These are not ‘Asian' grooming gangs, they are Kashmiri Muslim

Telegraph

18-06-2025

When Baroness Casey appeared yesterday before a select committee to answer questions about her landmark report into group-based child sexual exploitation, there was something she was particularly keen to impress upon the MPs: when it comes to dealing with the nationwide scourge of grooming gangs, questions of ethnicity have been avoided for too long.
Her 200-page audit on the nature and scale of group-based child sexual abuse in England found that authorities, from the police to local councils, systematically shied away from pursuing child sex grooming gangs for fear of inflaming community tensions or being perceived as racist.
Casey's passion for the subject is evident. The report's key finding, which many have known for some time, is that men of Pakistani origin are over-represented in grooming gangs which have targeted young white-British girls in towns and cities from Manchester to Rotherham.
As someone who believes in strong law and order, I have found the level of institutional paralysis over tackling the grooming gangs – for fears of being accused of racism and Islamophobia – to be a grand national failure. In a particularly eye-popping passage in Casey's report, she reveals how the word 'Pakistani' was Tippexed out of one child victim's file.
While there is no doubt that a diversity of ethnicities and faiths are involved in these gangs, the use of the term 'Asian' in connection to them has long masked the ever-mounting evidence that it is men of Pakistani Muslim origin specifically who are vastly overrepresented among perpetrators of these heinous sex crimes.
A 2020 academic study by professors Kish Bhatti-Sinclair and Charles Sutcliffe, based on data consisting of 498 defendants across 73 prosecutions between 1997 and 2017, found that Muslims – particularly Pakistanis – dominated prosecutions for group-localised child sexual exploitation (GLCSE).
Indeed, it concluded that Pakistani and Muslim proportions of the local population are 'powerful variables' in explaining the level of GLCSE prosecutions in an area. Meanwhile, the proportion of Bangladeshis and Indians in a local area had no effect. In fact, the proportion of Hindus in a local area had a negative impact on the levels of GLCSE prosecutions. Using the term 'Asian' is incredibly unhelpful in this context. Gujarati Hindus, Goan Catholics, and Punjabi Sikhs should not be conflated with the men perpetrating these crimes.
It is time for us to shine a light on the poorly integrated Muslim communities originating from Mirpur in Azad Kashmir, which have formed patriarchal clans along kinship lines – known as 'biraderi'. These Mirpuri grooming gangs have shown an ugly side of family solidarity, multi-generational cohesion and tight-knit community networks: this is the dark underbelly of modern multicultural Britain.
I suspect much of Britain's law-abiding population simply cannot wrap their heads around the numbers involved in the grooming-gangs scandal – which perhaps explains some of the denial.
After all, some accounts of this sexual violence and brutality would not be out of place in history books on the campaign of systematic rape and torture against Bangladeshi women and girls by the Pakistani forces forces during the 1971 Liberation War. But, as it has taken root in dozens of cities and towns across England, it is something we must face up to as a society.
The national statutory inquiry into grooming gangs announced by Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, must examine how cultural codes – such as so-called 'community protection' – have enabled group-based child sexual exploitation and abuse. There is no space for political correctness or mollycoddling particular minorities. If we are serious about delivering justice for the victims, no stone should be left unturned.