I was interested in the latest spat between Elon Musk and Keith Starmer due to the equal amounts of heat, light and pure miss information that it generated. I refer, of course, to the governments response to a demand for a public enquiry into the ‘Asian grooming’ scandal and Musk’s barrage of attacks on Starmer and Jess Phillips (Under-Secretary of State for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls) refusal to hold one. However, we have hardly started this saga before there is a challenge to the terms commonly used to describe the abusers. I have put the term ‘Asian grooming’ in inverted commers because a report issued by the Labour Party put the term, ” “grooming gangs” in inverted commas and suggested that using the term in relation to Muslims was racist.” (The Times 09/01/25) I take the view that if it is an accurate description, backed up by empirical evidence, then it is not be racist. It does become racist if the term is applied to all Asian men and not to a group of criminals who share a common ethnicity.
Moving on, amidst all the flag waving and talk of threats to democracy (Sounds familiar?) we should be able to acknowledge that two things can be true at the same time. On the one hand, we could say that Mr Starmer might have a point when he questions Mr Musk’s motivation for all his attacks on the UK government. One suspects that Mr Musk concentrates his incredible intellect on the issue of the moment and then moves on to the next target, be it Mars, electric cars, DOGE, social media or, a socialist foreign government. I am sure that the issue of the Asian groomers shocked him and he felt that he had the means and the power to influence UK policy. However, it would be more convincing if he had shown the same energy in the case of the 320,000 missing children that crossed the US southern border under the Biden administration. The August 2024 report, issued by the DHS Inspector General (see link below) should be well known to him and claims that they weren’t really missing because no one was really looking for them (see Note 1) demands his attention and energy to cut through the wilful misinformation surrounding the trafficking of children in the US. On the other hand, reading from the progressive playbook, Mr Starmer immediately blamed everything on the fabled far right. As the Times reported he, “accused politicians such as Kemi Badenoch, who have backed a new inquiry, of “amplifying what the far-right is saying” and “jumping on the bandwagon” to gain attention.” (The Times 09/01/25) This does a great disservice to labour MP Anne Cryer, who was shouted down when she first raised the issue; also the Times reporter Andrew Norfolk was called racist when he exposed the scandal in 2011. Labour MP Sarah Champion was accused of being Islamophobic when she spoke up for victims. These and many others were not far right politicians, Mr Starmer!
Maggie Oliver, a former detective with Manchester Police, summarised the widespread rejection of the PM’s attempt to deflect attention away from his government. “Keir’s comments about grooming gangs and the far-right clearly didn’t read the room or the mood of the country and he certainly didn’t read the mood of victims and survivors.” (The Times 09/01/25) Maggie Oliver now runs the The Maggie Oliver Foundation which supports victims of abuse but first came to prominence exposing the failure of the authorities in Rochdale to take action against the gangs. It can be both true that Mr Musk is partly motivated by ideology, egotism and perhaps malice but it is also true that the issue that he has targeted resonates throughout the country as unfinished business that the government seeks to avoid dealing with. Continuing her response to Mr Starmers ‘extreme right wing’ comment, Maggie Oliver highlight the underlying tone of his statement as showing no real concern for the victims:
“The ones I’ve spoken to in the last few days are furious and would not accept an apology from him if he offered one.” “He clearly still views them as the problem. In the past they were viewed as the problem because what they were doing was considered ‘a lifestyle choice’, now they’re a problem because they’re challenging their inhumane treatment, but he’s accused them of being far-right extremists.” The Times 09/01/25
The term ‘lifestyle choice’ was often used when the authorities were faced with evaluating a victims complaint. Typically, she was young, probably in the system, from a deprived background and with a drink or drug problem. It was very easy to dismiss her as having little credibility and this disinterest to pursue further investigation was widespread. In 2023 the BBC reported that both Police and Social Services failed to focus on the victims. They quoted from an earlier report from Telford which commented on the same theme:
The inquiry into the Telford abuse scandal, which published its report in 2022, found police dismissive of claims of abuse, with one saying “these girls had chosen to go with, I don’t know, ‘bad boys'”. BBC 04/04/23
The arguments for an national inquiry recognises the feeling amongst the public that previous enquiries were too narrowly drawn; not victim focussed and didn’t challenge the authorities to explain their lack of action. Jess Phillips, recommendation that any further enquiry should be local are hotly refuted. The feeling is that there are already too many local enquiries and a national enquiry would have the power to answer the questions from the victims as to why they were ignored for so long. As the Times leader argued:
Grooming gangs were only one element of Professor Jay’s inquiry — Rotherham garners a sole mention in her 468-page report and the gangs in Telford are not referenced. A new national inquiry is needed to explore where and how these gangs operated. It must not skirt around sensitive subjects, including ethnicity. It should not replicate mistakes of the past. (The Times leading Article 06/01/25)
We can immediately dismiss one argument against a full inquiry, that it will hold up the implementation of the 20 recommendations of the Jay report. Parliament has the power to pass legislation as it sees fit and should not be delayed by an ongoing investigation. On a more serious note some reformers are reluctant to engage in another seven year Jay type report. I would suggest a shorter, more focussed Cass type report which uses existing reports and data from all sources. I rather like the review from the Atlantic on the efficacy of the Cass methodology,
“The Cass report is a model for the treatment of fiercely debated social issues: nuanced, empathetic, evidence-based. It has taken a political debate and returned it to the realm of provable facts.” The Atlantic 12/04/24
What should a Cass report focus on? It should take a holistic view on all cases of child sexual abuse, nation wide. There should be a drill down on the cases in Rotherham, Oldham, Rochdale, Oxford, Telford, and other towns but it should be looking at the response by the authorities as much as the criminality of the gangs. There needs to be a scientific approach to data, particularly crime statistics. In the past, UK police were allowed to list ‘crimes solved’ by stating that they knew who committed the crime but just couldn’t prove it. In Ireland, the Central Statistic Office refused to take Police crime figures because they were so inaccurate. In the US, during the Presidential election, the FBI changed the 2023 crime Stats from a reduction of 2% to an increase of 4%. The Jay report called for the ethnicity of the offender to be recorded but there is no clarity as to how that is to be done. Similarly, the gender under which criminals are listed when the criminal has a GRC, is also not clear. Once a base load of data has been established the victims should have an opportunity to voice their story. As Maggie Oliver said, out of the 7 year long Jay enquiry,” Just two weeks was given to the grooming gang section and only one victim was allowed to give evidence — it was a terrible missed opportunity.” The Times 09/01/25 The final section should be a review of where we are and what needs to be done.
So let’s say we have our Cass style enquiry, what do we expect to see. In the short term, we can challenge some of the misinformation exploding all over the media. For example, according to an article by Tom Calver ( The Times, 12/01/25) the figure of one million girls being abused (per Mr Musk) can be attributed to the Rotherham MP Sarah Champion, who grossed up the number of incidents over five years in Rotherham, plus an allowance for unreported crimes to get an estimated national figure and extending it over a 70-year period. “This is, as Champion later admitted, a “completely unreliable estimate.” ( The Times, 12/01/25). We must be careful in our search for accurate data that we do not lose sight of the victim’s story and unlike the Jay enquiry, time must be given to the survivors to testify to their awful experience at the hands of the gangs and the authorities. Having said that there has to be a report based on facts and an example of this is Tom Calver’s article, entitled, How common are UK grooming gangs and who are the perpetrators? (link below) For the first time in 2023. the Police, in response to the Jay report, have reported a national figure of 4,228 cases of “group-based” child sexual abuse and have given a breakdown by ethnicity of these crimes. Tom Calver does a good job in setting the numbers in context and explaining the definition of the various groups. However, given my previous comments on crime figures, this would be the sort of evidence that Cass actually focussed on in her report on Gender Identity Services for Children. I would recommend anyone interested in the facts of the Asian grooming story to read his article but I would pick a couple of stats he highlighted from the Police report. I might take issue with his chart heading in the article which is ” Tip of the iceberg – Child sexual abuse in 2023. What we might consider to be “grooming gangs” is a tiny share“. Here he is referring to the 717 cases on the first line which he interprets as being the closest to the generally understood meaning of grooming abuse.
- Group-based, in-person child sexual exploitation 717
Group-based, in-person child sexual abuse 4,224
All in-person child sexual abuse 78,078
All child sexual abuse (including images 115,489 - (The Times and The Sunday Times Source: Hydrant)
I am not sure where he gets the additional 40k+ sharing images figure but his main point is that grooming offenses are a relatively small number compared to the total numbers. However, there is an anomaly when comparing this class of offense against the ethnicity of the general population. According to his data, the Asians represents 9%of of the general population. Asians account for 8% of ‘All group-based’ child sex abuse, which aligns with their proportion of the population but account for 16% of the ‘in-person’ child sexual exploitation class which identifies as the closest classification to the grooming offense. He offers no real explanation for this deviation, other than it being possibly due to difference in classification. Again, we have to be very careful about interpreting these numbers, especially as this is the first report of its kind.
In summary, the point of this essay is to attempt to calm the rhetoric and inflammatory commentary surrounding this issue and to recommend a path to logic, reason and accountability. With regard to the threat of foreign interference in British affairs, the UK has weathered many criticisms from our cousins in America since the war. I am reminded of the threats by President Obama to put ‘Britain at the back of the queue’ in respect of trade deals unless the British public voted against Brexit. I think this intervention, together with his view implying that the US won the war single handidly, had the opposite effect. Similarly, I think that Mr Musk’s attention will soon shift to his many other interests but I genuinely hope that he does use some of his influence to look at the trafficking of children across his southern border. However, he has ignited a debate on whether the government, both Labour and Conservative, have reneged on the fundamental duty of government to protect the weakest in society. I think that we need a mid term report on whether we failed to protect children by weakness, in fear of racial violence or, incompetence or, a mixture of both. The PM can either boldly seize this question and bring the sexual abuse of children from the darkness into the light or, be counted as an enabler and destroyer of the innocents.
Notes
Note 1) But Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy director at the American Immigration Council, a migrant advocacy group, told the BBC the figures are indicative of a bureaucratic “paperwork issue” rather than “anything nefarious”. “When you hear the phrase ‘missing’, you think that there is a child that someone is trying to find and can’t,” he said. “That’s not the case here. The government has not made any effort to find these children.”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj0jlre7mymo
Sources
Tom Witherow, 09/01/25, The Times, Labour policy suggested ‘grooming gang’ phrase was racist, https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/labour-policy-grooming-gang-racist-islamophobia-xm7mxf9fk
DHS Inspector General https://www.oig.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/assets/2024-08/OIG-24-46-Aug24.pdf
Ben Ellery, 09/01/25, The Times, Grooming-gang victims furious at PM’s ‘far right bandwagon’ claim, https://www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/article/grooming-gang-victims-furious-at-pms-far-right-bandwagon-claim-jktwfmr0w
Tom Symon, 04/04/23, Grooming gangs and ethnicity: What does the evidence say? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-65174096
TOM CALVER , 12/01/25, The Times, How common are UK grooming gangs and who are the perpetrators? https://www.thetimes.com/uk/society/article/grooming-gangs-ethnicities-how-many-statistics-data-dpx2bfrts
