Cooper Announces Statutory National Inquiry on Rape Gangs – Guido Fawkes

Cooper Announces Statutory National Inquiry on Rape Gangs

mdi-fullscreen

Cooper has announced in the Commons “a new national inquiry to direct local investigations and hold institutions to account for past failures.” This will be a time-limited inquiry led by an independent commission and not “over-arching.” The home secretary says “we will set out the further details on the national inquiry in due course”…

This comes along with other moves from the government:

• Collection of new “ethnicity data and research so we face up to the facts on exploitation and abuse.“
• New laws to “protect children and support victims so they stop being blamed for the appalling crimes committed against them.” Changes to child prostitution offences…
• New “action across children’s social services and other agencies to identify children at risk.“
• “Further action to support child victims and to tackle new forms of exploitation and abuse.“
• “Change the law to ensure that adults who engage in penetrative sex with a child under 16 face the most serious charge of rape.“

Cooper said Casey’s audit “identifies clear evidence of over representation among suspects of Asian and Pakistani-heritage men-And she refers to ‘examples of organisations avoiding the topic altogether for fear of appearing racist or raising community tensions’.” Casey’s audit “confirms that ethnicity data is not recorded for two thirds of grooming gang perpetrators.” She said more than 800 cases will be reviewed and she expects the figure to rise to more than 1,000. Cooper said it will be “a formal requirement to collect both ethnicity and nationality data for all cases of child sexual abuse and exploitation.”

The home secretary said asylum seekers were confirmed to have been part of rape gangs:

“Baroness Casey reports that she came across cases involving suspects who were asylum seekers. We have asked her team to provide to the Home Office all the evidence so that Immigration Enforcement can immediately pursue individual cases with the police.

But let me make clear. Those who groom children or commit sexual offences will not be granted asylum in the UK and we will do everything in our power to remove them, and we are bringing forward a change to the law, so that anyone convicted of sexual offences is excluded from the asylum system and denied refugee status.”

The government received the report in full ten days ago. A chairman for the independent commission is to be appointed in weeks…