Britain’s belated probe illustrates the deadly cost of delay.
A grooming scandal that has been discussed for years in London is finally getting attention.
MPs and London Assembly members are demanding an urgent investigation into grooming gangs in the city. They say authorities have failed to act on reports from survivors about the systematic abuse and exploitation of girls as young as 14.
This comes after a BBC investigation uncovered stories of young women being drugged, assaulted by multiple men, and forced into sex work to pay off drug debts. These cases are similar to those in Rotherham and Rochdale, where thousands of girls were abused over many years.
The letter, signed by figures such as Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp and former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith, was sent to Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood and London Mayor Sadiq Khan. It calls for the national inquiry into grooming gangs to focus on London.
Khan has been criticized for saying there were “no reports and no indication” of organized abuse in the city and for not addressing questions about whether Muslim rape gangs have operated there. Critics now accuse him of ignoring the issue.
The Metropolitan Police are reviewing 9,000 child sexual exploitation cases, with estimates suggesting that 2,000 to 3,000 involve grooming gangs. As in earlier scandals, most suspects are men of Pakistani heritage accused of targeting white English non-Muslim girls.
Grooming gangs have operated for decades and have faced little interference, with group-based child exploitation dating back to at least the mid-1970s. Authorities often overlooked these crimes while focusing on other types of child abuse. The problem became widely known in the 1990s and 2000s, but institutional failures allowed it to continue.
Nearly 100 trials and convictions have occurred in over 40 towns and cities across the U.K., including Rotherham, where more than 1,400 victims were identified between 1997 and 2013, as well as in Rochdale, Oxford, Telford, and Huddersfield.
Despite this, London’s mayor has said there are no such cases, or none on the same scale, in the capital. This has led to public anger, especially as the Metropolitan Police review thousands of old cases. --->READ MORE HERE
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| PA Media |
The government's inquiry into grooming gangs "must look specifically at London as part of its local investigations", according to a group of MPs.
In a letter seen by the BBC, eight Conservative MPs and three London Assembly members are demanding "urgent action" from Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood and Mayor of London Sir Sadiq Khan.
The MPs include the shadow home secretary, Chris Philp, and the former leader of the Conservative Party, Sir Iain Duncan Smith.
The letter follows a BBC News investigation last month, which exposed how vulnerable girls as young as 14 were being lured into forced sex by gangs in the capital.
"Survivors told the BBC they had been raped by several men as payment for unpaid drug debts by the gangs that controlled them, while others said they had been groomed for sex," the letter says.
"We are horrified by these reports. The report lays bare the failings of the authorities in London to tackle the grooming gangs we have seen operating all over the country."
The government has announced there will be a full national statutory inquiry into grooming gangs, covering England and Wales.
It is expected to include new local investigations, which will take place even if local authorities do not want one. But it is not clear where those inquiries will be.
The signatories want one of those local inquiries to be about London, and are calling on the Metropolitan Police to "set up a specific unit to look at these cases and bring these disgusting grooming gangs to justice".
In response to the letter, a Home Office spokesperson said: "The local areas to be examined by the inquiry will be selected by the chair in due course.
"Sexual and criminal abuse of children by gangs, whenever they occur, are among the most horrific crimes imaginable." --->READ MORE HERE
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