UK announces rapid review into scale of child sexual abuse by grooming gangs

LONDON: The UK government announced Thursday a “rapid” national review of the extent of sexual exploitation of children by grooming gangs, recently the subject of a row between US billionaire Elon Musk and Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

Interior minister Yvette Cooper also said several new local inquiries into cases of abuse would be launched, bowing to political pressure for further action but stopping short of demands for a new nationwide inquiry.

The issue was at the centre of a political firestorm earlier this month when the Tesla boss posted a series of incendiary comments about Starmer on his X platform.

The Labour leader then hit out at those spreading “lies and misinformation” online, in a thinly veiled rebuke of Musk.

The row relates to sex offences going back decades against primarily white British girls by men of mostly South Asian origin in various northern English towns.

Cooper told MPs that she had ordered a three-month “rapid audit of the current scale and nature of gang-based exploitation across the country” to be led by Baroness Louise Casey.

The review will look at “cultural and societal drivers” of child sex abuse and “properly examine ethnicity data and the demographics of the gangs involved and their victims”, she added.

Previous inquiries have found that the authorities and the police shied away from taking victims’ claims seriously, in part to avoid seeming racist and for fear of raising community tensions.

Cooper announced that several new local reviews would also be launched.

“As we have seen, effective local inquiries can delve into far more local detail and deliver more locally relevant answers, and change, than a lengthy nationwide inquiry can provide,” she added.