The British government will reopen more than 800 cases of historic child rape grooming gang cases in addition to launching a full national inquiry after Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer bowed to pressure and made a major reversal on the issue over the weekend.
The National Crime Agency (NCA), the UK equivalent of America’s FBI, will lead investigations alongside local police forces across Britain into grooming gang cases that did not result in the suspected perpetrators facing justice.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said on Sunday that over 800 cases of suspected child rape grooming have already been selected to be reopened.
“The vulnerable young girls who suffered unimaginable abuse at the hands of groups of adult men have now grown into brave women who are rightly demanding justice for what they went through when they were just children,” Cooper said per the i paper.
“Not enough people listened to them then. That was wrong and unforgivable. We are changing that now.”
The move will come on top of a full national inquiry, which will be established under the Inquiries Act, meaning that it will have legal authority to compel witness testimony and have full access to police and other local documents.
The exact remit of the investigation remains to be seen. However, it was launched in response to the findings of a review from Baroness Louise Casey, which is set to be published this week.
Baroness Casey reportedly argues that a full national inquiry was necessary and that it should not only focus on the politically correct cover-ups committed by local officials and police, but also on the ethnicities of the perpetrators.
The decision by Starmer to launch a full inquiry came after months of the prime minister and members of his left-wing party deriding proponents of such an investigation as being “far-right”.
Starmer and his government faced considerable criticism for its hitherto refusals, including from X owner Elon Musk, Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party, and victims.
However, acquiescing to a full review may also be politically perilous for the embattled PM, given his role as the head of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) when the scandal began to emerge and that many of the alleged cover-ups are said to have been conducted by councils controlled by his left-wing Labour Party.
Numerous local reports from northern English cities such as Rochdale and Rotherham have previously found that local officials and police refrained from safeguarding young girls and prosecuting their abusers for fear of appearing racist because most of the victims were working-class white girls, and the perpetrators were mostly Pakistani-heritage Muslims.
The Casey review, which forced the u-turn, is also expected to say this week that illegal immigration to Britain has been a major contributor to the problem.
Commenting on the decision to launch an inquiry, former detective turned grooming whistleblower Maggie Oliver said on Sunday that the victims were let down by the politicians, senior police, prime ministers, and social workers who were tasked with their protection.
“We need mandatory recording of ethnicity, religion, nationality, occupation, we need integration and respect for our culture. We need the influx of illegal immigrants deported if they can’t honour our beliefs and laws, and the enforcement of them,” she said. “Rape is rape! Consent is critical, and the law must enforce it.”
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