Grooming Gangs in the UK: What the Evidence Shows

Grooming Gangs, Institutional Failure and the Christian Duty to Protect Children

Few scandals in recent British history have been as painful as the “grooming gangs” crisis. Over decades, groups of men sexually exploited vulnerable girls in towns and cities across England, often girls in care or from troubled homes. In many places, the people responsible for protecting those children failed them, and in some cases appear to have looked away.

A recent commentary on The Daily Declaration argues that political correctness, fear of being called racist or “Islamophobic,” and a set of progressive priorities silenced the truth. It’s a serious claim, and it touches questions of justice, honesty and moral courage that matter to every Christian.

This post sets out what official inquiries have actually found, what is still disputed, where the evidence is strong or weak, and what a faithful Christian response looks like. It does so without graphic detail, out of respect for the survivors.

What Official Inquiries Have Found

Rotherham, 2014

The best-known early report was Professor Alexis Jay’s independent inquiry into child sexual exploitation in Rotherham, published in 2014. It estimated that at least 1,400 children had been exploited in the town between 1997 and 2013. The report described how victims were ignored, blamed or disbelieved, and found that some staff were nervous about discussing the ethnicity of perpetrators for fear of being labelled racist. Similar failures were identified in other places, including Rochdale, Rotherham, Telford and Oxford.

The Casey audit, 2025

In June 2025, Baroness Louise Casey published a national audit on group-based child sexual exploitation and abuse. Several of its findings are central to this debate:

• It described an “appalling lack of data on ethnicity” about perpetrators, and said the issue had been “shied away from” by agencies. In some places, ethnicity was recorded in only around a third of cases, according to the description later given by the inquiry’s chair.
• It said gaps in data had produced competing and sometimes misleading claims, including from media and academics, and had eroded public trust. Casey also said that flawed data had often been used to dismiss concerns about “Asian grooming gangs” as sensationalised, biased or untrue.
• It recommended making the collection of ethnicity and nationality data mandatory in child sexual exploitation investigations, along with better data sharing, tighter taxi licensing and a new national police investigation.
• It recommended a national statutory inquiry. The Government accepted all 12 of the audit’s recommendations.

It’s important to be precise about what Casey did and didn’t conclude. She said that where reliable local data existed, men of Asian and Pakistani heritage appeared in disproportionate numbers among suspects in some areas. She also made clear that, nationally, the data was too poor to give a complete picture. In other words, the evidence was serious enough to demand answers, and incomplete enough that confident national statistics couldn’t be given.

The 2020 Home Office report

In 2020, the Home Office published research on group-based child sexual exploitation. It stressed that most child sex offenders overall are white men, and that the available evidence didn’t show that any particular ethnic group was over-represented in this type of offending. The Casey audit later criticised the data gaps that underlay that kind of conclusion. The report was accurate that child sexual abuse occurs across all communities. Where it fell short was in the limited data behind its claim about group-based offending specifically.

The national inquiry, 2025–2026

After delays, the Government announced the Independent Inquiry into Grooming Gangs in December 2025. It’s chaired by Baroness Anne Longfield, a former Children’s Commissioner for England, with panellists Zoë Billingham and Eleanor Kelly, and Baroness Casey acting as an adviser. It’s a three-year statutory inquiry with a budget of £65 million and has the power to compel evidence.

Crucially, its terms of reference explicitly require it to examine how ethnicity, religion and culture played a role in the responses of authorities and in offenders’ behaviour. When Baroness Longfield gave evidence to a parliamentary committee in May 2026, she acknowledged that people had felt “squeamish” about tackling ethnicity and said the inquiry would not be.

The Lowe Report: What It Claims and What Critics Say

The Daily Declaration commentary cites a 2026 report by MP Rupert Lowe, leader of the Restore Britain party. It’s worth looking at carefully, because it is often quoted.

• What it is. The “Rape Gang Inquiry Report” is a 219-page document published in mid-June 2026. It was crowdfunded and privately convened. It has no statutory powers and is not an official public inquiry.
• What it claims. It contains survivor testimony and sweeping estimates, including a figure of roughly 250,000 victims and assertions about the ethnicity and religion of offenders. The commentary quotes a claim that 95 per cent of abusers were Pakistani Muslims.
• What critics say. Several independent commentators have criticised its lack of a clear methodology, the way national estimates were derived, and the extent to which its recommendations align with the political agenda of Lowe’s party. A former member of its panel publicly criticised how the inquiry was run. Critics on the right as well as the left have said its statistical claims are shaky. One commentator wrote that official reports already show a clear pattern, but argued that this report’s flaws risk overshadowing survivors’ testimonies.
• What supporters say. Supporters argue it gave survivors a platform when official processes had failed them, and that its qualitative findings match what other reviews have found about institutional failure.

The fair conclusion is that the survivor testimony deserves to be taken seriously, while the statistics need independent verification. The statutory inquiry, with its legal powers, is the proper place to establish the facts.

The Moral Heart of the Matter

Setting aside the political arguments, the core of this scandal is simple. Children were raped and exploited, and the adults and institutions responsible for protecting them failed.

Scripture is blunt on this subject. Jesus said that anyone who causes one of these little ones to stumble would be better off with a millstone hung around their neck and drowned in the sea (Matthew 18:6). The Old Testament repeatedly commands God’s people to defend the weak and the fatherless (Psalm 82:3–4; Isaiah 1:17), to speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves (Proverbs 31:8–9), and to care for orphans (James 1:27). Ezekiel 34 delivers a scathing rebuke to shepherds who feed themselves instead of the flock.

Those passages should shape our response before any political position does. The first question is not “Whose side does this help?” but “Who is protecting these children?”

Why Did Authorities Look Away?

The commentary attributes much of the failure to political correctness and fear of being accused of racism. Official reports lend some support to that. Jay’s 2014 report recorded such fears, and Casey said agencies had “shied away” from the issue.

But it wasn’t only one factor. Reviews have also pointed to:

• Contempt for victims. Many girls were treated as “troublemakers” or as making lifestyle choices rather than as children being abused. Casey’s audit found that children were sometimes blamed for crimes committed against them.
• Fragmented services and poor data sharing. Agencies didn’t connect the dots between police, social care, schools and health services.
• Concern for reputation. Local authorities and police forces sometimes protected themselves rather than acting.
• Vulnerabilities in the care system. Children in care, or with troubled home lives, were easy targets.
• The night-time economy and taxi licensing. Casey identified weaknesses in how taxi licences were granted.
• Fear of community tensions. Some officials said they didn’t want to inflame community relations or feed far-right narratives.

Seen together, these suggest the failure was a mixture of fear, indifference and institutional self-protection, not a single cause.

Our Take

Here’s where we’d like to add some commentary.

1. Children first, always.

The most important response to this scandal is a commitment that children’s safety outranks reputations, ideologies and political convenience. That applies to councils, police forces, politicians, charities and churches alike.

2. Name facts, collect data, avoid generalisations.

Casey was right to recommend mandatory data collection. Without reliable facts, both denial and exaggeration thrive. If evidence shows that offenders in particular areas disproportionately come from particular backgrounds, that should be stated openly, so it can be understood and addressed. At the same time, we should resist the leap from “some groups of offenders” to “an entire community.” Most British Muslims, like most people everywhere, are appalled by the sexual abuse of children, and many Muslim women and community leaders have spoken out against it.

3. Abuse happens in every community.

The Home Office point that most child sex offenders overall are white men is true, and shouldn’t be used to dismiss concerns about group-based offending. But neither should concerns about group-based offending be used to suggest that child abuse is a problem of one community. A serious response takes both truths seriously.

4. The church has no right to be smug.

The commentary notes that media coverage of abuse linked to Christianity has been more eager than coverage of this scandal. That may be a fair point about media balance. But the church has its own painful history, in Australia and elsewhere, of abuse and cover-up. Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, which reported in 2017, found that many institutions, including churches, protected themselves rather than children. The lesson is the same: when institutions put reputation above children, the vulnerable pay the price. Christians are best placed to call others to account when we have been honest about our own failures.

5. Be careful with big causal claims.

The commentary links the scandal to wider themes, including immigration levels, abortion and progressive politics. These are legitimate topics for debate, but each requires its own evidence. For example, noting that the rate of reported rape and the rate of migration both rose over the same period doesn’t show that one caused the other. Reporting practices, legal definitions, population growth and many other factors changed too. Where claims go beyond what the evidence can bear, we should say so, even when we’re sympathetic to the writer’s concerns.

6. Listen to survivors, and don’t use them.

Survivors have often been disbelieved, dismissed and then exploited again, this time as political ammunition. Their testimony should be treated with respect, not used to win arguments.

The Other Side of the Argument

Not everyone agrees on how to read this scandal. In fairness, here are some of the main views:

• Those who emphasise ethnicity and religion argue that these factors have been central to the pattern of offending and to the failure to act, and that avoiding them is exactly what allowed the abuse to continue. They point to Casey’s comments on data and the inquiry’s terms of reference as vindication.
• Those who emphasise class, gender and institutional failure argue that the key factors were the targeting of vulnerable girls, the failure of care systems, and attitudes toward working-class girls, and that focusing on ethnicity risks stigmatising entire communities and missing wider patterns of abuse.
• Some scholars of religion debate whether Islamic teaching or culture plays a causal role. Some researchers argue that specific attitudes toward non-Muslim women are a factor. Others argue that clan culture, gang dynamics, criminal networks and the night-time economy better explain the pattern, and that treating the issue as a religious or civilisational conflict makes it harder to prevent.
• Critics of Lowe’s report on the left and the right argue that flawed statistics undermine the cause. Supporters answer that official bodies failed for years and that outsiders had to step in.
• Some Muslim voices emphasise that the crimes violate Islamic teaching, that their communities also contain victims and whistleblowers, and that blanket blame makes cooperation harder.

A mature Christian response can hold these debates open while holding firm on what isn’t debatable: the abuse was a grave evil, the failure to stop it was a grave failure, and justice is owed to the victims.

What Would Help

Whatever one’s politics, there’s broad agreement among those who study the issue on several practical steps:

1. Complete the statutory inquiry and make sure its findings lead to real action.
2. Collect ethnicity, nationality and other data consistently, as Casey recommended, and publish it responsibly.
3. Prosecute offenders, including through the new national police investigation, and hold officials accountable for deliberate failures.
4. Improve data sharing between police, schools, health and social services.
5. Tighten taxi and night-time economy licensing where it has been a vulnerability.
6. Reform the care system so that vulnerable children are better protected.
7. Support survivors with long-term, trauma-informed help.
8. Protect whistleblowers, like the police officers and social workers who tried to raise the alarm and were ignored.

If This Topic Affects You

This subject can be deeply distressing, particularly for survivors of abuse. If you or someone you know needs support, in Australia you can contact 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732, Blue Knot Foundation on 1300 657 380, or Lifeline on 13 11 14. Children and young people can call Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800. In the UK, the NSPCC offers support on 0808 800 5000. In an emergency, call your local emergency number.

Questions to Reflect On

• Do I carry assumptions about this issue that I’ve never tested against evidence?
• Have I ever stayed quiet about something wrong because speaking up felt awkward or risky?
• What does my church or organisation do to protect children, and how would I know if it was failing?
• How can I speak plainly about hard facts without condemning innocent people?
• Who in my community might need to be listened to, believed and supported?

A Short Prayer

Lord, we grieve for the children who were harmed and for those who still carry the wounds. Heal them, and surround them with people who will believe, protect and walk with them. Give courage to those who must investigate and judge, and bring justice where it has been denied. Forgive us the times we looked away, and make your church a place where the vulnerable are safe. Help us to tell the truth with love, and to seek justice for the sake of the little ones you cherish. Amen.