The grooming gangs scandal, explained

Reports of young girls being groomed by gangs of men, largely of Pakistani heritage, first began to emerge in 2002, when the then-Labour MP Ann Cryer warned that it was happening in her Yorkshire constituency of Keighley.

In 2010, a group of five men who had committed sexual offences against girls aged 12 to 16 were convicted in Rotherham in South Yorkshire. The Times then launched a long investigation, exposing not only the shocking extent of child sexual exploitation in Rotherham, but also of a wider pattern of horrendous abuses of young girls by organised networks of men, predominantly British-Pakistani.

The story began to gain wider traction. In recent years, child-grooming gangs have been jailed in more than a dozen other English towns, mostly in the north of England and the Midlands: notably Rochdale, Oldham and Telford, but also Bristol, Oxford, Huddersfield, Halifax and Banbury, among others.

Why are they called grooming gangs?

Child sexual abuse is mostly carried out by relatives and other trusted figures. But in these cases, gangs used grooming techniques to find their victims in public: girls aged 11 to 16, mostly white, often from troubled backgrounds, would be courted by men a few years older, who often worked as taxi drivers or in takeaways; many were involved in the illegal drug trade. The girls would be given alcohol or drugs and would begin a sexual relationship with one man, who would then coerce them, often violently, into having sex with his friends or relatives.

"It is hard to describe the appalling nature of the abuse that child victims suffered," noted Alexis Jay's 2014 inquiry report into abuse in Rotherham. "They were raped by multiple perpetrators, trafficked to other towns and cities in the north of England, abducted, beaten and intimidated." Children were "doused in petrol and threatened with being set alight, threatened with guns, made to witness brutally violent rapes and threatened [that] they would be next if they told anyone. Girls as young as 11 were raped by large numbers of male perpetrators." Some victims were murdered: in Telford, Lucy Lowe died at 16 with her mother and sister when her abuser set fire to her home in 2000. She was pregnant a second time by him when she died.

How many children were abused?

Very large numbers. In Rotherham, at least 1,400 girls were estimated to have been abused by grooming gangs between 1997 and 2013; in Telford, it is estimated that over 1,000 children were abused over three decades. In Rochdale, an inquiry identified 74 probable victims and evidence of a much wider problem. But the statistics are incomplete and highly contested.

How did the authorities respond?

A series of local inquiries have exposed an official response that was unforgivably inadequate. In her report on Rotherham, Jay said that South Yorkshire Police had treated child victims with "contempt", and that social workers had "underplayed" the problem.

In at least two cases, police arrested the fathers of girls who had attempted to remove their daughters from the houses where they were being abused. On another occasion, police attended a derelict house and found an intoxicated girl with several male abusers; they arrested the child for being "drunk and disorderly", but detained none of the men.

Inquiries in both Telford and Rotherham also found that child sexual exploitation was dismissed as "child prostitution"; teachers and social workers were discouraged from reporting abuse. Witnesses were not protected. Other inquiries and reviews in Rochdale and Oldham identified similar issues.

What explains these failings?

There are a range of explanations, from lack of understanding and incompetence to snobbery, misogyny and fear of inflaming racial tensions.

Many of the victims came from care homes. Some police officers referred to them as "slags", and to their abuse as a "lifestyle choice"; the issue was given a low priority. Prosecutors saw victims as poor witnesses. Social workers in Rotherham were often "overwhelmed", Jay found. Another inquiry found that Rotherham Council was "in denial".

There is evidence that many officials feared being accused of racism. In 2004, a Channel 4 documentary about Asian men grooming girls in Bradford was postponed over fears that it could lead to race riots; Jay found that councillors had fretted that discussion of the issue could harm "community cohesion". Telford's inquiry also identified a "nervousness about race". Because a vast amount of evidence was ignored, there have been many claims of cover-ups.

Do we need a national public inquiry?

Some experts, such as Jay, think not. Public inquiries are slow and expensive; there have already been local inquiries in Rotherham (twice) and Telford, reviews in Oldham and Rochdale, and a national inquiry on child abuse, IICSA, which reported on grooming gangs. The problem is well understood, some would say; the vital thing now is to tackle it. Besides, such "group-based child sexual exploitation" represents only 3.7% of all child abuse, according to official figures.

On the other hand, many would argue that the issue remains unresolved. Few officials have been held responsible. We have incomplete data, and the ethnic dimension remains poorly understood; the most recent official abuse figures only have ethnicity data for a third of suspects. Inquiries are the gold standard in cases of state failure, and there are few more flagrant examples than this.

What is the government doing?

The Home Secretary Yvette Cooper last week announced a compromise solution: a "rapid" nationwide review of grooming gang evidence, which will examine demographic data and "cultural drivers", chaired by the Whitehall troubleshooter Louise Casey, to report by April; and five government-backed local inquiries, in Oldham and four other pilot areas.

What is Starmer's role in the scandal?

"Deeply complicit in the mass rapes." That’s how Elon Musk characterised Keir Starmer's role in the grooming scandal; but is this accurate? The short answer is an emphatic "no".

As director of public prosecutions, Starmer headed the Crown Prosecution Service between 2008 and 2013, with overall responsibility for bringing criminal charges in England and Wales. Musk's claim appears to refer to a decision taken by a CPS lawyer in July 2009 to drop a child grooming case in Rochdale because the victim wasn't considered credible (despite her attacker's DNA being found on her underwear). The abuse continued after the case was dropped.

However, Starmer was not involved in that decision; and, in 2011, he supported the decision of Nazir Afzal, the chief prosecutor for North West England, to reopen the case. As a result, nine men were jailed in 2012, for sexually exploiting up to 47 girls. In 2013, Starmer introduced CPS rules for grooming cases, to try to ensure that victims were heard and "stereotypes" about them challenged; prosecutions rose to record levels. That year, Starmer and the CPS were commended by a Commons Home Affairs Select Committee for trying to uncover "systematic failure and to improve the way things are done".