How the child-abuse inquiry failed grooming-gang victims

Calls for a new public inquiry into Britain’s so-called grooming-gangs scandal continue to grow. This comes after Labour safeguarding minister Jess Phillips rejected Oldham Council’s request for a government-led inquiry into the grooming gangs. As reported last week, Phillips said the council should lead a local one instead.

Those defending Phillips’s decision argue that an investigation into the rape and sexual abuse of predominantly working-class white girls at the hands of gangs of predominantly Pakistani-heritage men is unnecessary. They claim that there has already been an extensive public inquiry, in the shape of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), chaired by Alexis Jay. What’s more, they point out that the IICSA delivered its findings and recommendations as recently as 2022.

But this is a misleading argument. Launched in 2015, the IICSA was not tasked with investigating grooming gangs. It wasn’t focussed on explaining how these specific gangs were able to get away with the sexual abuse of vulnerable girls for so long. No, the spur for the IICSA was the sensational story of so-called VIP paedophile rings – a confected story that arguably got far more official attention than grooming gangs ever has.

As the BBC reported back in 2015, the IICSA would be investigating claims ‘about paedophiles in powerful places and establishment attempts to cover-up their actions’. As Peter McKelvie, a former child-protection manager, told the BBC at the time: ‘At least 20 prominent figures – including former MPs and government ministers – abused children for decades.’

These allegations were originally made by a fantasist called Carl Beech, who told the police that he had been abused as a boy by several senior Tories, including a former home secretary and prime minister. Championed in parliament by Labour’s Tom Watson, and in the media by broadcaster James O’Brien, Beech’s absurd and completely false allegations were treated as if they were good coin. They were to form the basis of the IICSA.

While grooming gangs were included, to some degree, in the IICSA, its approach to them is markedly different. This was illustrated by an IICSA ‘rapid evidence assessment’ report from 2018. It raises the issue about groups of British Pakistani men abusing white girls from impoverished backgrounds in a section called ‘Discourses of deflection’. It says that a widespread narrative that focusses on the race of these perpetrators casts ‘sexual exploitation… as a problem of South Asian men’, rather than a problem in society at large. It also claims that while the media reports widely on ‘cases of child sexual exploitation involving South Asian male perpetrators and white victims’, there is ‘no comparable coverage given to white perpetrators and black, Asian and minority-ethnic victims and survivors’.

IICSA’s 2018 interim report made no reference to grooming gangs at all. It was focussed primarily on abuse in the home, and by institutions. In 2022, the IICSA did publish a report that looked in more detail at ‘child sexual exploitation by organised networks’. It noted how ‘some of the high-profile child sexual-exploitation prosecutions have involved groups of South Asian males’, but a lack of data on ethnicity had led to a ‘heated and often polarised debate about whether there is any link between ethnicity and group-based child sexual exploitation’. It rightly observed that the failure to crack down on grooming gangs in places like Rotherham, Rochdale and Oldham was down to a fear of being called racist. But it also warned that: ‘Allowing this debate to continue without providing a proper context allows an accusatory style of debate in the public domain which is both unhelpful and divisive.’

By the time the IICSA had wrapped up, the story that sparked the inquiry had collapsed. Carl Beech, the principal informant for the allegations against Lord Brittan and the others, had been found guilty of perverting the course of justice in 2019 and exposed as a liar. He had also been convicted of child sex offences. Another informant, Steve Messham, also admitted that his allegations against former Tory Party treasurer Lord McAlpine were false.

The IICSA had been a shambolic affair from the start. Its first chair, Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, stepped down within a week of being appointed after being accused (unfairly) of bias. Her successor, Fiona Woolf, barely lasted any longer before she too had to resign in October 2014. The IICSA’s third chair, New Zealand justice Lowell Goddard, managed to remain in post between February 2015 and August 2016. But she was pushed out after she was accused of attributing Britain’s child abuse problem to Asian men – an accusation she flatly denied. It was only then that senior social worker Alexis Jay, who had led the Rotherham grooming gangs inquiry, took the reins – seeing the IICSA through to its conclusion in October 2022.

The IICSA’s problems stemmed from the fact it had been set up to investigate a fantastical and false tale of VIP paedophiles. As a result, the brutal abuse of young girls at the hands of groups of sadistic British-Pakistani men received far less attention than it should have.

Many have since accused the then PM, Rishi Sunak, of failing to act on the recommendations of the IICSA’s final report. But that is because the report itself was based on a fundamentally flawed inquiry. To his credit, Sunak did set up a special task force to investigate grooming gangs – an implicit acknowledgement of the IICSA’s inadequacy. This led to more than 500 arrests between April 2023 and May 2024.

Those who claim the IICSA has somehow settled the issue of grooming gangs are being dishonest and evasive. We have still yet to have an honest and open reckoning with what happened to these poor, young girls. Without this, the grooming-gangs scandal will continue to haunt Britain for years to come.

Correction note: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that the IICSA’s 2022 report blamed discussions around ethnicity for polarising debate. In fact, it blamed a lack of data on ethnicity for polarising debate.

It also stated that the 2018 IICSA report ‘dismissed’ news stories about grooming gangs. The report actually said the coverage was disproportionate in relation to other forms of child abuse.

James Heartfield writes and lectures on British history and politics. His latest book is Britain’s Empires: A History, 1600-2020.