Muslim grooming gangs in the United Kingdom

Rochdale

Telford

Oxford

Derby

Banbury

Peterborough

Aylesbury

Bristol

Newcastle

Yorkshire Towns

Yorkshire Towns:
 Halifax
 Huddersfield
 Keighley
 Rotherham

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The towns and cities named by the BBC as being affected by group-based child sexual exploitation from predominately men of immigrant backgrounds

Muslim grooming gangs in the United Kingdom (also known as Asian grooming gangs) refers to the phenomenon of groups of men, with heritage from predominately Muslim-majority countries or proclaiming to follow Islam, abusing children in group-based child sexual exploitation (CSE). The ethnicity and religion of perpetrators and the victims they abuse has been a focal point in discussions.

Public concern about "grooming gangs" began in the United Kingdom after the Rotherham child sexual abuse in late 2010. It was later exacerbated by the Telford child sexual exploitation scandal and the Rochdale child sex abuse case. Each case involved potentially over 1,500, 1,000 and 260 victims respectively. Independent inquiries into each case concluded that the majority of perpetrators were Asian, predominately men of Pakistani origin. Dozens of other towns and cities have also reported similar cases and the phenomenon has been recorded in some places since the 1980s.

Research published by the Home Office found that "links between ethnicity and this form of offending" could not be proven given the limited research in the field and poor data collection held by authorities. Based on three studies, it went on to say that "research has found that group-based CSE offenders are most commonly White". Other research, including two studies cited by the Home Office, reached different conclusions. In all five studies, Asians were disproportionately over-represented in statistics once population sizes were accounted for. However, the author of two of the studies has claimed that it was "irresponsible" to dwell on the data and the organisation behind two of the other studies has previously commented that "focusing on this problem simply through the lens of ethnicity does not do it service."

In 2023, then Prime Minister Rishi Sunak claimed that victims of such gangs have been ignored because of "political correctness" and cultural sensitivity. Home Secretary Suella Braverman was accused of amplifying far-right rhetoric for writing that grooming gangs were composed of "groups of men, almost all British-Pakistani, who hold cultural attitudes completely incompatible with British values". She later clarified that she was referring to the Rotherham, Rochdale and Telford cases and stressed that most British Pakistani men are not abusers.

Some academic research has described the focus on Asian perpetrators of sexual abuse as "scapegoating" and a "moral panic". Similar research suggests that media reporting of crimes by ethnic minorities has created the conditions for Asian men to be seen as "folk devils".

History

The town of Rotherham in South Yorkshire, Northern England received national and international media attention due to the child sex abuse scandal

In 2002, then Labour MP for Keighley, Ann Cryer was the first public figure to address the issue of groups of Asian men grooming underage White girls. However, she was shunned by the police, social services and imams and believed that the fear of being labelled a racist prevented action. In 2004, a Channel 4 documentary on Bradford's social services had its airing date postponed after fears that it would inflame community tensions during election times. The filmmakers documented groups of predominately Asian men grooming White girls aged 11 for sex. According to feminist writer Julie Bindel, fears over "being accused of racism" had suppressed coverage and reporting of the growing number of grooming gangs operating across the country. Although "gangs" had been in operation since at least the 1990s, it was only until 2007 when The Sunday Times became the first broadsheet to publish an article on the phenomenon. The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse found that the cultural fear of being accused racist, across authorities in England and Wales, hampered detection and intervention into grooming abuse. A Sikh charity has claimed that groups of predominately Pakistani men grooming girls began in the 1960s, with the first court case appearing in 1971. Public concerns for South Asian "grooming gangs" entered into the mainstream in November 2010 following the group conviction of five British Pakistani men involved in child sex crimes in Rotherham. In January 2011, Andrew Norfolk of The Times began to provide routine coverage of the repeated pattern of child sex abuse which had taken place in towns and cities across Northern England and the Midlands and the "conspiracy of silence" surrounding the issue. While other similar crimes have been reported by the British media in previous years, past reports of Asian crimes were comparatively low-profile and less focused on the race of the suspects.

Alexis Jay in 2016

The Rotherham incident was labeled the "Asian grooming case" by The Yorkshire Post in 2010, with the conservative broadsheet The Times further using the term "on-street grooming" in a 2011 article about the scandal. The case was brought back into public attention in 2012 after The Times reported, based on confidential sources, that public authorities were reluctant to investigate the mostly South Asian suspects in the case due to concerns that doing so would exacerbate community tensions. The report led a growing number of people to believe that there was a widespread trend of sexual abuse of girls in the UK and contributed to a growth of British right-wing groups such as the British National Party and UKIP in later years. Public outrage was further exacerbated when Professor Alexis Jay published a report in 2014 which stated that at least 1,400 children were sexually abused in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013. The report, which partially focused on issues related of race, especially in its section titled "Issues of Ethnicity", led the general public to debate the role of race, ethnicity, gender and institutional failures in the facilitation of child sexual abuse. In 2018, the National Crime Agency raised the number of potential victims to 1,510 and found that the vast majority of victims were White British girls whilst 80% of the 110 suspects were of Pakistani heritage. Elements of the victims being White and non-Muslim, as well as the religious attitudes of the perpetrators towards virginity and modesty, contributed to why they were targeted according to a former victim of the Rotherham abuse. This attitude towards White girls was revealed to be a common theme in later reported cases. One incident involved a 15-year old girl kidnapped, imprisoned, forced to learn the Quran and beaten if mistakes were made. She was referred to as "white trash" by her perpetrators. Over a period of twelve years, she was forced into three Sharia marriages, eight involuntary abortions and two live births. She would only be permitted to speak Urdu and Punjabi and was forced into Islamic dress.

Following Jay's report, The Daily Express railed against alleged "Muslim gangs" that operated in Rotherham. In an article published by The Telegraph, Allison Pearson criticised the Muslim and Pakistani community for their alleged roles in sexual abuse crimes. In her article, Pearson stated that the "leaders of the Pakistani Muslim community – essentially a Victorian society that has landed like Doctor Who’s Tardis on a liberal, permissive planet it despises – are at pains to deny that the grooming gang's behaviour has anything to do with ethnic origin or contemptible attitudes towards women". Another article by The Daily Mail criticised BBC News for not bringing enough attention to the fact that the Rotherham suspects were Asian. Ultimately, both tabloid and broadsheet outlets have focused on the ethnic aspect of Jay's 2014 report, the Rotherham scandal grew to receive international attention and the controversy contributed to the racialisation of child sexual abuse in Britain, with South Asian and Pakistani men being perceived as a threat to White and South Asian girls. In a Panorama documentary on the Rotherham scandal which aired in 2014, a Home Office researcher claimed that when her research in 2002 found that most perpetrators were from the Pakistani community, she was silenced by officials, her data was taken from her and was told to change her findings. A five-year investigation by the Independent Office for Police Conduct on the Rotherham case, codenamed Operation Lindon, found that the South Yorkshire police refused to take action against grooming gang members due to fears of being branded racist and to prevent inflaming tensions with the Asian community. The inquiry into Rochdale found that fears over race relations influenced police decision making as well, the report quoted a Greater Manchester Police Detective Constable saying "what had a massive input was the offending target group were predominantly Asian males and we were told [by senior officers in the gold command group] to try and get other ethnicities".

In 2013, the BBC's Inside Out aired a programme on the grooming of Sikh girls by primarily Muslim men. The investigation found numerous cases of allegedly Muslim men pretending to be Sikh in order to sleep with underage Sikh girls, with the perception that the honour-based culture in the Sikh community would prevent victims from speaking out. In Telford, the murder of the Lowe family was used to intimidate children from speaking out against perpetrators. Sikh and Hindu organisations supported Braverman's comments in 2023, and remarked that they had tried to raise awareness of Pakistani grooming gangs since the 1980s, but were largely ignored.

List of settlements with cases

Aside from the Rotherham case, other crimes involving group-based sexual assault have also contributed to public concerns about grooming gangs, such as the Rochdale child sex abuse case and the Telford child sexual exploitation scandal, with perpetrators specifically men of Pakistani origin and mainly Muslim. They joined a list compiled by Mark Easton of the BBC of ten other settlements – named as Oxford, Derby, Banbury, Peterborough, Aylesbury, Bristol, Halifax, Keighley, Newcastle and Huddersfield – affected by the issue.

In 2019, grooming gangs were in operation in an estimated 73 towns. Reported cases where the majority of group-based child sexual abuse perpetrators were from an Asian background have taken place in Birmingham, Blackburn, Blackpool, Bolton, Bradford, Brierfield, Burnley, Burton upon Trent, Bury, Chelmsford, Chesham, Coventry, Gateshead, Glasgow, Harrow, High Wycombe, Hull, Ilford, Ipswich, Kirklees, Leeds, Leicester, Manchester, Middlesborough, Newcastle, Nottingham, Oldham, Plymouth, Preston, Ramsgate, Redditch, Sheffield, Skipton, Slough, Stevenage, Stockport, Wakefield, Walsall, Wendover, Wirral and Yeovil. Some towns were subjected to numerous cases of group-based child sexual abuse where convictions took place across different years involving different groups. One victim may be subjected to abuse from up to a hundred different perpetrators.

Disputed and false cases

In 2016, the BBC's Newsnight documented the Badreddin family who came to the UK via the Syrian Vulnerable Person Resettlement Programme. Omar Badreddin, alongside two other Syrian refugees, would later be accused and cleared of the sexual assault of two 14-year old girls in Newcastle. Katie Razzall of Newsnight claimed that "the Syrian men, in many ways, appeared less sexually experienced than the girls they were supposed to have attacked". Omar, alongside his brother Mohamed Badreddin, later led a child grooming gang in 2018 and were jailed for the crime in 2024. The case led to commentary on the role of authorities adultifying White working-class girls as well as the cover up of grooming crimes to prevent reactions from the far-right.

Eleanor Williams, a 22-year old woman from Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria made false claims of being beaten, raped and groomed by "Asian gangs". Her social media posts were eventually shared over 100,000 times. The false allegations led to 150 crimes including bricks thrown through the windows of local Indian restaurants with owners of the restaurants also spat at on the street. Three of the men she accused, including two young White men, attempted to take their own lives after they were falsely accused. She was jailed for eight and a half years in 2023.

Home Office study

A study published by the Home Office in 2020 stated that "research has found that group-based child sexual exploitation offenders are most commonly white". The research further added that, although some studies pointed to an over-representation of Black and Asian offenders, it was not possible to conclude that those studies were representative of all group-based crimes. The study also said that it was "difficult to draw conclusions about the ethnicity of offenders as existing research is limited and data collection is poor", and that, "based on the existing evidence, and our understanding of the flaws in the existing data, it seems most likely that the ethnicity of group-based child sexual exploitation offenders is in line with child sexual abuse more generally and with the general population, with the majority of offenders being white."

Patrick O'Flynn, a former SDP MEP, noted that the claim in the Home Office report that offenders are "most commonly white" was based on a data-collection exercise in 2011, which found that of the "2,300 possible child sexual exploitation (CSE) offenders, no basic information was held about 1,100 of them. Among the remaining 1,200 possible offenders, there was no ethnicity data for 38 per cent of them. Of the approximately 750 suspects about whom ethnicity data was recorded, 30 per cent were white and 28 per cent were Asian." The 2011 census recorded Asians making up 8 per cent of the population and the White population at 86 per cent. The 2014 Jay report into Rotherham found that victims described the majority of their perpetrators as Asian, the 2015 Casey report concluded that most abusers were "from the Pakistani Heritage Community" and the equivalent 2022 inquiry in Telford found most suspects to be of "southern Asian heritage".

Stuart Waiton, a sociology and criminology academic, criticised the “misleading” media coverage of the Home Office study from The Guardian, The Times and The Independent claiming they “downplayed” the idea of Asian grooming gangs. The Home Office report examined five studies to reach its conclusions with three of the five studies finding White men made up the majority of perpetrators. In the first study by the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Command (CEOP) published in 2011, 30 per cent of perpetrators were White and 28 per cent were Asian. The second study by the Deputy Children's Commissioner Sue Berelowitz published in 2012 found 26 per cent of perpetrators were White and 21 per cent Asian. The third study by CEOP published in 2013 analysed offenders rather than reported cases, and found that 75 per cent of the 306 offenders were Asian. The fourth study by Berelowitz in 2014 found 42 per cent of perpetrators were White and 14 per cent were Asian. The final study published in 2016 by The Police Foundation found that ethnic minorities were over-represented in group based child sexual exploitation. Waiton argues that once population size differences are factored in, with South Asians making up just 4 per cent of the population compared to the 86 per cent of the White population, South Asians were over-represented in this crime by a factor of 20 times in certain cases.

Other statistics

An academic study published in 2020 analysed the press releases of over 2,000 group localised child sexual exploitation (GLCSE) prosecutions between 1997 and 2017 and concluded that Muslims made up 83% of prosecutions. This represented about 1 in 2,200 Muslim males over the age of 16 in England and Wales having been prosecuted for this crime. Regression analysis of the dataset found that being of Pakistani heritage was a more powerful variable in explaining GLCSE prosecution than being Muslim, with the equivalent prosecution rate for Pakistani males aged over 16 at 1 in 1,700. The study also found that the proportion of Bangladeshis in an area had no effect on GLCSE prosecutions.

Disputed statistics

A study published by the Quilliam Foundation in 2017, which described itself as conducting a "comprehensive data analysis of all group child-sex offences committed in the United Kingdom" between 2005 and 2017, stated that of the 264 convictions analysed "84% of grooming gang offenders" in the country were Asian. The research was criticised by multiple entities and its authors ultimately removed the word "comprehensive" from its description amid a series of corrections that were made to the study. The study did not disclose its sources, sampling strategy or its inclusion parameters, among other important information. Academic researcher Ella Cockbain called the research "a case study in bad science: riddled with errors, inconsistencies, a glaring lack of transparency, sweeping claims and gross generalisations unfounded its own 'data'".

Etymology

Grooming involving Asian perpetrators typically refers to "localised" or "on-street" grooming of children under the age of 16 where the victim has met the perpetrator, not through institutions or online, but through public places such as shopping centres, parks or on the street. The word "grooming" is loosely used to describe "the tactics used by child sex offenders in their efforts to sexually abuse children", although it has no universal definition. The Home Office describes "grooming" as "a process by which a person prepares a child, significant adults and the environment for the abuse of the child". The term "grooming gang" is a media construct and does not correspond to any legal or scientific concept, it is most often vaguely used to describe ethnic groups of child sexual abusers.

The term "Asian" when used in association with grooming gangs has been condemned by British Sikh and Hindu organisations given "the perpetrators are in fact nearly all of Pakistani origin". In 2021, the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) updated its Editors’ Code of Practice with the following guidance, "Editors may be well advised to approach crimes committed by people identified as members of religious or racial communities with caution – and to be aware that their reporting may, in turn, prompt concern in other communities. British Sikh and Hindu groups have objected to the use of the word ‘Asian’ to describe those convicted in sexual grooming gang cases. While accurate, it is better to avoid such general descriptions but this may not always be possible."

Reaction and public debate

Political reaction

Following the conviction of the two leaders of the Derby child sex abuse ring in 2011, former Home Secretary and Labour MP for Blackburn Jack Straw drew criticism when he told the BBC's Newsnight that there was "a specific problem which involves Pakistani heritage men... who target vulnerable young white girls" and suggested that some saw White girls as "easy meat". Keith Vaz, fellow Labour MP and then Chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee, criticised Straw's comments, stating that it was not a cultural problem and that it was wrong to stereotype an entire community.

In 2017, Sarah Champion, Labour MP for Rotherham and then Shadow Minister for Women and Equalities, wrote an opinion piece for The Sun which began with "Britain has a problem with British Pakistani men raping and exploiting White girls. There. I said it. Does that make me a racist? Or am I just prepared to call out this horrifying problem for what it is?" One week after the piece, the Vice-Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims Naz Shah shared and liked a social media post telling Rotherham sex abuse victims to "shut their mouths. For the good of diversity." The post was later deleted and a spokesman for Shah claimed the incident was an accident. Following increasing backlash to the article, Champion apologised, resigned from her shadow cabinet position and received increased security from Scotland Yard's counter terrorism unit.

In 2018, Sajid Javid, then Home Secretary, told BBC Radio 4 that ignoring the ethnicity of grooming gang members gave "oxygen" to extremists and defended a social media post he made which specifically referred to the grooming gang in Huddersfield as "sick Asian paedophiles". He received widespread criticism for highlighting their ethnicity including by Diane Abbott, then Shadow Home Secretary, and David Lammy, then Shadow Foreign Secretary, with Lammy stating "by singling out ‘Asians’ he not only panders to the far right but increases the risk of violence and abuse against minorities across the country." Mayor of London Sadiq Khan echoed Lammy's concerns, accusing Javid of "playing to the far right narrative" and adding that "as a consequence of some of these messages... ethnic minorities, particularly those of Asian origin... will be at the end of more abuse because of this sort of language". Both Javid and Khan are of Pakistani heritage.

Trevor Phillips, former Chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, was suspended from the Labour party in 2020 for alleged Islamophobic comments he had made in the past including expressing concerns about Muslim men sexually abusing children. In an opinion piece for The Telegraph, he argued that the "Asian" terminology used to describe grooming gangs was "evasive" given that Hindu Indians and East Asians were not associated with the crime. It was rather the common factor of "proclaimed faith" which united perpetrators across the different ethnicities of Pakistanis, Iraqis, Afghans, Turks and others who had been arrested. He wrote: "They are Muslims, and many of them would claim to be practising. It is not Islamophobic to point this out, any more than it would be racist to point out that the most active persecutors of LGBT people come from countries where most people are, like me, black."

Suella Braverman, then Home Secretary, wrote in a 2023 opinion piece for The Mail on Sunday that "grooming gang" members in the United Kingdom were "groups of men, almost all British-Pakistani, who hold cultural attitudes completely incompatible with British values". In response, the ISPO issued a correction stating that Braverman's article was "misleading", since it did not make it explicit that she was talking about the Rotherham, Telford and Rochdale child sexual abuse scandals in specific.

In 2023, while setting out new plans to tackle grooming, then Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said: "For too long, political correctness has stopped us from weeding out vile criminals who prey on children and young women". In its first year of operation, the newly created Grooming Gangs Taskforce specially trained more than 400 officers across England and Wales and arrested more than 550 suspects. Labour leader Keir Starmer agreed that the prosecution of grooming gangs should not be hindered by political correctness, adding that ethnic minorities are not involved in the "vast majority of sexual abuse cases".

Islamic community groups

Mohammed Shafiq, Chief Executive of the Rochdale-based Ramadhan Foundation, was the first community leader to speak out against the practice in a BBC interview in 2009. In a later 2011 interview, he stressed that these acts were not religiously motivated but rather based on men who did so for "their own depraved sexual gratification". He went on, "there are some Muslims who think that as long as these sex gangs aren't targeting their own sisters and daughters the issue doesn't affect them... but the vast majority of Muslims find these actions abhorrent and disgusting". Manzoor Moghul, Chairman of the Muslim Forum, agreed with Shafiq's remarks adding "offenders are under the misapprehension white girls are easy prey. The way they dress, their culture, makes them easy pickings". In 2012, Shafiq accused Pakistani community leaders of "burying their heads in the sand" on the matter. He urged the council and police to not be over-sensitive on racial matters, and to address the over-representation of members of the British Pakistani community in recent child grooming convictions.

Following a string of high-profile child sexual abuse cases involving Muslim men in 2013, Sheikh Ibrahim Mogra of The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) vowed to take action against the practice and planned to organise a national conference to educate people about grooming. Commenting on the perpetrators, Mogra stated that those claiming to be following Islam were doing the opposite, going on to say "they have used drugs, they have used alcohol, they have used prostitution and all kinds of other methods which are all forbidden within Islam." Later on in 2013, Together Against Grooming – alongside The MCB, The Mosques and Imams National Advisory Board and The Islamic Society of Britain – co-ordinated with the imams of hundreds of mosques to pledge to condemn sexual grooming during Friday prayer sermons.

During a meeting involving groups of Muslim councillors, community workers and campaigners in Bradford in 2014, Nazir Afzal, the Crown Prosecution Service's lead on child sexual abuse, urged the Muslim community to "accept and address the fact that Asian and Pakistani men are disproportionately involved" in the grooming of vulnerable girls. Commenting on why the over-representation may exist, Shaista Gohir, an attendee of the meeting and Chair of Muslim Women’s Network UK, believed it may be due to a lack of respect for women and girls. In a report she produced examining the attitudes of Asian men towards women, one told her: "They wear high heels, wear make up, nice clothes, smell nice, their body language, it’s the tone of their voice. We get tempted and then they scream rape. They call it rape afterwards just because they feel dirty". Afzal, a Muslim himself, stressed that there was no religious basis for the perpetrators of these crimes: "These men were not religious. Islam says that alcohol, drugs, rape and abuse are all forbidden, yet these men were surrounded by all of these things." He speculated that the prevalence of Asians working in the night-time economy may have led to some exploiting vulnerable girls seeking their services.

General public

A Freedom of Information request filed by The Independent in late 2019 asked for the government to release Home Office research into the "characteristics" of grooming gangs, however it was refused as the government claimed it was not in the "public interest". In response, over 130,000 people signed an online petition to parliament calling for the research to be released. The research was eventually published in December 2020 and the petition was debated in parliament in February 2021.

Terrorist attacks on Muslims

Main articles: 2017 Finsbury Park van attack and 2021 London, Ontario truck attack

In 2017, the perpetrator of a van attack towards pedestrians near a mosque in Finsbury Park, London, England was alleged to have been angered by the events of Three Girls, a BBC docudrama about the Rochdale child sex abuse ring. He would go on to develop an obsession towards Muslims, believing them to all "being rapists and being part of paedophile gangs". The attack resulted in the injury of twelve people and the death of a man, and the perpetrator was eventually sentenced to life imprisonment.

In 2021, a pick-up truck was rammed towards pedestrians waiting at an intersection in London, Ontario, Canada. The attack resulted in the the death of a Pakistani Canadian family-of-four and the injury of another member of the family. The attacker confessed that he wanted "to send a message to Muslim grooming gangs in the U.K. that you have to back off and if you don’t back off more Muslims are going to die." The perpetrator was sentenced to five terms of life imprisonment.

External links

• Casey, Louise (4 February 2015). Report of Inspection of Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council (PDF). London: Department for Communities and Local Government. ISBN 978-1-4741-1507-0.
• Crowther, Thomas (12 July 2022). Report of the Independent Inquiry Telford Child Sexual Exploitation (PDF). London: Eversheds Sutherland (International) LLP.
• Home Office (15 December 2020). Group-based Child Sexual Exploitation Characteristics of Offending (PDF). London: Home Office.
• Jay, Alexis (21 August 2014). Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Exploitation in Rotherham (1997–2013). Rotherham: Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council.
• Malcolm, Newsam; Ridgway, Gary (15 January 2024). The review into Operation Span and the investigation of non-recent child sexual exploitation in Rochdale (PDF). Manchester: Greater Manchester Combined Authority.
• House or Lords Grooming Gangs: Volume 797: debated on Tuesday 14 May 2019
• House of Commons Home Affairs Committee Child sexual exploitation and the response to localised grooming: Second Report of Session 2013–14, Vol. 1
• House of Commons Home Affairs Committee Child sexual exploitation and the response to localised grooming: Second Report of Session 2013–14, Vol. 2