UK: Police Probe 9,000 Grooming Cases

The Met Police is to re-investigate 9,000 child sex abuse cases as part of a grooming gangs probe, despite Sadiq Khan having been accused of “stonewalling” questions on the issue.

Scotland Yard has told the Mayor of London that suspected grooming gang and child exploitation cases from the last 15 years will be reviewed as part of a new investigation.

The decision follows Baroness Casey’s review looking at the scale of grooming gangs across the country.

Susan Hall, the leader of the Conservative Group of the London Assembly, said in reaction to the Met’s investigation that she had “repeatedly raised” the issue of grooming gangs to the Mayor, and had been “repeatedly stonewalled”.

In a letter to Khan, Sir Mark Rowley, the Met Police Commissioner, said that any sex offences against children were “abhorrent” but “group based offending, including that characterised as ‘grooming gangs’, is particularly insidious and devastating in its profound impact on the children affected”.

He noted that across the UK these cases had not always been recognised and thoroughly investigated and “too often, victims have been disbelieved and even judged at times”.

In February this year, the Prime Minister commissioned Baroness Casey to evaluate the scale, nature and drivers of group-based child sexual exploitation and abuse at a national and local level.

She recommended a national inquiry, co-ordinating a series of targeted investigations, to be launched into child sexual exploitation in England and Wales.

She found the ethnicity of people involved in grooming gangs had been “shied away from” by authorities with ethnicity data not recorded for two-thirds of perpetrators and that too often the children being abused were blamed, not helped.

Baroness Casey also called for a national re-investigation into unsolved child sex abuse overseen by the National Crime Agency and Sir Mark said the Met was “committed to playing its part”.

Sir Mark said the first stage of this for forces would be to identify any group-based cases where there were two or more suspects and no further action was taken by either the police or CPS.

He said this definition would apply to gangs based abuse but could also include examples such as institutional abuse or intrafamilial abuse.

He added: “We are aware public and media commentary focuses on a narrower definition when they refer to ‘grooming gangs’ and their victims.

“Based on the wider definition, the Met is undertaking an assessment of all such offences over the past 15 years, alongside all other forces.

“The current criteria will require us to re-assess approximately 9,000 investigations over the period, approximately 600 per year, to identify whether there are any potential missed or new investigative lines of enquiry or extant risks, including any safeguarding requirements or opportunities to bring offenders to justice.”

In his letter, Sir Mark also said there had been “significant improvements” to how the force identifies and investigates group-based offending since 2022.

These include training for 11,000 frontline officers and an expansion of child exploitation teams.

The re-opening of the cases comes after Sir Sadiq was accused earlier this year of “stonewalling” questions about whether London has a problem with so-called “grooming gangs”.

In January, Susan Hall asked Sir Sadiq nine times whether there were gangs operating, or previously active, in the capital. However, he repeatedly asked Hall to clarify what she meant by grooming gangs, claiming: “I’m not clear what she means.”

During the debate he said young people were being “groomed” in London by county lines drug gangs.

However Hall made clear she was referring to “rape gangs” that prey on girls and young women for sex and referred to cases in Rotherham and Bradford.

The exchange ended with Khan saying he was “none the wiser, why she is so nervous about saying what she means”.

On Sunday night, Hall said the letter from Sir Mark showed “the severity of the problem of grooming gangs operating here, right under the noses of regional and national authorities is far worse than even I imagined.”

She said: “Since January, I have repeatedly raised this issue of the existence of grooming gangs in London, to the Mayor and other authorities. I have been repeatedly stonewalled on this matter until the Commissioner finally accepted and admitted that these gangs indeed operated here in the capital, which he declared a couple of weeks ago in a meeting of the Police and Crime Committee.”

Hall added: “As for the contempt shown to me by our Mayor Sadiq Khan for having the audacity to ask the very question – ‘do we have rape gangs in London’ – I will let Londoners take a view on that.”

Jon Wedger, a retired detective who left the Metropolitan Police in 2017 after 25 years of service, has since taken up the fight to prove gangs are grooming girls for sex in London.

He claims that in 2006 he was told to stop investigating cases of 50 children who had been groomed and sexually abused in London, even though he had evidence such as car registration details of perpetrators. He suggests the problem has not gone away.

Wedger told The Times: “There are hotspots all over the place. We came across a girl who’d been on the street since she was 14. She’s a kid … it was a busy street, drivers come along and then go round the corner to have sex with the kids.”

A spokesperson for the Mayor of London said: “Any individuals or gangs exploiting children for sex are utterly abhorrent. Sadiq is quite clear that they must face the full force of the law. These children have not only suffered terrible abuse at the hands of the perpetrators but have been woefully let down by the authorities meant to protect them from harm.

“Sadiq has consistently been clear to the Met that no stone must be left unturned in pursuing justice for the victims of grooming gangs and ensuring the vile perpetrators are brought to justice

They added: “The Mayor remains vigilant to emerging and changing threats around child exploitation and will continue to support and hold the Met to account to ensure it does everything possible to tackle child sexual exploitation in London.”