Inquiry will examine role of “ethnicity, religion and culture” in exploitation
The UK national inquiry into grooming gangs will investigate offending in Wales and Birmingham, inquiry chair Anne Longfield announced on Wednesday. The expansion adds two dedicated strands to a national inquiry that announced its first dedicated local investigations in June and gives the inquiry formal jurisdiction over two regions where allegations of child-protection failures by police, councils and other agencies have persisted for decades.
The problem has blighted Britain for decades, with thousands of girls being raped, beaten and drugged by groups of adult men. The offending has been linked to the deaths of several teenagers.
Longfield, a former children’s commissioner, leads the inquiry. It has the power to compel witnesses and obtain documents, and will examine what individuals and agencies “did or did not do to protect children from being sexually abused.” The inquiry will conduct local investigations and look at the national picture and the response of agencies such as the police, NHS and local and central government.
The national inquiry follows a recommendation from crossbench peer Louise Casey, who carried out an audit after the government initially refused to fund a statutory inquiry into abuse in Oldham, Greater Manchester. The government faced a backlash last year for that refusal, including from Elon Musk, the owner of X.
The Welsh strand will focus on offending across the country, rather than one town or city, and has cross-party backing in the Senedd. A number of police operations have targeted grooming gangs in Wales. Last week, four men were jailed for abusing teenage girls in Rhyl, Denbighshire, between 2022 and 2024, in relation to exploitation centred on a coffee house.
Amy Clowrey, a director at Switalskis solicitors, which represents a number of Welsh survivors, said: “It’s not just an English problem. The survivors I represent, and have represented, have always felt [Wales] has been overlooked in the national conversation.” The inquiry said its Welsh investigation “will provide an important opportunity to examine safeguarding and multi-agency responses, the operation of devolved arrangements, and cross-border working between organisations in Wales and England.”
Longfield said: “Victims and survivors in Wales have waited too long for answers. This work is about establishing the truth, delivering accountability, and setting out clearly what must change so children are better protected in the future.”
Grooming gangs have been known to operate extensively in Birmingham. In 2010, police documents uncovered by the Birmingham Mail revealed that offenders were targeting children at schools and children’s homes. A large proportion were from the city’s Pakistani-heritage community. Four years later, Birmingham city council went to court to secure landmark injunctions against a number of men in an attempt to stop them approaching underage girls.
Victims from other parts of the West Midlands have been trafficked into Birmingham to be abused. A previous inquiry into child sexual exploitation in Telford, Shropshire, was told that concerns were raised about this problem as far back as the 1990s. The current inquiry said its Birmingham investigation “will focus initially on Birmingham but may extend to surrounding, connected or satellite areas where the evidence supports it.”
In June, the inquiry announced its first dedicated investigations, focusing on Oldham, London, Bradford and Keighley. It will also examine whether agencies in areas that have previously held inquiries into grooming gangs — such as Telford, Rochdale, Oxford and Rotherham — have adequately addressed the recommendations made.
A central theme across the investigations will be the role played by “ethnicity, religion and culture” in gang-based exploitation. Casey found that men from “Asian ethnic backgrounds” were overrepresented in recent police investigations into grooming gangs in parts of the north of England, though she said it had been difficult to paint an accurate national picture due to a lack of data.
Casey said: “More effort is required to identify the nature of group-based child sexual exploitation and why it appears men of Asian and Pakistani ethnicity are disproportionately represented in some areas, in order to understand it better and to tackle it more effectively.”
Many survivors of group-based sexual exploitation have said they were targeted by “street grooming” gangs, particularly those operating from takeaways and taxi companies. Others say they were introduced to offenders by their peers or family members. Frontline workers say that as social media platforms have developed, children are increasingly being targeted by networks of perpetrators online.
The national inquiry will look at the evolving nature of exploitation by grooming gangs and the potential role played by technology. It will run parallel to Operation Beaconport, an investigation being carried out by the National Crime Agency. It will also operate a “national listening project” so victims and their families can outline the impact of the abuse.