Pakistani men more likely to be suspects in grooming cases
Figures from the 43 police forces in England and Wales show that nearly one in 10 (9.7 per cent) of the suspects in group-based child sexual exploitation cases were Pakistani in the period from January 2023 to September 2024.
This is more than three times their representation in the general population, where Pakistanis account for 2.7 per cent, according to the 2021 census.
The figures were disclosed under freedom of information laws by the team behind the first national police scheme to collect and analyse police-recorded 'group-based' child sexual abuse, including the ethnic background of perpetrators.
The Hydrant Programme was set up by police after criticism in the 2022 Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse by Prof Alexis Jay of the 'widespread failure' to collect 'good quality' data on the abusers, victims and the offences.
Her report warned that failure to provide accurate data had contributed to a 'one-sided and often uninformed debate' about the ethnic backgrounds of perpetrators, and hampered the pursuit of offenders and support for victims.
Since then, recording the ethnicity of child grooming gang members has been a requirement for police.
Historically, police forces and prosecutors have failed to take action against groomers, some of whom are of British-Pakistani origins, amid fears they would be branded racist or Islamophobic.
In 2012, while head of the Crown Prosecution Service, Sir Keir Starmer admitted that in 'a number of cases presented to us' there was 'an issue of ethnicity that has to be understood and addressed', saying that prosecutors must not 'shy away from that'.
Deputy chief constable Becky Riggs, the police lead on grooming in England and Wales, acknowledged that there was an over-representation of Pakistanis but rejected suggestions that they were 'predominantly Pakistani men'.
She said: 'We can only go with the data because that is presenting the evidence base for us. There is a truth that there is a proportion of perpetrators – whom we will relentlessly pursue in terms of these crimes – who are Pakistani men. Our data tells us that.'
The data show that 67 per cent of suspects were white, 2.6 per cent Indian, 2.4 per cent black African, 1.5 per cent black Caribbean and 1.1 per cent Bangladeshi.
By contrast, 90 per cent of victims were white, only 0.1 per cent Pakistani or Bangladeshi and zero per cent Indian. Some 1.4 per cent were black African and 0.8 per cent black Caribbean.
Grooming, which is defined by police as a form of group-based child sexual exploitation, accounted for 717 offences reported to police in 2023 and 572 in the first nine months of 2024.
This represents 17 per cent of group-based child sexual offences, with the biggest threats to children being abused within the family or by other children.
Group-based abuse itself accounted for 4,228 offences, or 3.7 per cent of all 115,489 child sexual abuse and exploitation crimes in 2023, including online.
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