No end of a cover up?

More on the English rape gang scandal

In my last post I expressed a hope that Elon Musk’s intemperate intrusion into British politics might, in spite of its poison, inspire a more sustained focus on the plight of children who have been, and still are being, groomed and tortured by rape gangs. It was not to be, at least not yet. Musk’s posts on X have sparked much debate, but almost all of it, mirroring his tone, has been vicious political point scoring. Conservatives are blaming Labour, Labour are blaming Conservatives, and Reform’s 5 MPs are blaming Labour and Conservatives (while fighting each other over whether or not to support Musk’s demand that ‘Tommy Robinson’ should be freed from jail). Even Andrew Tate has muscled in on the act (yes, that Andrew Tate). Tate has set up a new political party that he claims will tackle the rape gangs, and, true to form, he has threatened to take legal action against one of the Telford rape gang survivors who called out his hypocrisy (the silencing worked. Her response to his intimidation was “I’m sorry. I’m quiet.”)

Throughout the furore, survivors have again been ignored. This is, in part, because many of them have refused to be interviewed by media that routinely trashed them in the past. But, in the main, it’s because those media are more interested in how the issue affects the fortunes of different political parties, or how it can be used as a weapon in ongoing debates about immigration policy.

One of the few positive outcomes of Musk’s intervention has been that the UK government has finally been made to agree, after a delay of more than two years, to implement two of the 20 recommendations in the Report of IICSA, the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse - they will establish a single data set, and introduce mandatory reporting. The government has also agreed to implement one of the 3 recommendations in the separate report on Child Sexual Exploitation - they will make grooming an aggravating factor in the sentencing of child sex offenders. But the Government has rejected a demand, made by many of the survivors, for an independent national inquiry into the rape gangs. To rub salt in the wounds, the Prime Minister has implied that survivors calling for a national inquiry are wanting to “jump on a bandwagon of the far right.”

The demand for a national inquiry

The Government has given two reasons for rejecting calls for a national inquiry. First, that its priority is to implement the 2022 IICSA Report recommendations. A national inquiry, it claims, would further delay that much needed implementation. Second, that we already have the IICSA Report. Another inquiry, it claims, would be unnecessary and expensive duplication.

The first objection is, frankly, ridiculous. There is no reason why a competent government can’t get on with implementing the IICSA recommendations, at the same time as an independent panel is working to understand the bigger picture around the rape gangs. And there’s no reason why that panel, given appropriate powers, shouldn’t be expected to report within a year. The second objection misrepresents the scope of the IICSA report, and how well it covered the exploitative element in abuse by rape gangs. Child sexual exploitation is a specific pattern of abuse. It typically involves torture, trafficking, and repeated gang rapes, in addition to the grooming, abuse, and institutional denigration of victims that are common to all forms of child sexual abuse.

The IICSA report took 7 years to complete, yet it is not a coherent body of work. Why it took so long, and why three Chairs needed to resign before Alexis Jay was drafted in as Chair, have never been satisfactorily explained.

IICSA was supposed to investigate all forms of child sexual abuse. It produced thorough supplementary reports on, for example, abuse in the Roman Catholic Church and in Lambeth Council children’s homes. The supplementary report covering Child sexual exploitation by organised networks is, in sharp contrast, far from thorough. The Inquiry Panel chose to focus on six case studies, and to exclude cases like Rotherham and Rochdale that had already been investigated at a local level. So no attempt was made to identify common patterns in perpetrator behaviour, or possible links between rape gangs in different localities - another aspect of IISCA’s work that has never been satisfactorily explained.

The BBC has publicised a claim by the former police officer who led an investigation into an Oxford rape gang, that a national inquiry is not needed because “we’ve done the national inquiry”. It’s a claim that has been repeated many times over the past week, including by IICSA Chair Alexis Jay herself. But it’s based on a failure to appreciate the limited scope of the IICSA report, and it perpetuates the cover up.

The IICSA child sexual exploitation report made no attempt to estimate the scale of the problem, not nationally, and not even in the chosen six case study areas. Instead, the report drew attention to how little was known about the extent and operation of rape gangs. It highlighted the fact that, far from improving, information about the gangs had actually worsened over time:

“ Less is now known and understood about the prevalence of this appalling crime than was the case prior to 2015, An accurate picture could not be gleaned from either criminal justice records or children’s social care data…The inquiry did not receive a reliable picture of child sexual exploitation from the six case studies that provided data.”

(IICSA - Child sexual exploitation by organised networks report, 2022)

This week’s government announcement that it will establish a single data set should yield more reliable information about the prevalence of rape gangs. But this will do nothing to improve our understanding of why there was so little institutional interest in collecting information on this appalling crime, and what this reveals about how agencies have viewed vulnerable children.

“Greater Manchester Police repeatedly failed to investigate and actively hindered investigators into widespread and known child sexual exploitation … Unfortunately in my experience abusers of children have learnt that the police do not actively pursue child sexual exploitation. Indeed the evidence in Manchester and elsewhere shows that most abusers are not investigated or prosecuted. As such, the abusers feel a sense of impunity and the abused children learn that no one will act on their disclosures of abuse, nor protect them from abuse. They are in many respects ‘forgotten children’”.

(Maggie Oliver, IICSA witness statement, 2020)

Many survivors have demanded a national inquiry - to meet a need for their experiences to be acknowledged, for their perpetrators to be brought to justice, and for the supposed protectors who failed them to be held to account. Survivors also suggest that without a deeper understanding of past systemic failures it will be difficult to provide more effective protection for future generations of potential victims.

The call for a national inquiry has been hijacked by political opportunists. That should not be a reason to dismiss it.

Oldham

In the unedifying public debate over who is most to blame for England’s ongoing rape gang scandal, the request by survivors in Oldham (Greater Manchester) for a government led inquiry into the activities of rape gangs in the town seems to have been forgotten. Yet publication of Jess Phillips’ response, insisting that any local inquiry should be commissioned by the council itself rather than by the government, was what Elon Musk had pounced on. His smearing of Jess Phillips as a “rape genocide apologist” was an unjustified misogynist attack on a woman who has, prior to becoming an MP, worked for Women’s Aid. She had written to Oldham council in her role as a government minister. Questions about why the government should be so insistent on Oldham council conducting its own inquiry have been swamped by Musk’s personalised attack.

“We want justice and we want our voices to be heard so they need to now start taking that on and listening to what we want, which is a government enquiry in Oldham ….I have still not had any justice against any professional that has been involved in my case at all.”

(Samantha Walker-Roberts, We want justice, Independent 8 Jan 2025)

Social media are awash with claims of links between prominent local politicians in Oldham and members of rape gangs - a picture that is all too reminiscent of that in Rotherham. It’s not just local councillors. Government ministers who are local MPs feature as well - Jim McMahon has been a Leader of Oldham council, and is now Minister of State for Local Government, while Angela Rayner is Deputy Prime Minister.

I once worked in the Chief Executive’s department of a local authority, so I know that stories of shady dealings by local councillors can be unreliable. But if only a quarter of the rumours about Oldham council were shown to be correct, the findings of an independent inquiry would be deeply embarrassing for the UK government. You’d think, if there was no truth in those rumours, that they’d welcome independent scrutiny, to put an end to stories of collusion between Labour politicians and rape gangs. The fact that they want Oldham council to supervise its own investigation does nothing to quash suspicions that their main objective is to perpetuate a cover up.