Source: Home Office published on this website Tuesday 17 May 2025 by Jill Powell
Mr Speaker, with your permission, I will update the House on the audit the government commissioned from Baroness Casey on child sexual exploitation and grooming gangs, and on the action we are taking to tackle this vile crime – to put perpetrators behind bars, and to provide the innocent victims of those crimes with support and justice.
The House will be aware that on Friday, 7 men were found guilty of the most horrendous crimes in Rochdale between 2000 and 2006.
They were convicted of treating teenage girls as sex slaves – repeatedly raping them in filthy flats, alleyways and warehouses. The perpetrators included taxi drivers and market traders of Pakistani heritage, and it has taken 20 years to bring them to justice.
I want to pay tribute to the incredible bravery of the women who told their stories and have fought for justice through all those years. They should never have been let down for so long.
The sexual exploitation of children by grooming gangs is one of the most horrific crimes.
Children as young as 10 plied with drugs and alcohol, brutally raped by gangs of men and disgracefully let down again and again by the authorities who were meant to protect them and keep them safe.
These despicable crimes have caused the most unimaginable harm to victims and survivors throughout their lives and are a stain on our society.
Five months ago, I told the House our most important task was to stop perpetrators and put them behind bars.
I can report that that work is accelerating.
Arrests and investigations are increasing.
After I asked police forces in January to identify cases involving grooming and child sexual exploitation allegations that had been closed with no further action, more than 800 cases have now been identified for formal review.
And I expect that figure to rise above 1,000 in the coming weeks.
Let me be clear. Perpetrators of these vile crimes should be off our streets, behind bars and paying the price for what they have done.
Further rapid action is also under way to finally implement recommendations of past inquiries and reviews – including the 7-year Independent Inquiry into Child Abuse – recommendations which for too long have sat on the shelf.
So in the Crime and Policing Bill, we are introducing:
The long overdue mandatory reporting duty which I called for more than 10 years ago.
As well as aggravated offences for grooming offenders so their sentences match the severity of their crimes.
And earlier this year, I also commissioned Baroness Louise Casey to undertake a rapid national audit of the nature, scale and characteristics of gang-based exploitation.
I specifically asked her to look at the issue of ethnicity, and the cultural and social drivers for this type of offending – analysis that had never previously been done despite years of concerns being raised.
And I asked her to advise us on what further reviews, investigations and actions would be needed to address the current and historical failures that she found.
I told Parliament in January that I expected Baroness Casey to deliver the same kind of impactful and no-holds-barred report that she produced on Rotherham in 2015 so we never shy away from the reality of these terrible crimes.
And I am very grateful to Louise and her team that they have done exactly that, with a hugely wide-ranging assessment conducted in just 4 months.
The findings of her audit are damning.
At its heart she identifies a deep-rooted failure to treat children as children. A continued failure to protect children and teenage girls from rape, from exploitation, and serious violence. And from the scars that last a lifetime.
She finds too much fragmentation in the authorities’ response, too little sharing of information, too much reliance on flawed data, too much denial, too little justice, too many criminals getting off, too many victims being let down.
To read more of this statement
To read the report
