Casey Report: The UK government has announced a national inquiry into organized child sexual abuse following the release of a searing report by Baroness Louise Casey. The report exposed decades of institutional failures in protecting children from “grooming gangs.”
Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour government had previously resisted mounting pressure to launch such an inquiry. Starmer’s administration had earlier argued it was focused on implementing recommendations from a previous seven-year investigation.
The Casey Report is a comprehensive review of how UK institutions have responded to child sexual exploitation. The report was commissioned by Prime Minister Starmer earlier this year with a focus on grooming gangs. The grooming gangs are a group of men who systematically targeted and abused vulnerable girls, often over long periods.
The report by Baroness Casey found widespread institutional failure in preventing rape, exploitation, and serious violence against children and teenage girls.
Among her most urgent recommendations was a proposed legal reform mandating rape charges for any adult who intentionally penetrates a child under the age of 16 in England and Wales.
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The report noted that many grooming cases had been dropped or downgraded because victims aged 13 to 15 were wrongly perceived to have been “in love with” or to have “consented to” sex with their abusers.
The report also condemned the reluctance of authorities to address the ethnic backgrounds of offenders.
“It is not racist to examine the ethnicity of the offenders,” the report stated.
Casey found clear evidence of an “over-representation among suspects of Asian and Pakistani-heritage men.” However, the review also flagged serious gaps in national data collection, pointing out that the ethnicity of two-thirds of perpetrators was not recorded, making national-level analysis impossible.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has confirmed that the government would adopt all 12 of Casey’s recommendations, including the launch of a new national criminal operation led by the National Crime Agency (NCA).
Another recommendation to be adopted is to target grooming gangs. The operation will be overseen by an independent commission with the authority to compel witnesses to testify. The Labour government also committed to establishing a full national inquiry.
Prime Minister Starmer said he had read “every single word” of the report and would move forward with the investigation recommended by Casey report.
Zubair Amin is a Senior Journalist at NewsX with over seven years of experience in reporting and editorial work. He has written for leading national and international publications, including Foreign Policy Magazine, Al Jazeera, The Economic Times, The Indian Express, The Wire, Article 14, Mongabay, News9, among others. His primary focus is on international affairs, with a strong interest in US politics and policy. He also writes on West Asia, Indian polity, and constitutional issues. Zubair tweets at zubaiyr.amin
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