Britain's Enduring Shame

"[British and Scottish political parties leery of accusations of racism combined with fear of loss at the ballot box took] precedence over the protection of British children."

"[A recently launched official government inquiry into grooming gangs may be a time-waster and there is] no guarantee that it will adequately address the politically sensitive ethnoreligious nature of the phenomenon." 

Rape Gang Inquiry Report, Britain

Woodhouse says she became pregnant at 14 and was forced to have an abortion. When she became pregnant again at 16, she was allowed to keep the child. Photo supplied/Woodhouse

 

Chaired by British MP Rupert Lowe, and led by survivor Sammy Woodhouse, the Rape Gang Inquiry Report has exposed the horrors of systematic grooming and sexual exploitation of mostly white British girls, by predominantly Muslim Pakistani gangs. It has been a shocking open secret for years that vulnerable white British girls have been used and savagely sexually abused by these grooming gangs, and though there have been citizen-calls to formally investigate the situation and put a stop to it, while prosecuting the malefactors, nothing was done for far too long.

 

It took a widely-publicized campaign by one of the world's most recognizable names, when the wealthiest man in the world wielded his own notoriety to highlight the assaults on young British girls, demanding that Great Britain finally respond to the human rights outrage and rescue any future victims from the fate that had befallen their earlier counterparts, to hone international outrage. The squeamishness of British government agencies including politicians, to confront the issue head on admitting that it was Muslim men who were persecuting, mocking and grooming female children for sex reflected an unwillingness to be labelled 'racist' and perhaps worse in their opinion, 'Islamophobic'.  

"[A pre-release briefing states of the inquiry that it is required to] consider how the ethnicity, religion and culture of both perpetrators and victims may have influenced offending patterns, as well as institutional responses to abuse."

"Men of Asian ethnicity are over-represented as perpetrators in group-based child sexual exploitation." 

Official Government Independent Inquiry into Grooming Gangs  

Undeniably, Muslim Pakistani grooming gangs in towns and cities across the United Kingdom have been engaged in the grooming and exploitation of young girls in Britain. On June 15, the 219-page independent report titled the Rape Gang Inquiry was released, a crowdfunding project where a campaign raised 794,677 pounds, thanks to over 20,000 Brits who responded to fund the inquiry. In the report, stories of girls systematically groomed as young as 11 by gangs were recorded.

 

More than 800 recommendations relating to grooming gangs and child sexual exploitation and abuse dating back to the 1990s have been identified by the inquiry. Photograph: Hollie Adams/Reuters

 

Befriended, introduced to alcohol and drugs, young girls were often taken from schools and care homes to be subjected to repeated rape, gang rape, trafficking and torture.  In some instances girls in the throes of sexual abuse were recorded on video, informed they were 'white trash'. Miscarriages, forced abortions were endured by girls whose rapes resulted in pregnancies. Other young girl who gave birth had them taken by the state, while yet others were taken to the Middle East to be part of arranged marriages.   

"[Over 250,000 girls were trafficked since the first recorded case in 1955], when four Bradford-based Pakistanis were charged with raping a 15-year-old girl from Middlesbrough." 

Rape Gang Inquiry Report  

Sammy Woodhouse was groomed at age 14 by a 24-year-old, Arshid Hussain, ringleader of a Pakistani-heritage child exploitation gang. Neither the police, social services, the National Health Service nor schools intervened at any time to rescue girls and to spur investigations into the ongoing abuse. Anyone who did make an effort to report the rapists were labelled racists or Islamophobes. The gangs acted with complete impunity. Urged to launch an inquiry the Labour government refused, until sufficient pressure was exerted to acquiesce.

 

When the government did launch an official independent inquiry, it was handed 65 million pounds to get the job done by March 31, 2029. The inquiry has not been given prior specific instructions on ethnicity, religion or any similar identifying demographic. Whereas the Rape Gang Inquiry Report tackles the issue head on, adding that the grooming gangs represent an immigration screening problem. 

 

Ethnicity data was found not to have been recorded for two-thirds of grooming-gang perpetrators, according to a 2025 audit examining available national databases and police data. This was highlighted by Baroness Casey of Blackstock in the audit. All the Casey report's recommendations have since been  accepted by the British government. It is yet too early to discern whether politicians will revert to their usual catering to groups in their constituencies in avoidance of being labelled racist and Islamophobic.  

Victims as young as 10 – often those in care, or children with learning or physical disabilities – being singled out for grooming precisely because of their vulnerability.

Perpetrators still walking free because no one joined the dots or because the law ended up protecting them instead of the victims that they had exploited.

Deep rooted institutional failures, stretching back decades, where organisations who should have protected children and punished offenders looked the other way - and Baroness Casey found “blindness, ignorance, prejudice, defensiveness and even good but misdirected intentions” all played a part in this collective failure.

Baroness Casey audit