“These despicable crimes have caused the most unimaginable harm to victims” and are a “stain on our society” said the Home Secretary as she presented the Casey report on grooming gangs
The Home Secretary said the findings from Baroness Casey’s audit are “damning.”
“At its heart she identifies a deep-rooted failure to treat children as children. A continued failure to protect children and teenage girls from rape, from exploitation, and serious violence.“
The report slammed authorities for “too little sharing of information, too much reliance on flawed data, too much denial, too little justice and too many criminals getting off, too many victims being let down.” adding
“too many perpetrators still walking free because no one joined the dots or because the law ended up protecting them instead of the victims they had exploited.”
Authorities it says covered up the ethnicity of the grooming gangs
The report concludes that further local investigations are needed but that they should be directed and overseen by a national commission with statutory inquiry powers.”
The inquiry will be “time-limited” and will challenge “legal wrangling” in local authorities.
She said that the government “will set out the further details on the national inquiry in due course.”
She also announced thst the Police will launch a new National Criminal Operation into grooming gangs, overseen by the National Crime Agency, to prosecute gangs across Britain.
