Grooming gangs sexually abuse two children EVERY DAY, groundbreaking figures reveal

Grooming gangs are committing more than two child sexual abuse offences every day across England and Wales, shocking new police figures have revealed.

The groundbreaking data, collected from all 43 police forces, shows the first comprehensive national picture of group-based child sexual exploitation.

The figures emerged through a new national police scheme established to analyse “group-based” child sexual abuse after previous failures to collect quality data on perpetrators and victims were thrust back into the spotlight this week.

Police recorded 717 child sexual exploitation “grooming” crimes in 2023, with a further 572 offences documented in the first nine months of 2024.

The data comes from the Hydrant Programme, which was established after Professor Alexis Jay’s Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse warned there had been a “widespread failure” to collect “good quality” data.

The inquiry’s 2022 report warned that inadequate data collection had led to a “one-sided and often uninformed debate” about perpetrators’ ethnic backgrounds – hampering both the pursuit of offenders and support for victims.

The new analysis reveals that “group-based” offending – involving two or more individuals – accounted for 4,228 offences in 2023.

This represents 3.7 per cent of all 115,489 child sexual abuse and exploitation crimes, including online offences.

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Of these group-based crimes, 17 per cent – or 717 cases – were specifically “grooming gang” offences. That’s more than 1.96 every say.

Family-based abuse, where two or more family members were involved, made up 26 per cent of group offences.

Police have also identified a significant number of cases involving child-on-child abuse, which investigators believe has been fuelled by internet pornography and young people’s online lifestyles.

The majority of perpetrators – 83 per cent – were identified as white, with seven per cent Asian, five per cent black and three per cent mixed race.

However, police cautioned that this ethnic breakdown was “limited” as it only covered 34 per cent of suspects.

Richard Fewkes, director of the Hydrant Programme, said the data suggested offenders reflected the UK’s overall ethnic mix.

“In very general terms, what we see across all group based offending is that no particular ethnicity stands out based on population data,” he told The Telegraph.

Police forces acknowledged past “cultural sensitivities” had impeded investigations but insisted this was “absolutely not” the case now.

In the past, police and prosecutors often failed to take action against groomers, who have been typically of British-Pakistani origin, over fears of being branded racist or Islamophobic.

Sir Keir Starmer had warned as much in 2012 when he was Director of Public Prosecutions, saying: “In a number of cases presented to us, particularly in cases involving groups, there’s clearly an issue of ethnicity that has to be understood and addressed. As prosecutors we shouldn’t shy away from that.”