Home secretary Yvette Cooper has ordered a national audit of gang-related child sexual exploitation (CSE), to examine the current scale and nature of the problem.
Alongside the three-month review, led by Baroness (Louise) Casey, the government will support – and fund – councils to carry out local inquiries into gang-based abuse, initially in five areas, Cooper told the House of Commons today.
The announcements are ministers’ latest moves to address the furore over gang-related CSE that has blown up in recent weeks.
Elon Musk’s interventions
That followed news that safeguarding minister Jess Phillips had rejected a request from Oldham Council to set up a public inquiry into CSE in the borough, instead advising it commission its own local review.
The revelation triggered a series of posts on X by its owner, Elon Musk, which were highly critical of Phillips and prime minister Keir Starmer. Meanwhile, the Conservatives called for a national public inquiry into gang-based CSE, with a focus on crimes committed by men of Pakistani heritage.
This was despite the issue having been covered by the seven-year Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), which reported in 2022, as well as by various local inquiries, for example, in Rotherham and Telford.
Mandatory reporting of child sexual abuse
Cooper responded, initially, with a statement to Parliament last week, in which she pledged to implement some of IICSA’s recommendations, including the introduction of mandatory reporting of child sexual abuse (CSA) by those in positions of trust over children.
She also said that Tom Crowther KC, who led the inquiry into CSE in Telford, would work with the government and councils where “more formal inquiries are required to tackle persistent problems”.
Today, she said Crowther would work with the government to “develop a new framework for victim-centred, locally led inquiries”, which would be piloted in Oldham and four other areas, backed by £5m of government funding.
Alongside this, Casey’s review would audit both police intelligence and child protection referrals, examine the demographics of gangs and victims, look at the cultural drivers of group-based CSE and make recommendations about further actions to address “current and historical failures”.
No public inquiry into CSE
Cooper’s announcement will be seen as a concession to the government’s critics. However, neither Casey’s audit nor the local reviews are public inquiries, with the power to compel witnesses to give evidence, as called for by the Conservatives and others.
On this point, shadow home secretary Chris Philp questioned how they could “possibly get to the truth when faced with cover-ups”.
Cooper said the government would work with councils “to bolster the accountability mechanisms that can support and follow up local inquiries, to ensure that those who are complicit in cover-ups, or who try to resist scrutiny, are always robustly held to account so that truth and justice are never denied”.
Inquiry implementation plan to come
In her previous statement, Cooper said the government would implement some of the recommendations from IICSA’s final report and its separate report into child sexual exploitation by organised networks, including:
- Mandatory reporting of CSA, which was recommended in the final report.
- Creating a new performance framework, with data collection requirements, for the police concerning CSA and CSE. This responds to IICSA’s recommendation, from its final report, to introduce a core data set for the issue, to tackle what it found was a lack of reliable data, particularly in relation to CSE.
- Legislating to make grooming an aggravating factor in the sentencing of child sexual offences, a recommendation from recommendation from IICSA’s report on CSE by organised networks.
In her latest statement, the home secretary said the government would publish a plan for taking forward the 20 recommendations from IICSA’s final report before Easter, though did not commit to implementing all of them.
She said the government had accepted in full four recommendations that were directed at the Home Office and had started implementing them. Besides mandatory reporting, these include improving compliance by relevant organisations with their duty to refer concerns about people’s suitability to work with children to the Disclosure and Barring Service procedures.
Recommendations from report on CSE by organised groups
Cooper added that the government would also implement all remaining recommendations from IICSA’s report on CSE by organised networks beyond making grooming an aggravating factor in sentencing.
Of the other five recommendations, one – updating the Home Office’s child exploitation disruption toolkit to improve guidance to practitioners on tackling CSE – appears to have been met.
Another concerns improving police and local authority collection of CSE data, including by separating it from data on other forms of abuse, such as CSA, and collecting information on the sex, ethnicity and disability of both the victim and perpetrator. This will likely be covered by the plan to create a new performance framework for the police in relation to CSA and CSE.
Call for ban on unregulated placements
IICSA also called for a ban on the use of unregulated placements in independent or semi-independent accommodation for 16 and 17-year-olds in care who have experienced, or are at heightened risk of, CSE, in the light of the risks many have faced in those settings.
The recommendation came after the government had banned unregulated placements for under-16s, but before it ended the legal use of unregulated provision for looked-after children, by requiring organisations to register as supported accommodation providers and comply with regulations.
These include ensuring that staff “have the skills to identify and act upon signs that a child is at risk of abuse, neglect, exploitation or any other harm, and act to reduce such risk” and can “support children to maintain appropriate and safe relationships with family, friends and other people who are important to them”.
It is likely this recommendation will be interpreted as met by the government, despite longstanding criticisms from campaigners that the supported accommodation regime is insufficiently protective of children and young people.
CSE guidance to be revised
That leaves two recommendations, both of which concern the Department for Education updating its 2017 guidance for practitioners and leaders on protecting children on CSE.
This should include providing further advice on online exploitation and abuse by organised networks and making clear that, where there are signs that a child is being exploited, they should not be treated as merely being “at risk” of CSE, IICSA said.
The inquiry found “a distinctive professional language around child sexual exploitation has developed over many years, which describes children being ‘at risk’ despite clear evidence of actual harm having occurred”.
As a result, children who had, for example, contracted sexually transmitted infections or were regularly going missing with adults, were not being given the support they needed because they were not treated as having experienced CSE.
In her statement, Cooper told the House of Commons that the DfE guidance would be updated, in response to IICSA’s recommendations.
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truth and justice never denied ~ I hope that those drafting the terms of reference for such inquiry actually understand what the Home Secretary means by this and have some test for it’s satisfaction; the current failure arises from the adherence to an avoidance architecture embedded in the very concepts being used to describe the boundaries of inquiry ….
… the fiasco in drawing up the terms of reference in Kirklees is a case in point and the then selection of Dr Reed, from Leeds Safeguarding Board said to be an assurance of due diligence; it wasn’t and he then went on to delete the actual insider errors culminating in the death of a child in Sunderland; it is about as much about getting away with corporate assault as it is about the failure in corporate parenting …
… the manipulation of the very concepts in use are shaped and motivated politically; take for example, the legal concepts of to hold information and one is going to frankly think what the fuck is going on as the legal concepts run in the opposite direction of anything a reasonable person would consider ordinary; it is designed to ensure that there’s always enough room to avoid liabilities….
… the liminality of the spaces and places’grooming gangs’ operate will be defined, how? …
… how, for example, will the role of the police informants be addressed and handled? and what of the trade-offs being made, between who and on who’s authority …
… the intersection with drug lines, the white collar professional use of drugs and the fact that the common denomination between the victims and those protecting them is their shared knowledge of the dealer; why else do you think that women get such a shitty time of it? This issue alone will test the veracity of who is counted in and who is left out of the scope of inquiry made ….
…. let’s not forget that the play Shopping and Fucking by Mark Ravenhill was suppressed for 10years between 1984 and 1995/6 ~ first airing as an indictment of cse within the entertainment industry in 1984 and blocked until 1995/6 and rebadged as a critique of consumerism….
… grooming gangs have existed for decades, it’s an expected perk in Rag Nymph economies including those hiding in plain within the cover of the Church, and on a scale that’s simply staggering; LoudWall, Or What?….
…. Louise Casey is good but I wonder if this is gonna be the project that clips her wings; if I were her I’d want to know how on earth those issued with honours for their services to children and families got them when so much has clearly and plainly been avoided; doh! …
…
The Guardian has good coverage of the difficulties Labour’s AI path dependency is running into.
The spat between Musk and Philips isn’t mentioned neither is a guarantee of online safety without the buy-in from Musk and Zuckerberg. Trade agreement trade-offs, eh!
Here’s the thing:
A reliable proxy of whether the Government is, actually, taking child sexual exploitation and abuse seriously is the scope of AI super language modelling being used in its detection and as part of the process of reparations arising from it.
How, for example, is the DWP, assessing the lifetime impact such experience can have ~ Known as cptsd.~ the condition remains outside the scope of UK disability and equalities legislation; why?
Characterised by disassociation, emotional numbing, thought rumination with subtle and gross reenactment of often subconscious past events. The condition is treated by and large by primary care professionals as anxiety, depression and PTSD, and for sure there’s overlap between these and cptsd, but there’s also a world of difference. It’s requires specialist intervention from highly specialised psychotherapists so where’s the investment?
Those with cptsd simply have diminished internal reference ~ there’s no sense o self. Its a horrible condition and largely masked by learning how to please and appease, a lack of selfworth and crippling self Blake and shame.
Here’s the thing:
The DWP don’t recognise cptsd as being within it’s scope and as condition isn’t covered by UK disability and equalities legislation; the super language modelling by design discriminates against those with exposure to and direct experience of child sexual exploitation and abuse ~ the same is true of other violence, and mainly against women and girls although not exclusively.
Jess Phillips and Bridget Philipson, both steeped in services sticking up for victims and survivors of abuse, should be shouting out against the DWP culling of welfare benefits to disabled people and the seemingly lesser legal, if non existence of, protections offered.
The Front Bench may not actually suit them and I hope that they can reconcile the gains of Office with decades spent fighting to hold hard fought ground.
I was made aware of this particular form of CSE over 20 years ago as part of my work in the field of community based substance misuse services. It would’ve been severely challenging (understatement) to my social work career to drill down into the detailed context of this phenomenon at that time.
Members of Parliament and journalists have been attempting to draw greater attention to this issue for at least 15 years alas with little success. I find it deeply unsettling that external influences may have played a part in this government’s decision to offer more comprehensive formal public scrutiny of this heinous behaviour.
the indo-pacific-economic-framework-prosperity-ipef is the trade agreement brokered by the US during 22/23 to ensure UK entry as only European country joining the trading bloc on 15th December 2024. a bit back like in 2009 I had conversation with the EC DG Grow about the increased likelihood of child sexual exploitation arising from the poor due diligence undertaken throughout public procurement and competitive processes they said what has child protection got to do with us; the EC 2011 Directives on CSE followed and by 2014 the UK has to forced into some examination of compliance with this Directive. Agency workers were (mis)used to lift the lid on what was a problem surfacing within youth justice and suppressed although Ann Cryer MP raised the issues in the HofC. After which Sammy Woodhouse and a survivors group called Out of the Shadow’s continued to fight for access to justice victim’s and survivors. Similarly, The Forgotten Boys is seeking reparations for the survivors of the English borstal system.
The definition of words ‘grooming’ and ‘gang’ must be treated carefully as PM Cameron said the problem has an industrial scale; the lesser expectations for children to have a childhood are rooted in how the economy is structured and the separation of any consideration of “the meaning of child” woefully inadequate in these trade talks.
The Tories and Babenoch(sp) brokered the indo-pacific-economic-framework-prosperity-ipef prior to the election without so much of a whisper of what this means for the local delivery Education, Housing and Welfare services.
The focus on regionalism the enhanced function of Regional Purchasing Organisations similarly divorced from any consideration of the impact these issues will have on the everyday quality of life for children and families; the legacy of the late, Frank Dobson and his Quality Protects Programme is worth reviewing today as ‘we’ are falling way below the standards needed for planning modern services as an advanced economy and it’s shameless; by design!
this is a useful reference/reflection
https://doi.org/10.12795/araucaria.2019.142.22
“the meaning of the child” has never been more important, no?