UK Home Office dismisses stereotype of Pakistanis behind ‘sex grooming’ gangs

• UK Govt report debunks right-wing media's claim linking Pakistani origin behind sexual exploitation
• Report finds complex interplay of patriarchy, power, exploitation, opportunity and disregard for children behind child sex abuse
• Paper was made public after a petition signed by more than 130,000 people called on Home Office release report

LONDON: A much-anticipated Home Office report has trashed the far-right stereotype that “grooming gangs” exploiting white girls in the United Kingdom are mainly a Pakistani problem due to their cultural orientation and religion.

The report concluded there was no evidence that Pakistan-origin Britons were behind the majority of child sexual exploitation cases.

Until now, the right-wing media has linked the wide-scale issue of sexual exploitation with Muslim men of mainly Pakistani origin. However, a two-year study by the Home Office makes it clear that there are no grounds for asserting that Pakistani men are disproportionately engaged in such crimes – as reported by papers like The Sun, The Times, Express, and Daily Mail.

Most of the sex exploitation cases have been reported over the last decade or so in areas of Rochdale, Sheffield, Oxford, and Telford where Pakistanis live in large numbers.

The media reported for years that these areas were infested with sex crimes — exploitation of young white girls — because Pakistanis lived in these towns in large numbers and mainly worked in the private hire and takeaway business.

On the contrary, the Home Office researchers have found “that group-based offenders are most commonly white”.

The myth that Pakistani men were mainly responsible for exploiting white girls started in 2011 when The Times claimed to have uncovered a new ethnic crime threat and that there was an establishment’s cover-up to hide the crimes.

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The same stereotype was then pushed forward by the Quilliam Foundation which claimed, with help from the right-wing media, that 84% of “grooming gang offenders” were of Asian origin.

The report has found that the common denominator is not immigration, race, culture, or Islam but that child sexual abuse is the product of a complex interplay of patriarchy, power, exploitation, opportunity, and disregard for children.

The Home Office had previously said releasing the paper would not be in the “public interest”, in response to a Freedom of Information request by British publication The Independent.

However, the paper was made public after a petition signed by more than 130,000 people called on the Home Office to release the report.

The Home Office research says that although several high-profile grooming cases, including Rotherham, Rochdale, and Telford mainly involved men of Pakistani ethnicity but “links between ethnicity and this form of offending” could not be proven.

“Research has found that group-based child sexual exploitation (CSE) offenders are most commonly white," the report said.

“Some studies suggest an over-representation of black and Asian offenders relative to the demographics of national populations. However, it is not possible to conclude that this is representative of all group-based CSE offending.”

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The Home Office document said there were issues with the data used in existing studies, sample selection, and a “potential for bias and inaccuracies”.

“It is difficult to draw conclusions about the ethnicity of offenders as existing research is limited and data collection is poor,” the Home Office added.

Evidence from police forces across the UK said that sex gangs “come from diverse backgrounds” but that most are ethnically homogenous.

The report said that identified victims are mainly girls aged between 14 and 17 who mostly come from vulnerable and troubled backgrounds including those with broken families, drug dependency, and health issues.

The nationalities and ethnicities of suspects in current investigations “varied considerably”, the Home Office report said. It pointed out that ethnicity included British, American, Bangladeshi, Bulgarian, Dutch, Eritrean, Indian, Jamaican, Lithuanian, Pakistani, Portuguese, and Somali.

“This analysis demonstrated that the existing data would not answer the question of the relationship between ethnicity and child sexual exploitation,” it added.

“Based on the existing evidence, and our understanding of the flaws in the existing data, it seems most likely that the ethnicity of group-based CSE offenders is in line with child sexual abuse more generally and with the general population, with the majority of offenders being white.”

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The researchers found no evidence of a “highly organised national network” conducting coordinated abuse in different areas, which has been suggested by far-right groups who blame Pakistani-origin men for the abuse.

The paper warned that such abuse “can happen anywhere”.

The home secretary, Priti Patel, while commenting on the report said that the "victims and survivors of group-based child sexual exploitation" have told her how they "were let down by the state in the name of political correctness".

"What happened to these children remains one of the biggest stains on our country’s conscience," said Patel.