Changes for page Grooming Gangs

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25	25	* **Huddersfield (Operation Tendersea, 2017–2018):** In West Yorkshire, a massive investigation into grooming in Huddersfield led to 20 men (mostly of Pakistani and Bangladeshi origin) being convicted in 2018 for raping and abusing a group of teenage girls. The trials had to be split into three because of the number of defendants. In total, the Huddersfield gang received over 220 years in prison sentences. The case stood out for its scale (one of the largest single grooming gang prosecutions in the UK) and again showed similar patterns – vulnerable young girls, often from broken homes, were lured by older men, given alcohol or drugs, and then repeatedly assaulted, sometimes by several men in one night. An added controversy was the temporary {{tooltip label="reporting restriction" event="click" style="width: 320px; text-align: left;"}}Courts may restrict contemporaneous reporting to avoid prejudicing a trial; breaches risk contempt of court under the Contempt of Court Act 1981. [[Judiciary guidance>>https://www.judiciary.uk/guidance-and-resources/media-guidance/]].{{/tooltip}} on the case, which, when broken by an activist, led to a high-profile {{tooltip label="contempt of court" event="click" style="width: 320px; text-align: left;"}}Publishing information that risks serious prejudice to active proceedings can be contempt; penalties include fines or imprisonment. [[UK Courts: Media Guidance>>https://www.judiciary.uk/guidance-and-resources/media-guidance/]].{{/tooltip}} incident. Huddersfield’s case fed into the narrative that these crimes were occurring in many northern towns beyond just the notorious examples. {{footnote}} https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leeds-65276358{{/footnote}} [[image:1750218979305-658.png]]
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27	27	* **Newcastle (Operation Sanctuary, 2014–2017):** In contrast to some other towns, **Newcastle’s grooming gang** investigation revealed a more ethnically mixed group of offenders. In 2017, as part of {{tooltip label="Operation Sanctuary" event="click" style="width: 320px; text-align: left;"}}Northumbria Police’s umbrella operation tackling sexual exploitation and related offences; included covert tactics and safeguarding partnerships. [[BBC coverage>>https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-40879427]].{{/tooltip}}, Newcastle authorities convicted 17 men and one woman for grooming and abusing at least 22 girls and young women. The perpetrators in that network included people of Pakistani, Indian, Iraqi-Kurdish, Bangladeshi, and Eastern European background as well as white British individuals. This diversity underscored that grooming gangs were //not exclusive to one ethnicity//, even if certain areas saw particular groups predominating. Newcastle’s approach was cited as proactive: they ran a {{tooltip label="covert operation" event="click" style="width: 320px; text-align: left;"}}Use of undercover policing/surveillance and controlled test purchases; often supported by an independent victim witness. See College of Policing overview on covert tactics [[here>>https://www.app.college.police.uk/app-content/investigations/covert-policing/]].{{/tooltip}} with a victim who acted as an informant, resulting in a wave of arrests. Nonetheless, a serious case review after Operation Sanctuary still found that earlier warnings had been missed and victims had been dismissed as “child prostitutes” by some officials – echoing themes seen elsewhere. Newcastle’s police and council responded with one of the country’s first {{tooltip label="Complex Abuse units" event="click" style="width: 320px; text-align: left;"}}Teams set up for abuse involving multiple victims/offenders across agencies/locations. NSPCC Learning: Complex abuse."}}
28		-[[Complex Abuse units>>https://learning.nspcc.org.uk/child-abuse-and-neglect/child-sexual-exploitation/child-sexual-exploitation-by-organised-networks]]{{/tooltip}} dedicated to such cases and made efforts to share lessons learned nationally. {{footnote}} https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-40879427{{/footnote}} [[image:_97268047_sanctuary_18_comp.jpg.webp||alt="Northumbria Police Operation Shelter defendants who were convicted/pleaded guilty of offences including conspiracy to incite prostitution, rape and drugs"]]
	28	+[[Complex Abuse units>>https://learning.nspcc.org.uk/research-resources/2022/child-sexual-exploitation-organised-networks-investigation-report]]{{/tooltip}} dedicated to such cases and made efforts to share lessons learned nationally. {{footnote}} https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-40879427{{/footnote}} [[image:_97268047_sanctuary_18_comp.jpg.webp||alt="Northumbria Police Operation Shelter defendants who were convicted/pleaded guilty of offences including conspiracy to incite prostitution, rape and drugs"]]
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30	30	**Other Towns:** Group-based child sexual exploitation has come to light in numerous other locales across England and Wales. Cases in **Derby**, **Bristol**,{{footnote}} https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-30078503{{/footnote}} **Aylesbury**,{{footnote}} https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/sep/07/aylesbury-child-abuse-ring-six-men-handed-long-jail-terms{{/footnote}} **Peterborough**,{{footnote}} https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/feb/20/peterborough-child-sex-gang-sentenced{{/footnote}} **Halifax**,{{footnote}} https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leeds-47475311{{/footnote}} **Oxford**,{{footnote}} https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/may/14/oxford-gang-guilty-grooming-girls{{/footnote}} **Blackburn**,{{footnote}} https://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/news/national/16995621.20-men-guilty-sex-abuse-major-grooming-gang/{{/footnote}} **Keighley**,{{footnote}} https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2kv2nvj1eo{{/footnote}} **Banbury,{{footnote}} https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/jun/17/public-must-keep-calm-over-ethnicity-of-grooming-gang-offenders-says-louise-casey{{/footnote}}** and more have led to convictions of grooming networks since 2010. For example, in Aylesbury, six men (of South Asian ethnicity) were convicted in 2015 of abusing girls as young as 12; in Bristol, a 2014 case involved 13 Somali-background men exploiting teenagers; in Peterborough, a gang of mainly Czech Roma men was convicted in 2015 ({{tooltip}}Operation Erle was Cambridgeshire Constabulary’s probe into organised CSE in Peterborough.{{/tooltip}}). Each case exposed remarkably similar failings: victims were often known to social services, flagged as at-risk, or repeatedly reported missing from care, yet their abuse continued due to poor communication and disbelief. Collectively, these cases demonstrate that grooming gang crimes were not isolated incidents but part of a broader pattern of organized child sexual exploitation that many authorities struggled to comprehend or were reluctant to openly address. In all cases the perpetrators were overwhelmingly nonwhite.
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103	103	* **Poor Coordination and Record-Keeping:** Another failure was the sheer disarray of information within and between agencies. The grooming cases fell through the cracks of various systems – police, social services, schools, health – none of which shared data well. Perpetrators exploited this fragmentation. For instance, an offender banned in one town could simply move to another to continue offending, since intelligence wasn’t systematically passed on. Casey’s audit notes that police data on CSE was //“stored across multiple systems which do not communicate… within a force [or] between forces”//. Additionally, vital data like ethnicity, vehicle info (e.g., taxi license details), etc., were not collected or linked to suspect profiles. Basic policing work was sometimes lacking: victims or their parents would give police names, nicknames, car plate numbers of suspects, only for these not to be properly followed up or cross-referenced. When the Greater Manchester review (2020) revisited old files, they found numerous leads that had been dropped without investigation. Similarly, the 2013 Oxfordshire serious case review pointed out that even when social workers had lists of suspected exploiters, there was no effective mechanism to get police to act on that intelligence unless a victim made a formal complaint.
104	104	* **Lack of Accountability and Transparency:** Even after failures were identified, few officers or officials faced serious consequences. Often those in charge during the worst periods retired or moved jobs with pensions intact. In Rotherham, it took until after the Jay Report for the Chief Constable and others to step down under pressure. In other areas, inquiries noted a //“reluctance to accept the need for people to understand what happened”// and a defensive culture. Whistleblowers within the system (like some youth workers who raised alarms) were sometimes ostracized or silenced. This created a chilling effect where professionals feared speaking out. The failure to hold anyone accountable for so long eroded trust – victims and their families felt deeply betrayed. As Casey put it, //“institutions which bear responsibility for how these crimes were handled then fail to give victims the accountability they seek”//, resulting in victims feeling they have no choice but to call for independent inquiries. Only in recent years have we seen some consequences: e.g., South Yorkshire Police were heavily criticized, Greater Manchester Police’s Chief Constable publicly apologized, and a few officials (like a Rochdale social services director) faced disciplinary processes. But by and large, accountability has been elusive.
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106		-Summarizing these failures, the Casey audit talks of //“blindness, ignorance, prejudice, defensiveness and even good but misdirected intentions”// combining in a *//“collective failure to properly deter and prosecute offenders or to protect children from harm.”// In essence, many of the very agencies meant to safeguard children ended up **enabling the abusers**, whether through neglect, incompetence, or cowardice. The consequences were devastating: countless girls (and some boys) endured additional years of abuse that could have been stopped. Many victims later said that the **betrayal by authorities** – being called liars or “sluts” by those they begged for help – was as traumatizing as the abuse itself. It is only in hindsight that policing bodies have acknowledged these failures. There is now an effort to instill a culture of //“believe the victim, investigate thoroughly”// from the outset and to treat CSE with the same seriousness as, say, terrorism or homicide. Nonetheless, rebuilding trust will take time. As of 2025, one of the audit’s immediate calls is to **track down the perpetrators still at large**: //“there are far too many perpetrators walking freely today who have evaded justice for too long and we should seek to put that right,”// wrote Casey. This indicates that while strides have been made, significant law enforcement work remains to bring all perpetrators to book and to decisively end the era of impunity.
	106	+Summarizing these failures, the Casey audit talks of //“blindness, ignorance, prejudice, defensiveness and even good but misdirected intentions”// combining in a *//“collective failure to properly deter and prosecute offenders or to protect children from harm.”// In essence, many of the very agencies meant to safeguard children ended up **enabling the abusers**, whether through neglect, incompetence, or cowardice. The consequences were devastating: countless girls (and some boys) endured additional years of abuse that could have been stopped. Many victims later said that the **betrayal by authorities** – being called liars or “sluts” by those they begged for help – was as traumatizing as the abuse itself. It is only in hindsight that policing bodies have acknowledged these failures. There is now an effort to instill a culture of //“believe the victim, investigate thoroughly”// from the outset and to treat CSE with the same seriousness as, say, terrorism or homicide. Nonetheless, rebuilding trust will take time. As of 2025, one of the audit’s immediate calls is to **track down the perpetrators still at large**: //“there are far too many perpetrators walking freely today who have evaded justice for too long and we should seek to put that right,”// wrote Casey. This indicates that while strides have been made, significant law enforcement work remains to bring all perpetrators to book and to decisively end the era of impunity. This is also not even a new phenomenon, there is evidence of this same kind of targeted sexual  abuse against British schoolgirls as far back
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108	108	== Controversies ==
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