There will be a national enquiry into the grooming gangs

[inkognitha]

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/jun/14/keir-starmer-national-inquiry-grooming-gangs

Posting here for traffic

YABU: this was unnecessary
YANBU: this was the right thing to do

I am a victim. Though I was “lucky” because I was kept as a girlfriend to one so not passed around. The men were all white. I was middle class. As were at least two other victims. Vulnerable because of very strict and controlling parents but not in care or neglected. We were still treated like the perpetrators by the police. I had a police office yell at me. I was arrested too. Social services were useless and school just punished. I was sure I was wrong and to blame.
So I don’t buy the narrative that it’s a classist. It is a female thing. I don’t buy that it’s a particular racist, it’s a man thing. Men abuse women. Men abuse girls. Not all men, but always men.

Good. The institutional failings to address this issue and to cover it up is a national disgrace and those with blood on their hands should be held accountable.

It's exactly that kind of attitude which resulted in the police taking no action and thousands of girls being abused over the course of decades.

Do we need another inquiry? Depends on what has truly driven this. Is it to placate the public who are basing calls for inquiry on short press articles or to really do something about it? I have lived in a few countries and don't know any country that does as many inquiries than the UK. Including multiple inquiries on one issue across decades and inquiries on inquiries. Sometimes these are justified. At other times it just placated people in the short term buy does not actually lead to solutions, to implementing recommendations of the inquiries or addressing deep rooted causes rather than symptoms. At the end of the day I hope we will understand the deep rooted causes of these grooming gangs, punish them adequately, provide full and comprehensive support to victims, prevent future grooming and have in place well funded response structural for when it happens again (because regardless of prevention measures it will likely happen again)

It doesn't. That's why I said "if".

And you are saying "don't look there... look over here" because you don't seem to want to even think about white men doing this.

I'd hope that you want justice for ALL victims, not just those who are victims of brown men.

Agreed. And it is decades and thousands upon thousands of girls that were raped and maimed. And we need to confront how that happened and who let it happen.

Confront in what way? Are people expecting social workers and the police to be put on trial?

Well yes, those who were complicit and aiding these groomers, and we know that there were people in the police force who did this and councillors too, should face jail. We can't believe that more won't come out in the wash.

The cowardly won't go to jail but, yes, there should be a heavy shame laid on those who allowed this to happen and the way the system created the space to allow this to happen, and that should be widely documented and known even if the individuals remain anonymous.

For me, acknowledgment and apology helped with letting go of self blame and shame. It gave me a closure.
As part of therapy, I contacted my old school and spoke to the safe guarding lead, who happened to be an old teacher (she was new and young then). I barely got the words hello out before she apologised for the school failing me. She told me their procedures now too. While the head teacher now is one of the teachers who failed me and that pisses me off, I felt able to put down a massive weight that I was carrying. I wasn’t bad. I wasn’t naughty or dirty. They should have protected me and they admitted it.
So for me personally, accountability is healing. I’ve had no such acknowledgement or apology from the police.

It needs to look at why this was allowed to happen.

IMO, it doesn't matter if the men involved were Pakistani, white British or Martians. The point is that they identified that no-one cares about working class white girls in care. The authorities and the caregivers who were supposed to protect them didn't. Whole groups of girls who can go missing for hours or days on end with no-one looking for them, be picked up by adult men with no-one asking questions, desperate for the attention and love that they should already by getting, that's a dream for any violent sex offender, regardless of where they are from.

That's not the point of the inquiry and that's not going to happen. There have already been investigations, reports and a national inquiry into child exploitation and no arrests were made.

I don’t care about the race of the perpetrators. It’s the people who turned a blind eye to what was happening because of race that are the problem.

Of course I want justice for all victims. Nothing I have ever said suggests otherwise

No other inquiry has been able to compel documentation, witnesses, summon public bodies.

This is nothing like other investigations. Alixis Jay was explicit that the full scale of the scandal couldn't be captured until there was a broader, better funded national inquiry.

👏👏👏

Not my experience at all. We were a mix of vulnerable due to being in care and vulnerable due to strict parents and being very middle class and plenty in between. The common denominator is vulnerability. I went missing, my parents called the police. They police came out once over the 7 years I was abused. Once. Then they told my parents I am going willingly so nothing they can do. My parents sanctioned and punished. I went out anyway.
Class has nothing to do with it.

We'll see. I have never witnessed any such investigation resulting in prosecutions of the establishment.

They will still do that so long as the definition of CSE remains as it is. Right now the definition labels the child as a prostitute and so that is one thing that needs to change. That influences all other things and has been created on purpose as a reflection of how people feel about these victims, sadly that it is still seen as their fault.

This is why Casey recommended this inquiry, not for shits and giggles but because the state failed across multiple agencies to do their job. And she was clear it should cover institutional cover-ups. This should outrage everyone.

There was a disproportionate number who were care-experienced, but yes, some were vulnerable for other reasons. The important thing is that we shouldn't have so many children in society who can be abused with impunity.

It shows you do not care about victims who were not white as there were many who were not and you seem to focus on just the white victims. Also why working class girls as again not all victims were working class but victims of other classes do not matter eh?

So working class brown and black girls were supported were they? Other class victims were supported? Absolutely they were not.

We already know that multiple agencies failed to do their jobs. We have access to police reports which blamed the victims. We have access to reports that social workers blamed the victims. We know care workers blamed the victims. No one has been held to account for multiple failings.

The recommendations following the child exploitation inquiry were not implemented.

You were vulnerable because you were in the vicinity of perpetrators. That is the only reason kids are vulnerable to this crime. No one removed the perpetrators. If they had then you wouldn't have been vulnerable.

But these earlier investigations had no teeth and were poorly resourced. Maggie Oliver has made a detailed account of how her investigations were cut short and diminished. We don't know how many children were hurt, we are not clear on how many places this was happening in - because it was prolific in my town that never makes the headlines - and we don't know the lengths of these cover ups.

Well, regardless of your approval, there is to be an inquiry. Thanks to Baroness Casey hopefully this will do justice.

It boils down to their racism. They are happy to blame brown men but cannot cope with blaming white men (or black men either). I agree it is just as bad as denying the muslim gangs it also shows that they will try and silence anyone who speaks about white grooming gangs which is acting in just the same as other communities did when it was their men being accused. The people on here doing just that are as bad as those communities who did it in the past. I am not sorry for saying that. They are supporting rapists.

I completely agree ALL are evil and ALL need to be stopped and held to account and ALL victims need supporting regardless of their own ethnicity or the ethnicity of the perpetrators or the class of the victim etc. There are perpetrators and victims - that is all and that is what needs dealing with.

Thank you.

I welcome the discussion and debate. There should be outrage and there should be changes as a result.

Stepping away now for my own well being.