What is the Casey report on UK grooming gangs – and why did Labour U-turn? | Sexual Assault News

The British authorities has introduced a nationwide inquiry into organised youngster sexual abuse following the discharge of a damning report by Baroness Louise Casey that criticised a long time of institutional failure to guard youngsters from so-called “grooming gangs”.

It marks a outstanding U-turn by the Labour Occasion authorities of Prime Minister Keir Starmer, which had resisted months of requires an inquiry, stating that it was specializing in suggestions already made in an earlier seven-year probe.

However what precisely is the Casey Report, and what drove Labour’s abrupt change after all?

What’s the Casey Report?

Commissioned earlier this yr by Starmer, the Casey Report is a evaluate of how United Kingdom establishments have tackled youngster sexual exploitation.

The evaluate centered on “grooming gangs” – teams of males who focused weak ladies for sexual abuse, typically over prolonged intervals of time.

What does the report say?

The report recognized an institutional failure to guard youngsters and teenage ladies from rape, exploitation and critical violence.

Amongst its suggestions, the Casey Report steered a change within the regulation so adults in England and Wales face obligatory rape expenses in the event that they deliberately penetrate a toddler below age 16.

In her report, Casey concluded that too many grooming circumstances have been dropped or downgraded from rape to lesser expenses as a result of a 13- to 15-year-old is perceived to have been “in love with” or have “consented to” intercourse with the perpetrator.

Her evaluate additionally highlighted reluctance by the authorities to “look at the ethnicity of the offenders”, saying it was not racist to take action.

Within the native knowledge that the audit examined from three police forces, they recognized clear proof of “over-representation amongst suspects of Asian and Pakistani-heritage males”.

Nevertheless, the evaluate additionally criticised the continued failure to gather ethnicity at a nationwide stage, with it not recorded for two-thirds of perpetrators, making it not possible “to supply any correct evaluation from the nationally collected knowledge”.

Have been the suggestions accepted?

Sure.

The UK’s House Secretary Yvette Cooper confirmed the federal government would settle for all 12 suggestions within the Casey Report.

This implies the police will launch a brand new nationwide felony operation focusing on grooming gangs, overseen by the Nationwide Crime Company (NCA).

This operation could be overseen by an unbiased fee with powers to compel witnesses to supply proof.

It will additionally go forward with a nationwide inquiry, with Starmer stating that he had learn “each single phrase” of the report and would settle for Casey’s suggestion for an investigation.

What led to Labour’s U-turn?

Richard Scorer, the top of Abuse Regulation and Public Inquiries at Slater and Gordon, a regulation agency, instructed Al Jazeera that the sheer measurement of the scandal and the truth that it had affected hundreds of kids made it “inevitable” that there would should be a public inquiry about it sooner or later.

US billionaire Elon Musk’s on-line references to the grooming scandal that emerged a decade in the past in a number of cities and cities in northern England had additionally pushed the “subject up the political agenda”, he stated.

In June 2022, an unbiased evaluate discovered that the police and native council had failed to stop sexual exploitation of younger ladies by gangs in Oldham, a city in Better Manchester in England.

Two years later, political leaders in Oldham Council known as for the federal government to analyze additional, however then-House Workplace Minister Jess Phillips rejected the council’s request, saying it ought to lead an investigation itself.

In January this yr, Musk threw his weight behind far-right activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, who goes by the title Tommy Robinson and had been outspoken on the problem.

He known as for Robinson, a controversial political determine, then serving an 18-month jail time period for contempt of courtroom, to be freed, writing on his personal social media platform X, “Why is Tommy Robinson in a solitary confinement jail for telling the reality?”

Musk additionally accused Starmer of failing to prosecute youngster rapists when he was director of public prosecutions between 2008 and 2013.

He additionally took intention at Minister for Safeguarding Jess Phillips, calling her “a rape genocide apologist”.

Starmer responded on the time, with out mentioning Musk by title. “These which might be spreading lies and misinformation as far and as large as doable are usually not serious about victims, they’re serious about themselves,” the PM stated.

Will this report result in change?

Consultants say it’s definitely a constructive step.

William Tantam, a senior lecturer in anthropology on the College of Bristol, who has labored on a earlier unbiased inquiry into youngster sexual abuse, stated that from a researcher’s perspective, the primary constructive was that there could be extra consistency and readability in knowledge.

He stated that one other constructive is that inquiry panel could have the authority to compel businesses to take part.

Scorer famous that bringing within the NCA to analyze circumstances that haven’t progressed prior to now can be a really welcome consequence of the report.

He stated within the UK, completely different police forces haven’t all the time succeeded in coordinating their efforts to deal with grooming gangs, so a extra centralised overview from the NCA would possibly safe “a greater coordination of police exercise”.

Cooper instructed Parliament on Monday that greater than 800 circumstances have now been recognized for formal evaluate, and he or she expects that determine to rise above 1,000 within the coming weeks.

However Scorer warned that the federal government would want to assign a further finances for the implementation of the modifications really helpful by Casey.

“In case you are asking the NCA to reopen and examine, doubtlessly as much as 1000 circumstances, that’s going to require an enormous quantity of sources,” he stated. “Who’s going to pay for that? That’s one of many questions that the federal government goes to want to reply.”