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Against the background of Elon Musk vs. Keir Starmer, all about the UK grooming gang scandal

Posted on by Josh L
Against the background of Elon Musk vs. Keir Starmer, all about the UK grooming gang scandal


London:

The United Kingdom has long struggled to bury its history of grooming gangs that sexually abused thousands of young girls over several decades. For years, the authorities have been accused of deliberately turning a blind eye to horrific abuse, mostly of English children, by gangs of men who were mostly of Pakistani origin.

After a few token prosecutions in the 2010s, the issue was largely erased from public consciousness until American billionaire Elon Musk revived the debate about the threat of gangs that groom and sexually exploit young girls. In the New Year, owner X took to his microblogging platform to accuse UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer of being “complicit in the rape of Britain”.

He asked Starmer to resign because he had failed to prosecute these gangs during his tenure as Director of Public Prosecutions from 2008 to 2013. Musk also accused UK Health Secretary Jess Phillips of “covering up” for Starmer by rejecting calls for a public inquiry into alleged grooming scandals at Oldham.

Critics have argued that Musk’s intention in raising the issue was to target the Starmer government and raise voices on the UK’s far-right political spectrum. But his criticism sparked calls for a national investigation into child sexual exploitation.

History of Grooming Bands in Great Britain

The scandal came to public attention more than a decade ago in Rotherham, a run-down town in Yorkshire, where authorities were alerted to the systematic grooming and sexual assault of young white girls around 2001, according to the US publication. Free press.

However, a conviction in the case came nearly a decade later in 2010, when five men of Pakistani origin were jailed for multiple crimes against girls as young as 12. The pattern was found to be repeated in 50 towns across the UK, including Rochdale, Oxford, Telford and Bristol.

What does the data show?

According to a 2014 report by Professor Alexis Jay, more than 1,400 children were sexually abused in Rotherham alone in the 16 years between 1997 and 2013. Many of the victims were abducted, raped, sold and subjected to incredible violence, often with little to no intervention from the authorities for fear of being branded racist.

In his latest report Working group on sexual exploitation of children found that in 2023 there were more than 1.15 lakh cases of child sex offenses in the UK. Of these, 4,228 (3.7 percent) were recognized as group crimes. The task force was set up in April 2023 by then Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to tackle grooming gangs. In the first year of operation, he arrested more than 550 suspects.

The report found that 26 percent of these crimes occurred within families, and 17 percent involved gangs, including grooming gangs. Nine percent of gang crimes are reported to have taken place in schools, places of worship, community centers and other similar institutions.

In 2024 iindependent review commissioned by Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham found widespread organized child sexual exploitation in Rochdale between 2004 and 2012. It highlighted that the people who were on Rochdale Council between 2004 and 2013 did not and did not recognize very serious mistakes that affected children’s lives. Following Operation Span in 2012, nine criminals were convicted, eight of whom were British-Pakistani nationals. Since then, there have been 135 more arrests, 432 charges and 32 convictions.

Oldham’s case, which became the focus of debate after Musk’s tweet, involves the sexual exploitation of children and the alleged cover-up by the city council between 2011 and 2014. The case came to light in 2012 and led to the conviction of nine men for various crimes, including rape, human trafficking and conspiracy. However, an independent report published in 2022 said there was “no evidence” of such a cover-up, but pointed out that local authorities had failed to protect some children from grooming.

Media handling issues

Following the renewed debate on sexual grooming in the UK, questions have also been raised about how the British media is handling the issue. Matthew James Goodwin, a prominent British political scientist, recently suggested that the British media did not cover enough of the grooming gang scandal. Using the Lexis database used by researchers to track the content of British newspapers, Goodwin analyzed media coverage of the issue from 2011 to 2025.

He noted that until 2011, the media largely ignored the grooming crisis, despite widespread rumors. He credited Andrew Norfolk of The Times with starting the early coverage.

Musk vs. Starmer

On New Year’s Day, Musk accused Keir Starmer of failing to act decisively on grooming gang cases during his tenure as director of public prosecutions (2008-2013). Musk claimed that Starmer had allowed “rape gangs” to exploit vulnerable girls without being brought to justice, arguing that institutional failures were linked to Starmer’s leadership of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).

In response, Starmer hit back at Musk, saying “those who spread lies and misinformation as widely and as widely as possible, they’re not interested in victims.”

Following the scandal, UK Home Secretary Yvette Cooper announced that professionals working with children would be prosecuted if they did not report allegations of sexual abuse.

A racial issue

In her 2014 report, Professor Jay noted that “several staff described their anxiety about identifying the ethnic origins of criminals for fear of being thought of as racist; others remember clear instructions from their superiors not to do so,” according to BBC report.

In 2023, when founding a task force on grooming groups, Sunak noted that criminals had escaped justice for too long because of “political correctness.”

In the same year, Conservative MP Suella Braverman suggested in a column for the Daily Mail that “almost all” of the perpetrators of the “grooming gang phenomenon” were British-Pakistani men.

However, after Braverman’s comments, 50 researchers signed a letter warning that such claims “perpetuate misinformation, racism and division.” Tracey Brabin, the Labor mayor of West Yorkshire, also called Braverman’s remarks a “dog whistle”.

The report, published by the UK Home Office, also said there was not enough evidence to conclude that the majority of gang criminals were from Asia or Pakistan.

“Some studies suggest an overrepresentation of black and Asian offenders compared to national demographics. However, it cannot be concluded that this is representative of all group CSE (child sexual exploitation) offences,” the report says. .