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Child sexual abuse in the United Kingdom has been reported in the country throughout its history.[1] In about 90% of cases the abuser is a person known to the child.[2] However, cases during the second half of the twentieth century, involving religious institutions, schools, popular entertainers, politicians, military personnel, and other officials, have been revealed and widely publicised since the beginning of the twenty-first century.[citation needed] Child sexual abuse rings in numerous towns and cities across the UK have also drawn considerable attention.[citation needed]
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In 2012, celebrity Jimmy Savile was posthumously identified as having been a predatory child sexual abuser for the previous six decades. Subsequent investigations, including those of Operation Yewtree, led to the conviction of several prominent "household names" in the media, allegations against prominent politicians, and calls for a public inquiry to establish what had been known by those responsible for the institutions where abuse had taken place. An Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse was announced by the British Home Secretary, Theresa May, in July 2014, to examine how the country's institutions have handled their duty of care to protect children from sexual abuse.[3]
The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Command identify four broad categories of child sexual abuse in the United Kingdom, which they describe as the four "key threats" to children.
The proliferation of indecent images of children – particularly the production of still, moving and live-streaming of child abuse images. Live streaming of abuse of third world children for consumption by UK paedophiles is increasing. Perpetrators are being increasingly found and brought to justice. Tracking down and safeguarding third world child victims is more difficult. There are calls for better funding for the National Crime Agency so these crimes can more easily be prevented.[4]
Online child sexual exploitation – with a focus on the systematic sexual exploitation of multiple child victims on the internet.
Transnational child sexual abuse – including both transient and resident UK nationals and British citizens committing sexual offences abroad.
Contact child sexual abuse – particularly the threat posed by organised crime-associated child sexual exploitation and the risks around missing children. Within this category there are a number of recognised types.
Firstly, contact child sexual abuse by lone offenders.
Secondly, contact child sexual abuse by group offenders and offending associated with street gangs, of which there are two types.[5]
The true number of offences remains doubtful, generally assumed to be larger, due to expected unreported cases of child abuse.[7] Some 90% of the sexually abused children were abused by people who they knew, and about one out of every three abused children did not tell anyone else about it.[2] The vast majority of child sex offenders in England and Wales are male, with men representing 98% of all defendants in 2015/16. A 2020 report by the Centre of Expertise on Child Sexual Abuse stated that "In the records of defendants prosecuted for child sexual abuse offences" among those in which ethnic background was recorded "the vast majority were white (89%); 6% were Asian, 3% were Black, 1% were from mixed ethnic backgrounds and 1% were from "other" ethnic backgrounds."[8] The 2021 Census shows whites make up 81.7% of the general population in England and Wales, 9.3% identify as Asian, 4% identify as black, 2.2% identify as mixed race and 1% identify as 'other'.[9] The Ministry of Justices prison population statistics (2020) show the total number of convicted sexual offence prisoners with an associated child sexual abuse offence to be 8,345. Of this number 43 did not have their ethnicity recorded or stated. Of those with recorded ethnicity, white prisoners were the majority with a total of 7,353. 464 were Asian, 310 were black and 175 were mixed and 'other'.[10] A 2020 report on child sexual exploitation published by the Home Office warns of a "potential for bias and inaccuracies in the way that ethnicity data is collected" with the possibility of "greater attention being paid to certain types of offenders."[11]
In the 11th century, surviving ordinances of Canterbury Cathedral revealed that a process was in place to minimise opportunities for clergy guilty of past abuses to engage in further illicit sexual activities with minors.[13] Several organisations in the United Kingdom work towards the goal of preventing sexual abuse. These include the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and the Lucy Faithful Foundation. Prevention initiatives have traditionally involved providing information to children and parents about sexual abuse and how to prevent it. Other forms of prevention involve disruption activities where the children can be removed from the family home or area in which they are living, or work can be done to make it more difficult for people to sexually abuse children.
Austerity led to cuts in policing so that the police no longer have the resources to investigate possible offences satisfactorily, or to safeguard potential victims. Nazir Afzal (formerly the Crown Prosecution Service lead on child sexual abuse and violence against women and girls) said, "Austerity has come at the wrong time. When finally voices are being heard, finally authorities are beginning to do their job properly and finally the NGO sector are being listened to, there isn't any money to go around. They are doing this with one hand behind their back. As a consequence, clearly people will not get justice".[14]
Nazir Afzal is also concerned that there are few prosecutions of grooming gangs in the south of England, Afzal fears people in the south are not looking hard enough. Afzal said,[14]
The perceptions is that northern towns and the Midlands have got a better handle on it, but London, the south-east, the south-west really are not focusing on it and claiming they don't have any problems. ... There have been hardly any cases south of Birmingham. What the hell is going on? Is it because there is no problem? I don't accept that at all. Is it because it's not a priority? I hope that's not true. I do think it's that thing about not turning over a stone.
In 2023 Stephen Cottrell, archbishop of York, said that there was a crisis of safeguarding within the Church of England regarding church-related abuse, saying "I imagine Jesus weeps over this situation ... And I know many of us are not far from those tears as well".[15]
Group-based child sexual exploitation and localised grooming are terms used to describe a series of group-based child and adolescent sexual exploitation cases in the UK,[16] of which the youngest victim was 12 and the oldest was 18.[17]
A 2013 report by the House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee describes a group first making contact with the child in a public place.[18] After the group's initial contact with the child, offers of treats (takeaway food, cigarettes, drugs) persuade the child to maintain the relationship.[18] Sometimes a boy similar in age presents himself as a "boyfriend"; this person arranges for the child to be raped by other members of the group.[18] Children may end up being raped by dozens of these group members, and may be trafficked to connected groups in other towns.[18] The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre defines "local grooming" as follows:
Localized grooming is a form of sexual exploitation – previously referred to as 'on street grooming' in the media –where children have been groomed and sexually exploited by an offender, having initially met in a location outside their home. This location is usually in public, such as a park, cinema, on the street or at a friend's house. Offenders often act together, establishing a relationship with a child or children before sexually exploiting them. Some victims of 'street grooming' may believe that the offender is an older 'boyfriend'; these victims introduce their peers to the offender group who might then go on to be sexually exploited as well. Abuse may occur at several locations within a region and on several occasions. 'Localised grooming' was the term used by CEOP in the intelligence requests issued to police forces and other service agencies to define the data we wished to receive.[19]
A television documentary was broadcast in August 2003, in which reporters uncovered details of an 18-month police and social services investigation into allegations that young British Asian men were targeting under-age girls for sex, drugs and prostitution in the West Yorkshire town of Keighley.[20] The Leeds-based Coalition for the Removal of Pimping (Crop) sought to bring this behaviour to national attention from at least 2010.[21] In November 2010, the Rotherham sex grooming case saw several convictions of child sexual abusers. In 2012, members of the Rochdale sex trafficking gang were convicted on various counts, and in 2016, following the largest child sexual exploitation investigation in the UK, "bigger than high profile cases in Rochdale and Rotherham",[22] 18 men in the Halifax child sex abuse ring case were sentenced to over 175 years in prison.[23]
These cases prompted several investigations looking into how prevalent British Asian backgrounds were in localised grooming; the first was by Quilliam in December 2017, which released a report entitled "Group Based Child Sexual Exploitation – Dissecting Grooming Gangs", which claimed 84% of offenders were of South Asian heritage.[24] However this report was "fiercely" criticised for its unscientific nature and poor methodology by child sexual exploitation experts Ella Cockbain and Waqas Tufail, in their paper "Failing Victims, Fuelling Hate: Challenging the Harms of the 'Muslim grooming gangs' Narrative" which was published in January 2020.[25][26]
A further investigation was carried out by the British government in December 2020, which concluded that:[27][28]
Beyond specific high-profile cases, the academic literature highlights significant limitations to what can be said about links between ethnicity and this form of offending. Research has found that group-based CSE offenders are most commonly White. Some studies suggest an over-representation of Black and Asian offenders relative to the demographics of national populations. However, it is not possible to conclude that this is representative of all group-based CSE offending. This is due to issues such as data quality problems, the way the samples were selected in studies, and the potential for bias and inaccuracies in the way that ethnicity data is collected ... Based on the existing evidence, and our understanding of the flaws in the existing data, it seems most likely that the ethnicity of group-based CSE offenders is in line with CSA [child sexual abuse] more generally and with the general population, with the majority of offenders being White.
Writing in The Guardian, Cockbain and Tufail wrote of the report that "The two-year study by the Home Office makes very clear that there are no grounds for asserting that Muslim or Pakistani-heritage men are disproportionately engaged in such crimes, and, citing our research, it confirmed the unreliability of the Quilliam claim".[29] The British government originally refused to release the report but eventually did so after public pressure.[30]
British media has previously been accused of perpetuating Islamophobia by "conflating the faith of Islam with criminality, such as the headlines 'Muslim sex grooming'", as well as pursuing sensationalist coverage.[31] A number of academics have described the controversy as a moral panic.[32] In one academic paper, media outlets, including The Times, The Daily Mail's Mail Online, The Guardian and The Telegraph, were accused of boosting the moral panic by creating "Folk devils" from a perceived masculine threat in young South Asian men, especially in the wake of various high profile sex abuse scandals.[33]
The Muslim Council of Britain has called on investigations to "adhere to the facts of the matter, rather than deploying deeply divisive, racially charged rhetoric that amplifies far-right narratives and demonises an entire community."[34]
Rishi Sunak has called arguments against using the term "grooming gangs" as political correctness that fails victims.[35] Other Conservative Party politicians, such as Home Secretary Suella Braverman, argue that use of the phrase "grooming gang" is simply "unfashionable facts."[34] Braverman wrote in a 2023 opinion piece that "grooming gang" members in the United Kingdom were "groups of men, almost all British-Pakistani, who hold cultural attitudes completely incompatible with British values". In response, the Independent Press Standards Organisation issued a correction stating that Braverman's article was "misleading", since it did not make it explicit that she was talking about the Rotherham, Rochdale and Telford child sexual abuse scandals in particular.[36] In response, many organisations called on her to withdraw her comments due to amplifying far-right ideologies.[34]
In response, researchers and organisations, including the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) have argued that focusing primarily on South Asian men simply fuels "misinformation, racism and division.”[37][38] NSPCC argues that "a singular focus on groups of male abusers of British-Pakistani origin draws attention away from so many other sources of harm".[38]
In 2013, BBC Inside Out London investigated allegations made by members of the Sikh community that British Sikh girls living inside Britain were being targeted by men who pretend(ed) to be Sikhs.[39] However an investigation by the Sikh scholar Katy Sian of the University of York found no truth to the allegations and instead found it was an allegation being pushed by extremist Sikh groups.[40][41] Further reports compiled by the British government and child sex exploitation scholars also confirmed there was no evidence to this.[25][42]
This is an incomplete list of notable British personalities who have been convicted of child sexual abuse. It does not include notable people, such as Jimmy Savile and Cyril Smith, who were publicly accused of abuse after their deaths, but never prosecuted.
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