Abuse victims having trauma ‘weaponised by politicians’ in ‘misinformed’ debate around grooming gangs

10 January 2025, 14:38

By Fraser Knight.

@Fraser_Knight

Victims of child sexual abuse are having their trauma ‘weaponised by politicians’, according to the head of a support charity, as she hit out at ‘reprehensible’ misinformation about Pakistani men.

The government has been under pressure after appearing to have blocked a national inquiry into the scale of abuse by grooming gangs, who force children into having sex against their will.

Some politicians have said the majority of perpetrators are from a Pakistani heritage, but police leaders have hit back, saying offending is being committed by people from all ethnic backgrounds.

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Gabrielle Shaw, chief executive of the national association of people abused in childhood, told LBC: “If this kind of spotlight and tension was 100% informed and accurate, I’d be saying brilliant, bring it on.

“Sadly that’s not the case - a lot of the rhetoric and discussion has been at best misinformed, misguided, distorted or outright lies.

“What we’re hearing from victims and survivors is so much anger, who feel marginalised, that their trauma and abuse is being weaponised to score political points and the trauma that brings can be up to the level of the abuse itself.”

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For the first time, police have started to gather data on the extent of group-based offending in England and Wales alongside the ethnicity of perpetrators.

Preliminary data for 2024 suggests around four per cent of child sexual abuse reports, where the ethnicity of a suspect is available, had a person of Pakistani heritage at the centre of it, compared to 85% which had a white suspect.

When it comes to grooming gangs, the proportion of recorded offences with a Pakistani suspect increased to 13.7%, compared to 63% white.

The ethnicity data is, however, only available for around a third of police recorded crimes.

Richard Fewkes, director of the Hydrant Programme, which oversees the national police response to child abuse and exploitation, told LBC the background of offenders broadly reflects the UK population.

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He said: “When we drill down into specific categories of crime, Pakistani men are highlighted within grooming gangs as being slightly disproportionate to the population levels. “But when you look across the whole of group-based offending, there are other ethnicities that are represented differently in other areas as well.

“Across the broad spectrum of group-based offending though, it is committed by all groups and all ethnicities and across the spectrum it broadly reflects the census data.The data shared with journalists at a briefing in London, also highlights the fact that grooming gangs account for just under a fifth of all child abuse being committed in England and Wales.

Abuse by family members continues to be the most common type reported by police, while institutional abuse makes up just under one in ten reports.

The preliminary data, for the first nine months of 2024, shows 24% of child abuse reports were committed by other children.

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Assistant Chief Constable Rebecca Riggs, the national police lead for child protection, said: “We recognise that we absolutely haven't always got it right and we have done significant work to listen to experiences and improve how we operate and investigate these types of crimes.

“We will continue to evolve and change and make sure that we tackle the individual threats in relation to child sexual abuse and exploitation.

“We will be inclusive, we will be very thorough and be reflective of all offenders. We must always follow the evidence and the data to maintain a balanced approach to address all the threats and ensure victims and children are protected and kept safe from harm and that involves all races, all ethnicities and all genders.”