London’s grooming gangs shame Sadiq Khan

In a now notorious exchange, London mayor Sadiq Khan said last year there was no ‘indication’ that grooming gangs – of the kind that have plagued towns such as Rotherham and Telford – exist in London. Evidence uncovered by the BBC last week has exposed the foolishness of this claim. It is now indisputable that vulnerable women and girls, some as young as 14, are being lured into a world of rape and exploitation by grooming gangs in London.

The revelations make for bleak reading. Some women said they had been raped as ‘payment’ for unpaid drug debts. Others said they were groomed specifically for sex.

The BBC investigation followed a decision by the Metropolitan Police, in October, to reopen 1,200 cases of child sexual exploitation from between 2010 and 2025. The decision was made by the Met after an investigation by the Standard found that many young girls in London reported allegations of rape, but were met with indifference by police.

Khan’s belief that London was somehow immune from grooming gangs was always fanciful, if not outright dishonest. Perpetrators have tended to work on taxi networks and in fast-food outlets, taking advantage of unsupervised young women – many of them also victims of a crumbling care system. Obviously, the capital isn’t short on taxis and fast-food shops.

Met deputy assistant commissioner Kevin Southworth has said that grooming-gang activity is ‘very high’ on the force’s ‘threat and risk radar’, and said it was committed to putting as much of its resources into tackling the problem ‘as possible’. These comments are indeed a relief, particularly when Khan himself, who is directly responsible for policing in London, has shown such little interest in the scandal.

The findings of the BBC’s investigation into London’s grooming gangs present a complex picture – one that includes drug dealing, phone theft and even weapons trading. But it also undeniably shows vulnerable women and girls being groomed for sex.

One survivor the BBC spoke to called ‘Milly’ (not her real name) recounted her experiences with grooming gangs in London. It is a mirror image of what has taken place for decades in towns such as Rotherham, Rochdale and Oldham. As a 15-year-old girl, she ‘was getting passed around different men every night – sometimes 10 or 15 a month’. She was plied with alcohol and drugs before she was raped. ‘Milly’ revealed that the perpetrators were South Asian, with some commenting on the fact that she was ‘a nice, young white girl’.

Another London survivor, ‘Ruth’, was also exploited for sex. She told the BBC that men of South Asian heritage ‘took advantage’ of her feeling ‘low’, by giving her expensive gifts to make her feel wanted in exchange for sex.

It is important to note that the gangs operating in London come from much ‘wider ethnic backgrounds’ than in other towns – reflecting the capital’s demographic diversity. ‘We do not see a disproportionate number of any one particular ethnicity or nationality within our suspects’, Southworth said.

To this extent, the grooming-gangs phenomenon in London appears to be different from other parts of the UK. Last year, Louise Casey’s audit into the scandal found that men of Pakistani Muslim heritage were overrepresented among the perpetrators. Casey lamented the lack of ethnicity reporting by police, yet concluded that there was enough evidence to show ‘disproportionate numbers of men from Asian ethnic backgrounds’ were behind the crimes across three regions – Greater Manchester, South Yorkshire and West Yorkshire. Her report also found that police ‘shied away’ from pursuing grooming gangs out of fear of being labelled racist.

Sadiq Khan was wrong to bat away claims that grooming gangs are rampant in the capital. He appears to be as deluded on this issue as he is about every other. There is now mounting evidence that shows it is a problem that should be treated with the utmost seriousness by London’s relevant institutions, such as City Hall and the Met. When it comes to this never-ending scandal, no stone should be left unturned.

Rakib Ehsan is the author of Beyond Grievance: What the Left Gets Wrong about Ethnic Minorities, which is available to order on Amazon.