Key moments
Casey no fan of commissioners
Casey was asked if she was in favour of having a permanent child sexual abuse commissioner, who could act on these issues.
She said she was “not a massive fan of constant commissioners”, despite having been victims commissioner. She said there was already a “very good” domestic violence commissioner in place in Nicole Jacobs.
Men’s violence against women the ‘bigger issue’
Casey warned that there was a “bigger issue which is men’s violence towards women is in danger of being lost”.
This is because officials have not done the job properly of collecting ethnicity data, she says.
“There are so many good men who need to step into the space of helping to do something around that,” she said.
“If we’re still arguing about data around ethnicity we wont get to the bigger issue which is no matter ethnicity, religion, age or whatever — why do men commit these offences against girls?”
“Child sex abuse that we’re talking about today is largely men — if not all men — against girls and some of them are young,” Casey said.
I’m not playing politics with victims, says Badenoch
Badenoch said she was “not doing politics” as she held a press conference with grooming gang survivors and campaigners.
“Oh, I do think that we should take the politics out of it. But who was it that said when we raised this issue, that we were pandering to the far right? That’s what brought the politics into it.”
She added: “I’m not doing politics now, when I’m in the Houses of Parliament, when I’m in the Commons, I will do politics.
“And I think that it is wrong for people to tone police those who are pointing out when something has gone wrong.
“That is what happened to Sajid Javid when he was talking about ethnicity. That is what happened to Suella Braverman.
“That is what happened to many people who were bringing up these cases. I remember hearing one survivor say that they reported that an Asian man had taken their son and the police were more interested in the language she used and said that she couldn’t describe him as that, that that was racist.
“That’s what really worries me.”
I don’t need to apologise again, says Badenoch
Kemi Badenoch has said she has already said sorry when asked if she owes an apology to survivors of grooming gangs for the Conservatives’ lack of action when in office.
At a press conference with campaigners, she said: “We have done that. I have spoken this is not the first time that I’m meeting the survivors. I have spoken to them about this.
“I have apologised. But what I find extraordinary is that more people are interested in prosecuting a government that did some things, did not conclude, rather than looking at what needs to happen right now, what I’m really worried about is that we’re spending a lot of time bringing the politics back into this when we want to take the politics out of it.
“I have spoken to survivors, and what they’re talking about right now is a full national inquiry.
“No one here has asked me for more apologies. They have heard the apologies. Apologies are easy. Apologies are easy.
“What we need to see is action. We can sit here and say sorry all day long, but what I actually want to see is an inquiry that gets to the bottom of this.”
Session ends
“We need to crack on” with change, Casey says, as she is thanked for her work by the chair.
Casey jokes about MPs’ spad sister
As Labour’s Jake Richards attempts to ask a “short” question at the end of the session, Casey jokes that “just because” his sister is a special adviser to Yvette Cooper, does not mean he gets special treatment.
Richard says the interest has been declared and that it gives “quite the opposite” of special treatment.
There are laughs in the committee room, and Casey says she’s “only joking”.
Perpetrators must be locked up
“I really want the people who have down these crimes to be locked up,” Casey said.
She urged the committee to hold the police and all other parties to account so that they bring the men who perpetrate the crimes to justice.
More research needed on cultural issues
An inquiry should be able to go “wherever they think they are able to go” in councils and organisations to find the truth, Casey said.
She refused to comment on the “cultural and societial drivers” that may have led to the crimes.
She called for a bespoke piece of research into how culture and religion may have contributed to grooming.
Bradford must be ‘open to change’
There must be a balance between local accountability and scare-mongering, Casey said.
“There are areas which say we have done serious case reviews and therefore we don’t need to do anything. I would caution against doing that,” she added and mentioned Bradford in particular.
She said she understood it could get “nasty” when people are named in reports.
Areas should ‘be ready’ to face national inquiry
“I didn’t want to get into ‘this is my hit list’. That wasn’t my job, my job was to establish facts,” Casey said, referring to a list of areas that could be investigated first.
“The government will have to move fairly quickly,” she said. “The sooner we get on with them, the sooner we can get accountability on the table.”
Victims want change
When asked, most victims would rather talk about what they want to change rather than their story, she said.
Casey said a national inquiry would be a good opportunity for victims to suggest changes, as many believe that those in power have not been “candid” with them.
‘I hope this is a line in the sand’
Casey said the speed of the report and the fact she was speaking to MPs a day after its publication showed people were taking it seriously.
‘’I think the 12 things we are asking for are not impossible, they’re not pipe dreams, they’re achievable”, she said.
‘We don’t know how much sexual abuse there is’
The audit has not been able to say accurately how much group-based child exploitation there is in the UK owing to faulty data, the report’s writers said.
“We don’t have an up-to-date prevalence survey. The last one was 12 years ago,” Casey said.
The report estimated that 500,000 children are sexually abused each year in different forms, Sarah Kincaid, a policy adviser at the Home Office, said.
Sharing the data is easier than ever
Casey said that technological advances have meant that sharing important data has never been easier or cheaper. She said there are privacy concerns, but that there are no technological reasons why there cannot be greater transparency from police forces.
“I feel very strongly on issues that are as searing as people’s race, when we know the prejudice and racism that people of colour experience in this country, to not get how you treat that data right is a different level of public irresponsibility.
“Sorry, to put it so bluntly, I didn’t put it that bluntly yesterday, but I think it’s particularly important if you are collecting those sorts of issues to get them 100 per cent right.
“And if you are not getting them 100 per cent right, please don’t use them to justify another position, which is potentially what happened.
“That may be well meaning, it may not be well meaning, but that’s how the data has run. And I think the sooner we bring a close to that — my view is collect something or don’t collect something. For God’s sake, don’t half-collect it. That’s a bloody disaster, frankly.”
Only Oldham ‘bit the bullet’ over local inquiry
Casey said that only Oldham council volunteered for a local inquiry to “find the truth”.
The mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham’s assurance reviews were “extremely important” but ultimately failed to “get to the bottom of it”. She also says the serious case reviews did not get to the truth, which is why she is calling for a statutory inquiry.
Survivors are ‘really angry’
“Victims and survivors are really angry that things haven’t changed,” Casey told the committee.
“I don’t think they feel confident in what’s going on at the moment,” she said.
“When children are small, we as a state have eyes on them,” she said. Casey outlines how these children were failed by the state because the suspects were not “doubled down” on.
Child expolitation v child abuse
Casey said that there was a over-representation of Pakistani men in cases of child sexual exploitation, but not for child abuse, where white men were more commonly suspects.
Child sexual abuse is when a child or young person is forced or tricked into sexual activities. They might not understand that what’s happening is abuse or that it’s wrong. Child sexual exploitation is a type of sexual abuse when an adult tricks a child into performing sexual acts by offering them something. This might include gifts, drugs, money, status or even affection, according to the Children’s Charity.
Casey: Child sexual exploitation is still happening
Child sexual abuse is “still happening” today and people aren’t looking “hard enough”, Casey says.
Casey says that rape law has not changed since 2003 and she calls for legistlation to introduce mandatory rape charges for all adults who had sex with 13 to 15-year-olds.
She says that the data being described as “incomplete and unreliable” is an understatement, and that it is a “public irresponsibility” to not record race correctly.
“Don’t half-collect it,” she says in reference to the unsystematic recording of race data.
There was a sense of “Oh dear God, what have you done here?” she said, when looking at many forces who had not recorded data properly.
Casey makes opening statement
She says she “grateful” to come to speak at the home affairs committee.
Casey says she was “somewhat surprised” when she was asked by the PM to conduct an audit, but it was the “right thing to do”.
“I’m happy I’ve done it as challenging a project as it was,” she said.
It was “hard to imagine” that things have not improved over the past decade, she said. “I have thought over the last few months, should I have done more?” she asks.
“We’ve got to put children at the heart of any discourse,” she added.
How The Times exposed the cover-up
It was not until The Times published an explosive investigation by Andrew Norfolk in 2011 that the full scale of the scandal, and the cover-up, began to emerge.
A “culture of silence” had for years facilitated “the sexual exploitation of hundreds of young girls by criminal pimping gangs” in towns and cities in northern England and the midlands, The Times’s front page said.
“Most of the victims are white and most of the convicted offenders are of Pakistani heritage, unlike other known models of child-sex offending in Britain, including child abuse initiated by online grooming, in which the vast majority of perpetrators are white.”
The story led to a national outcry and was followed by a flood of reporting by Norfolk, who was soon promoted to become the newspaper’s chief investigative reporter.
Pakistani suspects overrepresented in areas
A study of 323 suspects in Rotherham found 64 per cent were of a Pakistani ethnic background, despite making up only 4 per cent of the population.
In Greater Manchester, 54 per cent of suspects of child sex abuse were of an Asian ethnicity, more than double the proportion of the general population.
In West Yorkshire, 35 per cent of the suspects were of Asian ethnicity compared with a ratio of 16 per cent in the county’s population as a whole.
What did the review recommend?
• The police should be mandated to collect ethnicity and nationality data for all suspects in child sex abuse and criminal exploitation cases.
• Authorities held an “ambivalent attitude” to teenage girls who were too often judged as adults, leading them to become criminalised for offences they committed while being groomed.
• Victims criminalised for offences such as child prostitution should have their criminal convictions expunged.
• An overhaul of rape laws was needed to introduce mandatory rape charges for all adults who had sex with 13 to 15-year-olds.
• Taxi licensing laws needed tightening because men were continuing to use them to prey on vulnerable girls.
• Ministers should commission research into factors behind group-based child sexual exploitation, including online offending and cultural aspects.
Labour is being ‘honest’ about gangs
A minister said “we need to be honest about what the evidence shows” on grooming gangs.
Discussing the home secretary’s statement to the Commons, the transport secretary Heidi Alexander told Today on BBC Radio 4: “I heard Yvette say very clearly: ‘Look there is a disproportionality in terms of the involvement of Pakistani and Asian men in child grooming cases’.
“And so we need to be honest about what the evidence shows us, and that’s what the home secretary was doing yesterday.
“We’ve been in Government for 11 months, the home secretary in January ordered police forces to reopen the cases related to child sexual exploitation and grooming gangs. Over 800 cases have now been reopened by police forces.
“We are getting on with implementing the recommendations from the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse which took seven years.”
Tories did ‘precisely zero’ on gangs
Grooming gangs should be brought to justice regardless of the “colour of their skin”, a minister has said.
The national inquiry into grooming gangs will have the power to compel witnesses and evidence to “stamp out these vile heinous crimes”, the transport secretary Heidi Alexander told GB News.
“And I should just say, I don’t care who is committing these crimes; I don’t care what the colour of their skin is, they should be brought to justice and the victims should be listened to and should get the justice that they deserve.”
The Tories took “precisely zero action” on recommendations in the previous Alexis Jay report into child sexual abuse despite having 20 months from when it was published before the general election, Alexander said.
What did Casey find?
The report, published yesterday, found that flawed data was used repeatedly to dismiss claims about Asian grooming gangs as sensationalised, biased or untrue, while an institutional view persisted that there was an overwhelming problem with white perpetrators when “that can’t be proved”.
An accurate assessment of the ethnicity of grooming gang members was impossible because the data was not recorded for two thirds of perpetrators as police were discouraged from doing so by local authorities “due to fears of raising tensions”.
