The first LSE article linked is not a study, it is an article written by a researcher at LSE. They add at the end of the text:
"This piece was published on Medium by Tahir Abbas. This article gives the views of the author, not the position of LSE Religion and Global Society nor the London School of Economics and Political Science."
While there are some good points, one sentence was somewhat strange: "The narrative has been described as a moral panic, where public concern over a social issue is disproportionately high, often focusing on a specific group identified as “folk devils.”
How can the concern on the topic of CSE be "disproportionately high"?
Then follows a reference to previous investigations and reports, with the conclusion: "By focusing on ethnicity, the media and political discourse have diverted attention from the broader context of child exploitation—rooted in poverty, institutional neglect, and gender inequality." The author focuses on the systemic failures.
These are very important factors, too, however, they are all on the side of the victims (them being in care, for example) and the police (not believing the victims). They show the situation of the victims and the reaction.
But: the actual crime still belongs to the criminals. Just because someone sees that there are vulnerable people doesn't mean they have to misuse the situation.
The systemic failures are step 1: vulnerable situation and step 3: reaction. But step 2 is the action by the criminals. Without the action there wouldn't have been the problem that the police did not take this seriously (which is wrong of course, too).
You cannot take the actual misuse and the perpetrators out of the equation and say it's only the other aspects - which were hugely problematic, too, and I am not minimizing that.
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/religionglobalsociety/2025/01/the-grooming-gang-debate-navigating-race-politics-and-justice-in-the-uk/