British police officers have been told not to be “distracted” by coverage of grooming gangs – with “perpetrators of all races, ethnicities and genders” posing a threat to children.
The national police lead for child protection, Assistant Chief Constable Becky Riggs, told officers that “group-based offending occurs in various forms, in diverse settings, and across different ethnicities”.
Riggs, who took on the national police leadership role for child abuse investigations last summer, called for a “balanced approach to addressing the threat in all its forms”.
A report released in November 2023 revealed that out of 115,489 child sexual exploitation and abuse crimes, 4,228 were group-based offences.
Becky Riggs has told Britain’s police not to be ‘distracted’ by coverage of grooming gangs
VKPP
More than a quarter of group-based crimes were familial, while nine per cent were institutional and 17 per cent involved child sexual exploitation with power imbalances.
The data showed that, overall, 80 per cent of suspects were white, seven per cent were Asian, four per cent were black and eight per cent mixed or other.
Nearly 40 per cent of offending did not fit into any specific category, with nine per cent classified as unknown.
Police acknowledged that ethnicity data, which is self-declared, still has recording gaps.
And a slew of investigations into grooming gangs – including Professor Alexis Jay’s 2014 review into abuse in Rotherham – found that the majority of convicted offenders were of Pakistani or southern Asian heritage.
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Professor Alexis Jay’s 2014 review into abuse in Rotherham found that the majority of convicted offenders were of Pakistani heritage
PA
In a recent blog post, Riggs stressed “the importance of shaping policy and investigative strategies based on facts, rather than what we might hear or read in the media”.
She also warned there was “misinformation” about the scale and nature of group-based crimes.
“While media coverage often focuses on specific communities and so-called grooming gangs, it is crucial for law enforcement and their partners to respond forcefully to this type of crime in all its forms,” Riggs wrote.
Speaking to The Times, she added that police had made significant progress in addressing group-based offending, “understanding that this is not a problem confined to any one community”.
A previous national inquiry into child sexual abuse found it “impossible to know” if any ethnic group was over-represented in child exploitation networks due to lack of data.
The Government has committed to implementing recommendations for improved data collection, including a national database with comprehensive information about child sexual abuse cases.
The database will record characteristics of both victims and perpetrators, including suspects’ ethnicity, age and sex.
Local councils, police forces and prosecutors will be required to contribute to this enhanced data collection system.