British Pakistani Grooming Gangs: Myths and Facts

[Riaz Haq]

American billionaire and President-Elect Donald Trump's confidante Elon Musk's recent tweets have revived the allegations by the far right that the British Pakistani gangs are mainly responsible for sex crimes against children in the United Kingdom.  Earlier, these claims were repeated by former British Home Secretary Suella Braverman when she said in a television interview that child grooming gangs in the UK were “almost all British-Pakistani”.  This claim elicited a strong response by British Press regulator  IPSO which said that Braverman’s decision to link “the identified ethnic group and a particular form of offending was significantly misleading” because the (British) Home Office’s own research had concluded offenders were mainly from white backgrounds. The British Home Office Report on Group-Based Child Sexual Exploitation (December 2021) said that while some high-profile cases involved men of Pakistani ethnicity (2%), the academic literature suggests that group-based child sexual exploitation offenders are most commonly white (88%), according to Professor Tahid Abbas's blog for the London School of Economics. 

Grooming Gang Sex Crimes Stats. Source: Financial Times

Let's examine what the official statistics reveal about sex crimes in England and Wales.  It shows that grooming gangs account for a small fraction (3.7%) of child sexual abuse, even when looking just at group offending. In 2023, there were 4,428 reported offline sexual offenses committed by groups, according to official data for England and Wales published in November, the first time a detailed breakdown has been made available. These accounted for 3.7% of all child sexual abuse crimes.  Of these crimes, grooming gangs — organized networks of criminals who target children — accounted for 17%, or 717 crimes, according to the Financial Times. 

Sex Crimes Against British Children. Source: UK Ministry of Justice...

In terms of ethnicity, Pakistani defendants account for 2% (same as their proportion in the general population) of all defendants charged with sex crimes against children. White defendants make up 88%, proportionally more than the 83% of their numbers in general population in England and Wales, according to the UK Ministry of Justice. 

Group-based child abuse represents less than 1% of sex crimes against children. Pakistanis account for 3.9% in this specific category, according to the UK Police Chiefs Council.  The figure rises for Pakistani offenders to 13.7% if you remove institutional groups, such as sports groups, schools and church-based group offenders, and group child abuse committed in a family setting.

Clearly, the British government data doesn't support the allegations made by former UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman and tweeted by Elon Musk. So what is their motivation for it? The only conclusion one can draw is that both Braverman and Musk are motivated by Islamophobia and anti-Muslim racism. The demonization of Muslim men has become a common theme in public discourse, with a “Muslim bashing” mentality, particularly among the far right groups in the West. 

It is important to mention that British Pakistanis who make up just 2% of the general population represent 3.7% of all British doctors. 

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[Riaz Haq]

Elon Musk 'misinformed' on grooming gangs, says Wes Streeting

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czxdzng92lno

Police figures from 2023 reveal that group-based child sexual abuse accounted for 3.7% of all sexual offences against children reported to police.

https://www.hydrantprogramme.co.uk/assets/Documents/CSE-Taskforce-G...

According to the data, 26% of group-based child sexual abuse happened within families, compared with 17% involving groups including grooming gangs.

Schools, clubs and religious institutions accounted for 9%.

There have been numerous investigations into the systematic rape of girls and young women by organised gangs, including in Rotherham, Cornwall, Derbyshire and Bristol.

Inquiries into Greater Manchester Police's (GMP) handling of historical child sex abuse cases in Manchester, Oldham and Rochdale have also been carried out.

Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham said tackling grooming gangs was "not something to be politicised".

"We've done this when others were looking in a different direction," Burnham added.

"This is something to be faced up to fully and unflinchingly in my view."

Earlier on Friday, health minister Andrew Gwynne suggested Musk "ought to focus" on US politics, where he is set to act as an unelected adviser to the Trump administration on cutting federal spending.

Speaking to LBC Radio, Gwynne added that child grooming was a "very serious issue", pointing to previous investigations which had taken place into sexual abuse scandals.

"There comes a point where we don't need more inquiries, and had Elon Musk really paid attention to what's been going on in this country, he might have recognised that there have already been inquiries," he said.

[Riaz Haq]

Failing victims, fuelling hate: challenging the harms of the ‘Muslim grooming gangs’ narrative - Ella Cockbain, Waqas Tufail, 2020

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0306396819895727

Abstract
‘Muslim grooming gangs’ have become a defining feature of media, political and public debate around child sexual exploitation in the UK. The dominant narrative that has emerged to explain a series of horrific cases is misleading, sensationalist and has in itself promoted a number of harms. This article examines how racist framings of ‘Muslim grooming gangs’ exist not only in extremist, far-right fringes but in mainstream, liberal discourses too. The involvement of supposedly feminist and liberal actors and the promotion of pseudoscientific ‘research’ have lent a veneer of legitimacy to essentialist, Orientalist stereotypes of Muslim men, the demonisation of whole communities and demands for collective responsibility. These developments are situated in the broader socio-political context, including the far Right’s weaponisation of women’s rights, the ‘Islamophobia industry’ and a long history of racialising crime. We propose alternative ways of understanding and responding to child sexual exploitation/abuse. We contend that genuinely anti-racist feminist approaches can help in centring victims/survivors and their needs and in tackling serious sexual violence without demonising entire communities.

[Riaz Haq]

Most grooming gang offences carried out by white men, police chiefs say

https://www.times-series.co.uk/news/national/24849607.grooming-gang...

Main facts and figures

https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/crime-justice-an...

White Men, Not Pakistanis, Responsible for Most Grooming Gang Crimes: NPCC Report

https://khybernews.tv/white-men-not-pakistanis-responsible-for-most...

[Riaz Haq]

Financial Times' Ed Luce on Elon Musk's tweets on grooming gangs scandal: CNN.com - Transcripts

https://transcripts.cnn.com/show/fzgps/date/2025-01-12/segment/01

"And there have, of course, been other child abuse scandals in the church of England, the Catholic Church, the Boy Scouts, private schools, as you've seen in other countries that have not been mentioned by Elon Musk and that haven't had this kind of publicity"

-----------------

Fareed Zakaria: I'm just trying to understand, is there any basis for implicating him (PM Kier Starmer) in this scandal?

LUCE: No, there's no factual basis. It's true that he was director of public prosecutions in Britain, which is kind of the equivalent of attorney general, but also solicitor general. When that scandal broke in 2012, he then stepped up what was clearly a very lax system. He sort of tightened up the Crown Prosecution Service, which he was in charge of, to try to prevent such a recurrence of, you know, what was clearly a massive sort of fail by the system.

And he then began the prosecutions that are ongoing. But we've got, you know, a pretty long legacy now of trials in this case. And there have, of course, been other child abuse scandals in the church of England, the Catholic Church, the Boy Scouts, private schools, as you've seen in other countries that have not been mentioned by Elon Musk and that haven't had this kind of publicity.

ZAKARIA: And Musk doesn't like Keir Starmer. He's been encouraging the Reform Party, which used to be called the UKIP Party, the pro-Brexit party, to essentially rise. He's calling for new elections. Do you understand what that's about?

LUCE: Yes. I mean, he's a big fan of far-right parties, not just in Britain but in Germany. As you know, the Alternative for Deutschland, the far-right German party, he's saying is the only possible savior of Germany. And Nigel Farage's Reform Party in the U.K. similarly, he believes, will be the savior of Britain.

The context is the conservatives were defeated last summer by the Keir Starmer's Labour Party, and the conservatives are competing with reform for the far-right vote. They're moving to the right and Nigel Farage's Reform is moving to the left to make it a bit more electable. And they're roughly neck and neck in the polls. So there is this sort of battle as to who can be more right-wing and who can claim the mantle of sort of being a Trumpian British Conservative Party.

And Musk's interventions in favor of reform should be seen in that context. The reality is that Musk is not popular in Britain. The approval ratings I think a few years ago for him, when he was seen principally as a space guy and an EV guy, were very high. There are now fewer than 1 in 5 British people approve of Musk. So I think there are diminishing returns to this kind of really unprecedented intervention in another democracy.

[Riaz Haq]

Humza Yousaf
@HumzaYousaf
No messages of anger or disgust from Farage, Reform or Musk about one of the biggest child grooming gangs in UK who were sentenced yesterday.

It's almost like they don't actually care about keeping children safe but have an ulterior motive?

Hope those sentenced rot in prison.

https://x.com/HumzaYousaf/status/1884190344579015033

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Scottish child abuse gang members jailed for between eight and 20 years | Scotland | The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/jan/27/scottish-child-abus...

Seven people involved in a Scottish child abuse ring that plumbed “the depths of human depravity” have been jailed for minimum terms ranging from eight to 20 years.

The two women and five men will be monitored for life after being convicted of gang-raping a child and violently abusing two other children in a flat in Glasgow where drugs were taken.

Iain Owens, 46; Elaine Lannery, 40; Lesley Williams, 43; Paul Brannan, 42; Scott Forbes, 51; Barry Watson, 48; and John Clark, 48, were convicted in November 2023 after a lengthy and complex trial at Glasgow high court.

Owens, Lannery, Brannan and Williams were found guilty of attempting to murder a child by pushing her into a microwave and trapping her in other places. Two girls and a boy were abused over a seven-year period, between 2012 and 2019, and made to take drugs and alcohol.

In all, the seven defendants were found guilty of 49 charges that included sexual offences, misuse of drugs offences and the common law offence of assault to injury and danger to life.

They were jailed for a total of at least 93 years by the judge, Lord Beckett, and were all given lifelong restriction orders.

Beckett warned they may never be released from prison. “This court is used to hearing the worst examples of human behaviour but such depravity towards young children is beyond my experience,” he told the defendants.

“This is not typical behaviour and such extreme abuse of children seems to be rare.”

The judge also praised the “formidable strength” and the “courage and perseverance” of the children.

“It is possible to imagine from their desperate darkness, their carers have brought some light to their young lives – a home, a structure and nurture over a number of years,” he said.

The trial, which followed a police investigation dubbed Operation Woodwhite, heard evidence of systematic child sexual abuse that Beckett described as harrowing and said “plunges to the depths of human depravity”.

He previously said he was considering orders for lifelong restriction, which monitor high-risk offenders for the rest of their lives if they are deemed suitable for release from prison after serving a minimum punishment period.

Katrina Parkes, a prosecutor specialising in sexual offence trials in the high court, said the successive convictions were proof that prosecutors took violence against children seriously, and she urged other victims to come forward.

“I commend the bravery of the young victims; their strength has resulted in the conviction and sentence of their abusers for these heinous crimes,” she said.