victims. If a British person commits a crime in Asia, it isn’t reported as European.”
The Network of Sikh Organisations, a registered charity in the UK, also slammed PM Starmer’s generalisation, saying: “This lack of specificity has made it harder to address the problem and worsened the plight of victims.”
Sikh Federation UK also voiced its frustration, calling it political correctness, “In the debate regarding child sexual exploitation, Sikhs, Hindus, and others incorrectly labelled ‘Asian’ are sick and tired of politicians, including Keir Starmer, referring to ‘Asian grooming gangs.’"
Data matters
A 2023 report published by the UK’s Ministry of Justice and the Office for National Statistics shows that there were 4,228 instances of abuse carried out by grooming gangs. About two-thirds of cases were related to “contact” abuse – which means rape, sexual assault and sexual activity involving a child. The remainder were “online” abuse, mostly carried out by perpetrators who were strangers to the victim.
The report further said that children aged 10-17 accounted for 48 per cent of group-based abuse suspects.
But what is the ethnicity of the perpetrators of such crimes? The data shared by the government shows that 85 per cent of suspects in group-based offences are white, while seven per cent are Asian and five per cent are black.
Among the seven per cent Asian suspects — two per cent are of Pakistani ethnicity, another two per cent are of ‘any other Asian background’ and one per cent each are Bangladeshi and Indian.
Besides this, an independent review commissioned by Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham revealed widespread grooming and exploitation of young girls in Rochdale. The review said that the authorities failed to adequately investigate these cases between 2004 and 2013. Of the nine perpetrators convicted, eight were identified as British-Pakistani men, said the review.
In early 2023, then Britain’s Home Secretary Suella Braverman alleged in a Mail on Sunday article that almost all members of grooming gangs are “British-Pakistani”. However, her comments were titled as false by the press regulator, Ipso. The regulator said Braverman’s decision to link “the identified ethnic group and a particular form of offending was significantly misleading” because the Home Office’s own research had concluded offenders were mainly from white backgrounds.
In her defence, she said though, “To say the overwhelming majority of perpetrators in towns such as Rotherham, Telford, and Rochdale were British-Pakistani and that their victims were white girls is not to say that most British-Pakistanis are perpetrators of sexual abuse.”
“The former is a truth, one that made authorities reluctant to confront the issue. The latter is a lie, the speaking of which would be a disgraceful prejudice.”
With inputs from agencies