Every witness who volunteered their testimony – whether survivor, parent, whistleblower, politician or expert – showed courage that made this Inquiry possible. Their contributions have ensured that the truth is now a matter of permanent public record.

Rupert Lowe MP’s energy and commitment ensured that The Rape Gang Inquiry took place. He has been unwavering in his devotion to making sure that this rotting stain on our country’s history has remained firmly in the public eye.

Deep gratitude is extended to the entire Inquiry team, led by Sammy Woodhouse. Nat Enderby-Shenton, Marlon West, Debra Sudbury, and Julie Ballan worked tirelessly to bring the evidence together and support every survivor who came forward.

A special thank you is owed to MPs Esther McVey, Nick Timothy, and Carla Lockhart for taking the time to sit on the Inquiry panel.

Dr. Mark Durie has been extremely generous in enriching the report that follows with his expert knowledge.

We are also grateful to Charlie Downes, Joshua Ferme, Harrison Pitt, and Graham Smith for their editorial oversight and counsel.

Last but not least, we thank the untold thousands across Britain who made all of this possible by donating to ensure that this Inquiry could take place.

Britain doesn’t have a racism problem, it has an immigration problem.

Rupert Lowe

As is the case with many decent, hard-working Britons, I was unaware of the sheer scale of the evil that has been, and continues to be, perpetrated by chiefly Pakistani Muslim men against vulnerable young white women and girls in communities up and down our country. But a single court transcript from one such horrific case – amplified by Elon Musk early last year – set in motion a long overdue national reckoning on the matter that inspired over 20,000 British patriots to help fund our Rape Gang Inquiry. What follows is a comprehensive report of its findings. It is essential that all related court documents are securely preserved, both for legal and historical reasons.

I am grateful to everyone on my team who has contributed to exposing this demonic chapter in Britain’s history. A combination of the paralysing fear of ‘racism’ accusations and the scramble for votes from imported foreign sub-cultures meant that pure evil was allowed to metastasise. Nor is the horrendous ordeal over. The root cause was immigration, beginning with the British Nationality Act 1948 and escalating under Tony Blair from 1997 onwards. Believing proud nations to be responsible for the mid-20th century destruction of Europe, our post-war leaders embraced diversity and multiculturalism as the supposedly civilised alternative. This report establishes beyond any doubt that this ‘open society’ obsession has in fact enabled untold barbarism of its own. Oil and water do not mix and cultural differences, going back centuries, are the genesis of this problem.

I urge all Britons to read this report in full. Lessons need to be learned and prosecutions need to follow for the appalling cowardice of those responsible for refusing to resist such horrors. The strongest possible penalties, up to and including death, must also be sought for those yet to be properly punished or indeed punished at all for their vile, unspeakable crimes. The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.

Albert Einstein

Man is the cruellest animal.

Friedrich Nietzsche

The Rape Gang Inquiry has now concluded the first phase of its work. It was established to examine one of the most horrendous scandals in the long history of our country: the systematic targeting of vulnerable girls, overwhelmingly White British, by predominantly Muslim Pakistani gangs across towns and cities up and down the nation.

The evidence presented throughout the hearings confirmed what had long been known but repeatedly denied by many in the political class. The Inquiry welcomed girls, boys, men, and women of all races and religions to testify to their experiences to gain a complete picture of the rape gang phenomenon.

The Casey Report of 2025 stated that disproportionate numbers of men from “Asian ethnic backgrounds” were among the suspects for group-based child sexual exploitation (‘CSE’). Baroness Casey quoted local reports showing that a significant proportion of those convicted were of Pakistani and/or Muslim heritage. The crimes stretch back generations.

The Rape Gang Inquiry was necessary because the state and its institutions have failed catastrophically over decades. Police, social services, schools, the NHS, licensing authorities, and governments allowed these gangs to operate with impunity. There was a demonstrable lack of political will to confront them. The Labour Party initially refused a public inquiry altogether, only relenting under considerable pressure. It will be many years before this inquiry is complete and there is no guarantee that it will adequately address the politically sensitive ethnoreligious nature of the phenomenon. Despite now pushing for an inquiry in opposition, when in government the Conservative Party did very little.

The Rape Gang Inquiry was survivor-led. Every day the panel sat with Sammy Woodhouse, a survivor-turned-activist herself, alongside a variety of experts who attended whenever their specialist subject formed the focus of our efforts to get to the truth. We examined distinct areas of the scandal in turn so that a maximally full picture could be established. Parents and carers described their experiences. Instances of pregnancy, abortion, and children born of rape were laid bare. Whistleblowers who had previously been ignored gave evidence. Policing and justice failures were documented. Social care, NHS services (including sexual health and mental health), education, taxi licensing, demographic trends, cultural and social issues, and ideological obstructions to justice were all scrutinised without restriction. Nothing was off the table. Misguided political correctness and cultural sensitivities played no part in the proceedings. The promise made to every donor was honoured in full: the truth was pursued and justice was our only objective.

Survivors were finally given the platform they had been denied for so long and were central to the Inquiry. The full scale and nature of the crimes can now be placed on the public record. The true horror of what took place is no longer hidden.

Although the Inquiry lacked statutory powers, the response was overwhelming. Politicians, whistleblowers, experts, family members, and many others came forward. Those few in prominent positions who declined to give evidence did so knowing their refusal would be noted.

This report sets out findings and makes clear recommendations for how the problem of rape gangs can be eradicated. The country now knows the full truth. The country has been given the basis for justice. The country has the roadmap to ensure these crimes never happen again.

The Rape Gang Inquiry examined the systematic targeting of vulnerable girls, overwhelmingly White British, by predominantly Muslim Pakistani gangs across towns and cities throughout the United Kingdom. The evidence put to the Inquiry confirms that this scandal constitutes one of the most horrendous failures in the history of the country. Organised networks of perpetrators built coordinated operations that transported victims between locations, supplied them with drugs and alcohol, recorded abuse for distribution and blackmail, and passed girls between multiple adult men. These crimes have been committed for decades, since the 1950s by Pakistanis in particular, and have affected every region of our nation.

The scale of the crimes committed is staggering. It has been previously established that, at the very least, 250,000 young white girls have been subjected to repeated rape, gang rape, trafficking, torture, pregnancy, forced Islamic conversion, and lifelong trauma.¹ The true number is probably higher. The perpetrators bear primary responsibility, yet the institutional failures that enabled them for decades must also be confronted. In court records and official inquiries, around 87% of those convicted in these group-based child sexual exploitation (‘CSE’) cases bore distinctively Muslim names.² The vast majority of men involved in these gangs were not convicted. Dr. Taj Hargey, an imam with the Oxford Islamic Congregation, believes the true proportion of gang members who are Muslims to be around 95%.³ This figure far exceeds the Muslim share of the overall United Kingdom population. The overwhelming majority of the rape gang networks consisted entirely of men from Muslim backgrounds – predominantly of Pakistani heritage, although smaller groups from Somali, Iranian, Syrian, Turkish, and other Muslim origins were also involved.

The Inquiry heard harrowing testimony from survivors and their families. The method used to groom children typically followed the same process. Girls as young as 11 were initially befriended by a young Muslim man who then treated the young child like an adult and would then start providing them with alcohol, drugs, and cigarettes. After a few months the girls would then be collected from school gates, care homes, and streets in taxis. They were taken to houses, flats, restaurants, and hotels where they were raped repeatedly by groups of men, tortured, filmed for blackmail, and told they were “white trash” or “kuffar” who merited punishment. Many became pregnant while still children. Some miscarried under trauma, others endured coerced abortions, and some gave birth to children who were later removed by the state. We found that the same unspeakable crimes occurred in at least 149 local authority districts – close to 40% of all such districts across the United Kingdom (see page 14 for our full map). Survivors described daily rapes, “red rooms” of extreme torture, trafficking between cities, and institutional disbelief that compounded their suffering. Some girls were even trafficked to the Middle East where they would endure Islamic marriage.

The demographic and cultural drivers are clear. Perpetrators from Pakistani Muslim and other Muslim backgrounds operated under an honour- and shame-based clan code that treated non-Muslim girls, especially white working class girls, as property available for sexual use. This pattern was reinforced by eight theological and legal aspects of Islam. These include the doctrine of Muslim superiority drawn from Quranic verses that position Muslims at the top with a duty to correct non-believers. The gang members’ justification for their crimes can be found in the Islamic principles of loyalty and disavowal known as al-walā' wa-l-barā'. It demands enmity towards non-Muslims, the superiority of men over women, forced marriage combined with the absence of any fixed minimum age of consent, the perception of female sexuality as inherently dangerous, a system of sex slavery that authorises sexual relations with non-Muslim captives, and a religiously sanctioned social hierarchy that subjugates conquered non-Muslims. These elements, filtered through clannish immigrant sub-cultures, provided religious justification that enabled the systematic rape and even slaughter of White British girls.

Were Britain functioning effectively, these girls would have received considerable state protection. However, every one of our institutions failed them catastrophically. Police forces ignored repeated reports, criminalised victims instead of perpetrators, destroyed evidence, and allowed known rapists to walk free on bail. Social care services undermined protective parents, placed children in trafficking hubs inside children’s homes, closed cases despite clear indicators of exploitation, and retaliated against whistleblowers. The NHS recorded genital injuries, multiple sexually transmitted infections in children as young as 13, pregnancies caused by rape, and suicide attempts, yet discharged victims back to their abusers without safeguarding referrals or trauma care. Schools observed older men collecting girls at the gates, heard disclosures of rape on school premises, and responded by excluding victims rather than protecting them. Taxi licensing authorities renewed permits for drivers who formed the logistical backbone of the networks and collapsed in the face of organised protests when basic safety measures were proposed.

Political failure lies at the heart of the scandal. Successive governments lacked the will to confront the ethnic and religious patterns. The Labour Party bears particular responsibility. It initially refused a public inquiry and only relented under pressure by ordering a process viewed with widespread scepticism.

Labour-dominated councils and MPs were briefed on the gangs long ago yet later denied knowledge. The party prioritised electoral reliance on Muslim voting blocs and then blocked or watered down inquiries, suppressed ethnicity data, and framed legitimate concerns as ‘far-right’ agitation. When finally forced to act, the Labour government produced a national inquiry whose tightly drawn terms of reference deliberately excluded systematic examination of the demographic, cultural, and religious drivers. The Conservative Party, while in government, continued with Labour’s approach and failed to impose mandatory ethnicity recording or launch a full statutory inquiry despite clear evidence from Rotherham and elsewhere. Scottish political parties have refused a dedicated inquiry and failed to record offender ethnicity. Political correctness, fear of accusations of racism, and fear of losing electoral support from certain demographics have taken precedence over the protection of British children.

Whistleblowers, parents, and survivors who came forward showed extraordinary courage, despite having been met in the past with disbelief and intimidation. The perpetrators operated with impunity because the state enabled them. The evidence now demands immediate and decisive action to eradicate the problem, deliver justice for the victims, and ensure these abhorrent crimes are eradicated from our shores.

We now have a clearer sense of the problem. There are a number of measures necessary to resolve them, up to and including considerable changes to our criminal justice system, the passage of legislation aimed at targeting specifically gang-based CSE, and a great amount of institutional overhaul.

Our detailed list of recommendations includes improved data recording on ethnoreligious patterns among offenders, far stronger sentencing, a comprehensive deportation effort, institutional accountability measures, multi-agency coordination, specialist training, enhanced safeguarding through greater family involvement, and closing the various gaps in British law through which so many victims fell.

Following the publication of this Report, we intend to release the full witness testimonies, gather additional survivor accounts, identify those responsible in Parliament, and begin civil and private legal actions to ensure maximal accountability.

Rape gangs have exploited children systematically across every region of the United Kingdom for decades.

The independent chair of the Centre for Excellence for Children’s Care and Protection Alexis Jay has identified the 1970s as the decade when immigrant rape gangs first began tormenting the girls of Britain.⁴ However, the British Newspaper Archive reveals that the first recorded case of specifically Pakistani rape gangs dates back to 1955, when four Bradford-based Pakistanis were charged with raping a 15-year-old girl from Middlesbrough.⁵ This was soon after former colonial subjects, from the subcontinent as much as the Caribbean, became eligible to enter the United Kingdom in non-trivial numbers under the British Nationality Act 1948.⁶ What began as singular and small-scale instances became systematic and industrial over time.

These horrific crimes have only escalated in recent decades, especially following Tony Blair’s 1997 victory and the start of orchestrated mass immigration. With greater numbers came greater opportunities for abuse. Perpetrators built organised networks that transported victims between towns and cities and passed girls between multiple adult men.

In each of these areas the same tactics were used. Girls as young as 11 were targeted with gifts, alcohol and drugs, collected in taxis from school gates, care homes and streets and taken to houses, flats, restaurants and hotels and then raped repeatedly by groups of men, passed between perpetrators, trafficked across county lines, and in many cases impregnated or forced into abortions. Most victims endured violence, were filmed for blackmail, or told they were “white trash” or “kuffar” who deserved punishment.

The authorities at every level – including the police, social services, health services, schools, licensing bodies, and politicians – knew the patterns, possessed the intelligence, and still failed to protect the country’s children. The evidence establishes that a national scandal of repeated rape, trafficking, torture, pregnancy, forced Islamic conversion, and lifelong trauma enabled by institutional denial, political calculation, and fear of the accusation of racism took place over decades.

The incidents of criminal activities listed in this report are drawn from court records, official and unofficial inquiries across the country, and witness testimony provided to the Inquiry. They confirm that this was never a series of isolated local failures. It was a coordinated, nationwide pattern of organised child sexual exploitation that repeated in town after town, city after city, from the far north to the south coast. The same ethnic and religious profile of the perpetrators was documented throughout almost all of the witnesses who contacted the Inquiry.

The scale of the rape gang phenomenon is endemic across the entirety of Britain. The 250,000 figure originates directly from a statement in the House of Lords by Lord Pearson of Rannoch on 14 May, 2019:

He added that this number “is probably an underestimate.”⁷

This extrapolation now has greater support due to further data that has been collected, derived from scaling the patterns documented in major inquiries:

Rotherham (Jay Report, 2014): At least 1,400 girls abused between 1997 and 2013, with some updated estimates exceeding this. Perpetrators were overwhelmingly Pakistani Muslim men. Telford Inquiry (2022): More than 1,000 children (predominantly girls) over decades, again with the same perpetrator profile. National footprint: The grooming gang model has been confirmed in dozens of towns and cities. Our independent Inquiry, led by Rupert Lowe MP, has heard evidence demonstrating coordinated operations extending to all corners of the country, in at least 149 local authority districts (see page 14 for the full map).

When the Rotherham/Telford scale is applied across the documented national distribution, and multiplied by the extreme under-reporting factor accepted by official reviews, the total reaches the 250,000 threshold as a bare minimum.

We are far from grasping the full extent of grooming gang criminality in modern Britain. It is reasonable to assume that, since sexual abuse of all kinds tends to be under-reported, this is also true of grooming gangs. The Independent has reported that almost 19,000 children were identified as sexual exploitation victims in England in one year alone, despite the reluctance of state actors to name or tackle the problem of the rape gangs.⁸ After decades of abuse, victims must number in the hundreds of thousands. The full scale is not yet known.

Every major review has emphasised that recorded statistics severely understate reality:

Baroness Casey National Audit on Group-Based Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (June 2025): The audit explicitly states that the scale, nature, and characteristics of group-based child sexual exploitation remain impossible to quantify precisely due to inconsistent data collection and historical suppression. Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) and multiple local inquiries (2022–2025): “It is simply not possible to know the scale” because ethnicity, group offending, and historical cases were routinely unrecorded or shelved to protect “community cohesion.”

Overleaf is a heat map that portrays the various locations in which the Inquiry can be sure the rape gangs operated. It is likely that the true extent is far worse.⁹ The scale, the tactics, the perpetrator profile, and the systemic inaction were almost always identical everywhere. Britain did not face dozens of separate local scandals. It faced one national scandal that the state allowed to grow for decades.

London stands exposed as the epicentre of institutional denial in the grooming gang scandal. While northern towns faced public inquiries after the truth emerged, the capital maintained a wall of silence for years. The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has repeatedly insisted there were no grooming gangs operating in the city. As our inquiry heard from Susan Hall, Leader of the Conservatives in the London Assembly, the rape gang phenomenon is in fact endemic within the capital. After challenging Khan about the presence of such gangs in London, Hall was inundated with calls from women and girls purporting to be victims of their predation. Khan describes evidence from whistleblowers as malicious and politically motivated. He told the London Assembly that the problem was far more complex than in other parts of the country and that young people were being exploited through county lines rather than organised group-based child sexual exploitation.¹⁰

These statements were made despite the Metropolitan Police holding reports of young girls being plied with alcohol and drugs then raped by groups of men in hotels and other locations across the capital. A Daily Express investigation revealed that Khan had direct access to HM Inspectorate of Constabulary documents detailing exactly these patterns of offending. He read the files yet continued to deny the existence of grooming gangs in public.¹¹

Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp MP has accused Khan of facilitating a cover-up and other politicians stated that both the Mayor and the Metropolitan Police had been denying grooming gangs in London. Campaigners, including whistleblower Maggie Oliver and Chris Wild, described the capital as the last bastion of denial and warned that the scale of abuse there was more catastrophic than anywhere else in the country.

The evidence now emerging confirms their warnings. In October 2025, the Metropolitan Police announced a review of 9,000 child sexual exploitation cases. The National Crime Agency launched Operation Beaconport to examine thousands more files nationwide after initial assessments found human errors, missed lines of inquiry, and cases wrongly dropped. London forms a significant part of this backlog. A former Metropolitan Police detective has described industrial-scale child prostitution and grooming in the capital, with authorities aware but opting for inaction due to a mixture of “incompetence, laziness, and corruption.”¹²

London has the largest Muslim population in Britain. Khan relies on significant electoral support from those communities, as well as having an ethno-religious motive to protect the public reputation of Pakistani Muslims in particular. Widespread acknowledgment of organised networks of predominantly Pakistani Muslim men targeting vulnerable white girls would have shattered the narrative of community cohesion that successive London administrations – none more than Khan’s – have promoted. As for others in authority, fear of being labelled ‘racist’ paralysed the Metropolitan Police and City Hall in the same way it did in Rotherham and Rochdale before them. One anonymous whistleblower told us that boys as well as girls are an especially vulnerable target for criminal gangs – typically Albanian, Somali, or Turkish – operating in the capital. Yet the relevant bodies still refuse to collect data on ethnicity, wilfully rendering themselves blind to the very behavioural patterns that are supposed to aid law enforcement in its pursuit of justice.

The Metropolitan Police review, the National Crime Agency operation, and the witness accounts pouring in prove that group-based child sexual exploitation has thrived in our capital city.

This Inquiry records the failure without reservation. Khan and the senior leadership of the Metropolitan Police must answer for their role in this scandal. Until the capital confronts the truth with the same rigour now demanded elsewhere, the children of London remain at risk and the state remains complicit.

There are thousands of survivors who could have provided evidence to our Inquiry team. Below is a summary of some of the testimony provided by our brave witnesses who spoke at the Inquiry hearings. Some of the witnesses have to remain anonymous for their own safety.

Throughout her early childhood, ‘Chloe’ was popular at school, performed well academically, and enjoyed an active social life. Although her parents separated when she was young, she describes her early upbringing as relatively stable. Following the separation, full custody of Chloe and her older brother was awarded to their father, despite his alcoholism. Her mother, on the other hand, was often absent from her life and became homeless following the separation.

Chloe recalls a generally secure and supportive home environment under the care of her father. However, following his sudden death just before her tenth birthday, she moved in with her mother and her mother’s new husband – a man she describes as a “paedophile” by whom she was sexually abused. Chloe’s mother caught her husband assaulting Chloe on many occasions, but did little to stop it. On one occasion, Chloe’s mother caught her husband in the shower with Chloe and instead of intervening, “she closed the door and walked out.” At this time, Chloe was ten years old.

The abuse soon escalated to rape. Chloe’s stepfather supplied her with alcohol and cigarettes “to keep her quiet,” and she began smoking cannabis. Around the same time, Chloe started truanting and spending time in the local town centre with a friend unsupervised. She describes groups of Muslim men, primarily Pakistanis, aged 20 to over 50 showing them attention, including wolf whistling and buying them alcohol. Many were taxi drivers who would take the girls into their cars and drive them around the town. At this stage, there was no sexual abuse, and although the men’s behaviour was clearly inappropriate, Chloe and her friend – then in their final year of primary school – enjoyed being treated like adults.

The grooming soon intensified. The provision of alcohol and takeaways was accompanied by emotional manipulation, with the men – many of whom were related to one another – presenting themselves as sympathetic friends to Chloe. Chloe describes this process as them “mapping out, are you a vulnerable person?” Physical contact, including kisses and massages, became increasingly common. Meanwhile, the abuse by her stepfather at home worsened, and her mother was all but absent as a guardian.

At this time, Chloe had an aunt and uncle who lived nearby, and she often sought refuge with them. She had spent holidays with them during her earlier childhood, and felt that she could trust them. On one occasion, she had visited them while truanting, before returning home and spending the day there while her mother and stepfather were at work. To Chloe’s surprise, her uncle arrived at her house unannounced an hour later, and she invited him inside. After a brief conversation, Chloe’s uncle sexually assaulted her. Chloe resisted, and he relented and left.

She told her mother about the assault, and her mother reported it to the police. The police accused Chloe of lying, and no further action was taken. Until this incident, she had regarded her uncle as “one of the best people in her life” – afterwards, there were no adults left that Chloe could confide in or seek support from. Increasingly isolated, she became more deeply involved with the groups of Muslim men she encountered in the town centre.

One evening, Chloe’s friend suggested that they travel to a nearby town where one of the men had a hotel room. They were picked up by the man – who was drunk and under the influence of drugs – and taken to the hotel. When they arrived, hotel staff saw them but did not intervene. In the room, the girls were given a potent strain of cannabis, which left Chloe – then eleven – “absolutely smashed.” Chloe’s friend was taken into another room by a group of men, and Chloe was groped by the man who remained. Chloe resisted, and he hit her. The man did not attempt to sexually assault her again, and instead threw the girls – both of whom were still intoxicated – out of the hotel and refused to drive them back to their home town. They were forced to walk. It was around midnight. Chloe did not want to go back to her home as she feared her mother would beat her for being out late, so stayed with her friend.

In the early hours of the morning, Chloe was collected from her friend’s house by the police after her mother reported her missing. Chloe lied to the police and her mother about where she had been. Chloe’s mother “grounded” her for a month, meaning she was stuck at home with her predatory stepfather – a period she describes as “torture.”

After the month passed, Chloe arranged to see her friend, who boasted that she had a new boyfriend. Chloe left the house to meet her, and the girls were picked up by the “boyfriend” – who was in fact a 25-year-old Indian man.

Initially, Chloe thought the man was nice – “posher” than the other men she had met in the town centre. He took Chloe and her friend to a shop where he purchased a bottle of vodka before picking up one of his friends and taking the girls to a secluded location. During the journey, the men began pressuring the girls for sex. Chloe refused, stating that she was on her period, but the men replied that it did not matter. Night was falling when they arrived, and the “boyfriend” took Chloe’s friend out of the car, leaving Chloe alone with the other man. He proceeded to rape her on the back seats.

This incident took place in 2003. In 2022, Chloe took the two men to court, but neither were found guilty.

From this moment, Chloe’s life spiralled. At twelve years old, she began drinking heavily, smoking large amounts of cannabis, and taking harder drugs including ecstasy – “anything to block it out of her mind.” She would drink before school “just to get through the day” and her attendance dropped significantly. She and her friend would spend school hours in the town centre, “walking around until somebody picked them up in a car, somebody bought them alcohol or somebody gave them drugs.” There were times when Chloe would be missing for up to three days, during which time she was passed between taxis, drugged, abused, and raped. In every case, the perpetrators were Muslims, and primarily Pakistani.

On one occasion, Chloe was abducted by an abuser – who was driving drunk – and taken to a graveyard. He gave Chloe – still twelve years old – whiskey before forcing himself on her and raping her. He withdrew before ejaculation, and forced the empty whiskey bottle into Chloe’s vagina, where it shattered. Chloe admitted herself to A&E, but no questions were asked about how she had sustained such an injury. She was examined, the glass was removed, and she was discharged.

Chloe was questioned by police due to her absence on a number of occasions. Each time, she was asked where she had been, who she had been with, and what she had been doing. She replied that she had been having sex with adult males in cars. Rather than opening an investigation and pursuing her abusers, the police dismissed Chloe as a prostitute. They asked her whether she was consenting to the sexual activity and, despite Chloe telling them that she did not know the definition of the word “consent,” they reported that she had been.

The police found Chloe, as well as other missing children, in cars with the gang members on multiple occasions, but let the gang members go without so much as questioning them. On one occasion, Chloe was in the town centre and was identified as a missing child by a police officer who questioned where she had been. Chloe told this police officer about the full extent of the abuse, and the response of the police officer was that nothing could be done, and Chloe was let go.

In response to her truancy and deteriorating behaviour, the school regularly placed Chloe in isolation and compelled her to attend additional after-school classes every day. This did little to improve her emotional state, and she continued to spend time with her friend and her friend’s “boyfriend.”

This went on for a number of years. The “boyfriend” would supply the girls with alcohol and drugs, as well as introducing them to his friends, who were exclusively South Asian men. On one occasion, he took the girls to his place of work – a textiles factory – where he raped Chloe. Following this incident, Chloe stopped spending time with the friend who, up until this point, had accompanied her throughout her exploitation.

By this time, Chloe had become so accustomed to her “lifestyle” of spending time with the Muslim gangs that she continued to do so without her friend. On one occasion, following another late return home, her mother “grounded” her for two months. Fearing further abuse from her stepfather, Chloe walked to a nearby social services office while her mother was at work and reported him. Chloe was interviewed by the social workers about the abuse, after which her mother and stepfather were arrested and questioned. Both denied that the abuse was taking place, and were released without charge.

Chloe made further appeals to social services and was eventually removed from the house and placed in foster care. She lived with a couple who cared for several other foster children and, though she found them “snobby” and judgemental, found some semblance of stability with them – but it did not last long. She was still living in the same town, so when she went into the town centre – as she often did both alone and with the foster carers – the Muslim gangs would recognise and target her. She remained at the same school, and because she now lived further away, the foster carers paid for taxis to take her there. She would ask the taxi drivers to drop her near the school and, rather than attending, would walk to one of the neighbourhoods where the Muslim gangs spent their time. The gangs would take her into their taxis, ply her with drugs and alcohol, and sexually abuse her.

Around the age of 13, Chloe disclosed to social services that she was being sexually abused by gangs of Muslim men. In response, social services did not intervene, but rather talked to Chloe about contraception and sexual health. One social worker started regularly taking Chloe to a sexual health clinic, where she was diagnosed with chlamydia in her throat and vagina, gonorrhea, genital warts, and pelvic inflammatory disease. Neither the social workers nor the clinic staff questioned or reported this. The police were aware of Chloe’s activities, but instead of targeting those responsible for her abuse, they routinely failed to question them – let alone pursue further action – when Chloe was found in cars and houses with them. Chloe was soon moved to a different foster placement with a far more protective carer. On one occasion, a gang came to the foster home searching for Chloe, and the carer fought them in the street to protect her.

Around the time Chloe turned 14, a social worker approached her about her ongoing sexual exploitation. This was one of the first times this had happened, and Chloe was relieved that her abuse was finally being addressed. However, rather than offering a solution, the social worker instead told Chloe that the producers of Emmerdale were looking for a young actress to play a victim of child sexual exploitation, and asked whether she would be interested in auditioning for the role given her experience. Following this exchange, Chloe – upset, angry, and in a state of disbelief – ran away from the foster home, and, after being abducted by a Muslim gang, was missing for six months.

Over this period she was trafficked across the length and breadth of Britain. She was taken to “house after house” and raped and abused by “guy after guy after guy after guy.” The men who abused her paid money to the gang, which treated her as little more than a commodity. She was reported missing and her photograph was shown on TV. Her abusers remarked on this – “you’re that girl off the TV that’s missing” – but her whereabouts were never reported to the police. Chloe describes a cycle of grooming, rape, and drug and alcohol abuse – this went on until, eventually, she was located by the police.

When the police found her, she was in a car with a South Asian Muslim man. The man was let go without charge, and she was returned to her mother’s house. Chloe’s relationship with her mother had completely broken down by this point, so she continued to run away and her psychological state deteriorated further. Following another period of grooming and sexual exploitation by a Muslim gang, Chloe was taken into police custody and transported to a secure unit at a children’s home.

She describes the home as being like a prison. Every aspect of her life was controlled and surveilled, and she was routinely subjected to bodily examinations, including full cavity searches. Chloe found the experience highly traumatic. She remained there for 9 months, by which time she was almost 15. Social services determined that she was well enough to be released, and she was placed in foster care not far from where she had been living before. Chloe describes the new carers as a positive and encouraging presence in her life, and – in spite of her proximity to the sites of her abuse and exploitation – Chloe found stability and security living with them. She enrolled in a full-time hairdressing and beauty course at a nearby college, and for the next two years, Chloe describes her life as “fantastic.”

As Chloe approached her 18th birthday, social services notified her that the foster care would soon end. They identified a house for her and, after parting ways with her carer, she moved in and got a retail job to support herself. Despite having little experience taking care of herself, Chloe’s life remained generally stable through this period.

Eventually, Chloe reestablished contact with the friend whom she had been abused with as a young child. She invited her over to her house, and when she arrived, she was accompanied by a group of Muslim men – all of whom remembered Chloe from past abuse.

Immediately, Chloe’s life was thrown back into chaos. The men refused to leave, and – in Chloe’s words – “it was no longer my quiet little house. It was their house.” They smashed windows, kicked in doors, left the house an “absolute wreck,” and sexually abused Chloe. One of the men – a previous abuser – pinned her down, pulled his trousers down, and “sat on her face,” orally raping her on her own sofa as the rest of the gang watched.

Chloe returned to drugs and alcohol to cope. Though she was still working in retail, her ability to work was rapidly declining. During one shift, one of her colleagues – someone she was friends with – jokingly pinched her bottom. Chloe, traumatised by the years of abuse, punched him in the face in the middle of the shop. She was brought before management and tried to argue her case, but was fired. Left with no income, Chloe spiralled further. The Muslim gang was still occupying her house, and, with nowhere else to go and no ability to remove them, she remained there with them. They routinely drugged, abused, and raped her, including with objects including soft drink cans, keys, and a baseball bat.

Before long they started to pay her bills to consolidate their presence in her home. On a number of occasions, they brought young children into Chloe’s house to abuse them. Chloe recalls a number of occasions when boys under the age of 18 from the Muslim community were pressured and bullied by their older friends and relatives into raping her. Chloe was forced to commit crimes, including insurance fraud and the holding of drugs. On one occasion she contacted the police to report an assault that was taking place in her house and, when they arrived, Chloe was threatened with arrest rather than the gang members as the property was registered in her name.

One evening, an associate of the gang from a neighbouring town arrived at the house. A notorious sex trafficker, he soon began taking Chloe to bars and nightclubs in the surrounding area. There, he would spike her with heroin before handing her over to men who sexually assaulted and raped her.

Chloe became addicted to opiates and her health deteriorated rapidly. She became anorexic, weighing just five stone at the age of 18. The use of heroin was a method of control by the gang, as it left her with no ability to defend herself physically. Her daily existence became a relentless cycle of rape, exploitation, and violence.

Eventually, a social worker visited Chloe and was shocked by both her appearance and the conditions in which she was living. Concerned for her welfare, she took Chloe to an addiction clinic, where tests revealed an extremely high concentration of opiates in her system. Chloe was prescribed medication to manage her opioid dependency and gradually weaned herself off the drugs.

Around this time, Chloe reconnected with a childhood friend, and their friendship soon developed into a romantic relationship. Her boyfriend became aware of the ongoing abuse and, with the help of his father, paid off Chloe’s remaining rent and moved her out of her squalid house. Chloe moved in with him, after which she got another job in retail. For a short period, Chloe’s life was relatively stable – but, due to her unresolved trauma, she soon returned to drinking heavily, smoking cannabis, and gambling.

Her workplace was close to her first foster home, and before long she came back into contact with members of the gang that had abused her at that time. The cycle of grooming, exploitation, and abuse soon resumed. Her relationship with her boyfriend broke down, and, out of desperation, she re-established contact with her mother – who had left her predatory husband – and soon moved back in with her.

One night, Chloe was out with members of the gang and drinking heavily. Upon her return to her mother’s house, her mother reported her to the police. The police arrested Chloe while she was changing into her pyjamas, and she was taken to the police station drunk and half-naked. She was kept in a cell until two am the following morning, at which point she was released. They did not provide her with any clothes or transportation back to her mother’s house. She tried to contact her ex-boyfriend, but he did not respond. Chloe, then 19, was left stranded.

She wandered around the neighbourhood for several hours before encountering a gang member who had previously abused her. Cold and desperate, she got into his car, and, for the following weeks, was trafficked across the country.

Eventually, Chloe identified a new house to move into. Despite their dysfunctional relationship, her mother agreed to sign the rental agreement as Chloe’s guarantor, as Chloe – then without income – knew she would not be able to afford the rent. After she moved in, she became aware of the fact that she was the only White British person in her neighbourhood. Every other resident was South Asian. As a result, the gangs discovered where she was living, and once again treated her house as if it was their own. The cycle of abuse continued, and Chloe’s emotional state deteriorated significantly. Chloe was taken to hospital after a suicide attempt, and, while there, she discovered that she was pregnant.

The father of the child – a Pakistani Muslim illegal migrant – moved into Chloe’s home. Chloe was subsequently coerced into converting to Islam and forced into marriage, both to legitimise the pregnancy in the eyes of her abuser and to assist him in securing a visa. Chloe’s behaviour became tightly controlled. She was forced to wear a hijab, she was prohibited from looking out the windows of her home, and, if she misbehaved in the eyes of her “husband,” he would “beat her black and blue” – something that happened “every day.”

Chloe’s child was born with multiple health problems, including a defective kidney, due to the deteriorated condition of Chloe’s womb as a result of the sexual abuse. Nevertheless, becoming a mother gave Chloe a renewed determination to get her life back on track. She reported the father of her child to the police after he assaulted the child, and he was removed from the property. She stopped taking drugs. She was “focused,” and, for the first time, the gangs left her alone.

One evening, she went out with a friend who lived across the road. Chloe, now a mother, did not drink heavily, but her friend became heavily intoxicated. A group of Asian men started speaking to them, and offered to take Chloe and her friend home. Chloe was suspicious of them, but, for the sake of her friend, agreed. Instead of taking them home, however, they were taken to a hotel.

Chloe, who was not drunk, protested, and encouraged her friend – who was “paralytic” – to leave with her. Chloe warned her friend about what she suspected was going to happen, but her friend refused to leave. Chloe, thinking of her daughter and seeking to protect herself, reluctantly left without her. The following day, Chloe’s friend told Chloe that she had been raped by the men.

This incident represented a turning point in Chloe’s life. She decided that she needed to leave her home town for good and “get as far away from these Asian men as possible.” By chance, she reconnected on Facebook with a man she had known in her early childhood – an old colleague of her mother who she describes as “one of the only adult men in my life who never harmed me or treated me badly.” She told him about everything she had been through and her desire to leave. He lived in Scotland and she was invited to visit him for the weekend, which she did. After returning home, she sought support from Women’s Aid, who managed to secure her a property in Scotland. With nothing but her daughter and a small bag, she left her home town, leaving a lifetime of abuse and exploitation behind, and moved to Scotland, where she resides to this day.

Chloe personally knows at least twenty other girls from her area who were predated on by the Muslim gangs who abused her. The pattern was always the same: grooming, drugging, trafficking, abuse, and rape. Furthermore, Chloe describes being taken into mosques where imams would describe non-Muslims as “infidels” and preach that white women who dressed “inappropriately” were “free game.”

Chloe believes that the local police, social services, NHS, and government were all fully aware of what was happening, including the racialised nature of the crimes, but that they did not intervene for two reasons: because they “could not be bothered with the paperwork,” and because “they did not want to be seen as racist.” Chloe blames these bodies, and their “major push for diversity,” for her abuse.

Chloe says that “if I can save just even one more child, girl or boy, from going through any of this, then I’ve done my job.”

Fiona grew up in a highly abusive household marked by domestic violence, severe emotional abuse, and repeated suicide attempts by her mother, which Fiona witnessed. Despite exceptional academic ability, she developed serious mental health difficulties, self-harm behaviours, and suicidal ideation from a young age.

After escalating abuse and failed disclosures, Fiona entered care at the age of 13. She was placed in a children’s home that had already been identified as high-risk for sexual exploitation in a television documentary prior to her arrival. Inadequate supervision meant she went missing repeatedly. At 13, she was groomed by adult Pakistani men, whom she estimates were aged between 24 and

45. The grooming began with affection and alcohol, quickly progressing to rape, drug dependency, threats, and trafficking.

Care staff negligence was extreme. Abusers would sit in cars outside waiting for the girls, openly converse with staff, and even phone the home to inquire about them. One care worker told Fiona’s mother that her boss had described recording the men’s car registration plates as “above her pay grade,” warning that she would lose her job if she did so. Fiona believes the staff were aware of what was happening but felt powerless to stop it rather than being actively complicit. Nevertheless, the children’s home received £5,000 per week to care for her and failed miserably. Fiona suspects the management avoided proper investigation for fear of being labelled racist.

Only the police took any formal action, issuing “harbouring notices” to the men – official warnings stating they had no permission to associate with, contact, or house a vulnerable child. However, no further action followed. When Fiona’s mother called the police to report her daughter missing and mentioned a history of abuse by Asian men, the call handler told her: “You can’t describe them as Asian men because that’s racist. You should just be glad your child is being taught a different culture.” On one occasion, a police officer returned Fiona to the house where the abuse was occurring and told the men to “have fun with her.” On another occasion, police instructed the abusers that if they could persuade Fiona to sign herself out of care, the police would stop bothering them. The gang then tried to convince her to do so, intending to traffic her to Kashmir. She was only prevented from leaving the country because she did not have a passport.

Between 2008 and 2012, Fiona was repeatedly raped by multiple men connected to organised grooming networks. She was often kept in a house known as a “party house,” where between 10 and 20 men would attend at one time. On one occasion, she was encouraged to bring her friends because the owner had relatives visiting from Birmingham to celebrate Eid and “expected girls to be there.” Within the house, the girls were routinely referred to as “white slags,” while the men wanted Pakistani girls kept “pure” for marriage.

The gangs reportedly discussed fears that the English Defence League (EDL) would arrive armed, so they kept baseball bats for protection. They also allegedly spoke of attending EDL demonstrations with weapons.

Fiona was not only trafficked and raped across multiple cities in the UK but was also forced to traffic drugs. Drugs, intimidation, and violence were used to control her. She was made to clean up the knives from the scene of two fatal stabbings. She was present during a shootout. Her abusers bragged to her that they had hidden dead bodies in a certain location. A few days later, Fiona recalls the news reporting on a body being recovered from the same location that the abusers had disclosed to her. As a result, threats of violence carried enormous weight.

At 14, Fiona was abused by a man known as ‘Rambo.’ He had entered Britain illegally in the back of a lorry. Previously castrated in Pakistan as punishment for child abuse, he had then fled to the Philippines, where he allegedly attacked multiple women and children with a large knife – the origin of his nickname. Rambo was locked in a room with two girls and subjected them to extreme sexual torture. This case illustrated that, in some instances, the sexual abuse of children was driven more by humiliation and control than by sexual gratification.

At 15, Fiona became pregnant while in a mixed-sex care home. Her son was later removed and adopted due to the ongoing exploitation risks, yet Fiona herself was left in the same dangerous environment. The abuse continued into her adulthood. It only stopped when she turned 18, leaving her with profound physical and psychological trauma, including PTSD, substance dependency, and long-term health damage.

Fiona states that the greatest harm came not only from the abusers but from institutional disbelief, neglect, and punishment that actively enabled the ongoing exploitation. In total, she estimates she was abused by between 50 and 100 men. Of those, only two were not Pakistani.

From the age of 13, she was groomed by three adult Pakistani brothers who supplied her with alcohol, cigarettes, and drugs. She was raped while intoxicated, including one occasion when she was taken upstairs while her sister tried to intervene. Because of her upbringing, she thought this was normal – that they were her boyfriends and that they loved her. She would go missing for extended periods and was subjected to repeated daily sexual abuse. The perpetrators would collect her from school, her home, and public places, using threats of violence to coerce and control her.

At age 14, she was gang-raped and beaten by three men who had locked her in a house. She was left covered in cuts and bruises, which alerted a friend. The friend told her own mother, who then contacted Michelle’s mother. The police were called, but they claimed there was little they could do without more evidence. One of the gang members later forced Michelle to go to the police station with him to retract her statement. The police accepted him as her “appropriate adult” – a role normally reserved for a parent, close family member, social worker, or trained professional. The investigation was subsequently dropped.

One of Michelle’s friends, who lived in a care home, would be collected directly outside by the same gang. Care staff would call the police, but officers reportedly referred to the girls as “prostitutes” despite them being children. Both social services and the police, Michelle says, failed to understand the situation and believed the girls were engaging in the activity by choice. As a result, little was done to intervene. When she was abducted and went missing, no one came looking for her. A social worker once told her that, at age 14, she would be allowed to live with her 30-year-old “boyfriend” as long as they did not share a room. Michelle was raped in bin sheds, threatened with a knife, and forced into sex with multiple men waiting in cars. She was drugged, beaten, burned with cigarettes, locked in rooms, and passed between men. An amusement arcade was used as a front for drug dealing and the sexual exploitation of children. She became pregnant four times as a child as a result of rape, leading to miscarriages, one abortion, and one surviving child. Of her abusers, she states: “98% of them were Pakistani Muslim. If not, they were Iraqi Muslim or Kurdish.”

Michelle believes these gangs have remained untouchable because authorities feared being labelled racist.She describes an extensive network of abusers operating across the entire country, calling it “industrial” in scale. It functions as a large central network with smaller connected groups in specific localities. Michelle claims she was raped by between six and seven hundred different men over the course of three years. She now lives with severe PTSD and lifelong trauma, describing both her childhood and her future as destroyed.

She was first groomed and sexually abused at the age of 15 by two adult Pakistani brothers. One of the brothers, Whitney recalls, acted as a boyfriend figure. Both brothers would regularly take her to a flat in Birmingham, supply her with alcohol, and in her words she would “have sex with them.”

Their interactions with Whitney soon turned violent. They began beating her and, on one occasion, held a hot iron to her face. Whitney recalls that the brothers stopped contacting her after they arrived at her house to collect her and found all of her uncles sitting on the wall outside. After that incident, they never came back. She cannot remember exactly how or why her uncles were there, but she believes her mother had asked them to intervene.

Many years later, Whitney’s daughter began self-harming at age eleven and even attempted suicide. Her phone contained sexually explicit messages. Whitney’s daughter told her there was a “sex room” at school run by the older boys. Deeply concerned for her daughter, Whitney contacted social services. They offered little support beyond talking through the problems. In one instance, social services accidentally sent her six other children’s case files instead of her daughter’s, which left her deeply distrustful of their ability to help.

Whitney’s daughter was coerced into sending a sexual image, which was then circulated across multiple schools, the local community, and eventually the internet. This led to her receiving unwanted attention from adult men of various ethnicities and from multiple countries. From that point on, Whitney’s daughter began going missing regularly. These disappearances were directly linked to sexual demands and exploitation by older boys and adult men.

She was threatened with violence if she contacted the police and sometimes returned home with items of clothing missing. Whitney repeatedly reported her concerns to the police and social services, clearly stating that she believed her daughter was being sexually exploited. Police responses were often delayed, statements were not taken, and investigations were closed without further action. Social services refused to relocate the family, downgraded the risk level, and eventually closed the case despite ongoing exploitation.

Whitney herself was blamed, and her own past was used to undermine her credibility as a parent. Her family received repeated threats, including warnings that their house would be burned down, faces would be slashed, and machetes would be used. Later, Whitney discovered that her daughter had been placed on the National Referral Mechanism (NRM) as a trafficking victim – without her being informed. The NRM is the UK's official framework for identifying, referring, and supporting victims of human trafficking and modern slavery and serves as a recognition by a designated professional that an individual is a potential victim of human trafficking or modern slavery.

Sally described a previously stable, working family life until housing instability and family stress coincided with changes in her daughter’s behaviour. The house the family were buying fell through, but they had already moved out of their family home and all their possessions were in storage. A family friend was able to rent them a part-renovated property on a short-term basis, but it was not ideal for a family with four children. It was only meant to be temporary, but the family ended up staying there for ten months.

Her daughter began making up stories, such as claiming her mother and stepdad were going away and leaving her to look after her five-year-old brother at school. This resulted in school involvement in their family life. The stresses the household was under led to arguments that brought in both the police and social services. After leaving school at 16, Sally’s daughter began working at a local pub.

On one occasion she was invited to a party. Sally received a call later that evening from one of her daughter’s friends saying that her daughter was lying on the pavement outside the property. If Sally couldn’t pick her up, they were going to take her to the bus stop and leave her there, as she was making too much noise. When her mother found her lying on the ground, she was making a horrendous wailing sound and kept saying not to touch her. Her mother recognised that something was seriously wrong and took her to hospital.

Sally’s daughter told the nurse carrying out the examination that she had been sexually assaulted. The hospital notes recorded that her genitalia were swollen and red. The hospital reported the incident to the police. Sally’s daughter then received threats via Snapchat, became scared about the outcome of the case, and withdrew from the process. Around the same time, social services closed their case on the family. Sally believes her daughter did not want to invite more trouble into the household.

It later emerged in court that they had all been smoking cannabis. Sally believes her daughter had participated and that something had happened to her, but she was found guilty of lying about being raped.

Sally’s daughter then began working as a kitchen assistant at a care home and a glass collector at a nightclub, in addition to her pub job. After turning 18, she was able to work behind the bar at the nightclub, where her behaviour began to change. She would return home with cuts and bruises. On one occasion she came back with a black eye and said there had been a fight in the nightclub and she had been hit accidentally. She appeared more tired and distressed than usual.

Sally began to notice that her daughter’s phone would ring regularly, with “Asian” men’s names appearing on the screen. When asked about them, her daughter tried to hide the calls. The bar manager stopped her daughter from working on the main floor because she was small and they struggled to keep track of her. They also ensured she was always paired with an older member of staff, as the “Asian” men would harass her if she was working alone. One “Asian” man gifted her a gold chain.

Sally’s daughter began saying she wanted to move away from home. She had regularly travelled to a nearby town by train. Sally would pick her up and drop her off at the station, and she never appeared to have been drinking or using drugs. One day, Sally returned home to find her daughter had left with her possessions and was ignoring her calls. She had told work colleagues that she had moved because her stepfather was harming her, but this was not true.

After a few days of investigation, Sally managed to find where her daughter had moved to. When she arrived at the flat, she found her daughter with two police officers to whom she was reporting an allegation of rape. When her daughter handed in her phone as evidence, the police found hundreds of messages from “Asian” men. They believed she was being groomed. She was later found guilty of lying about the rape she had reported. Over the course of the following year, Sally reported her daughter missing thirty-nine times. She would often turn up in various towns across the region, battered, bruised, intoxicated or on drugs. She was usually without underwear and spent increasing amounts of time in hospital. One police force made a referral to the NRM, believing she was a victim of trafficking. Another police force repeatedly arrested her and seized her phone, which meant the referral agency could not contact her as her number kept changing.

One incident involved Sally’s daughter being locked in a room above an Indian restaurant, with the man refusing to let her leave. The police ignored it, believing she was lying. Another incident involved an “Asian” man following her, trying to grab her and take her away. Thankfully she was with her sister and friends, who quickly put her in a taxi and sent her home. That same man was later arrested for breaking into a woman’s house and sexually assaulting her while she slept – nevertheless, the police still insisted Sally’s daughter had been lying about the earlier incident. The police believed she had a mental health condition and was deliberately self-harming and putting herself in dangerous situations. They wanted to have her sectioned, but a doctor disagreed, noting that she still had capacity.

Another incident involved a different “Asian” man who refused to leave Sally’s daughter’s flat. Police told him to leave but asked no questions. He left behind a balaclava, yet the police showed no interest despite him carrying it while visiting a young woman. After her flat door was kicked down in yet another incident while she was missing, she returned to her mother’s home.

Sally’s daughter later explained that she had moved away to keep her family safe. She claimed she had been told that if she did not do as her abusers said, they would harm her brother, rape her sister, and firebomb the house. She had lied to her colleagues about her stepdad to avoid bringing repercussions on the family.

She went missing again. The police stated they believed she was making the whole thing up and injuring herself, so they charged her with perverting the course of justice. Part of her bail conditions required her not to leave Sally’s house. The following week, her daughter attempted suicide by overdose. She went missing one final time and was found in a field with injuries to her head and ear, a severed finger, and numerous cuts and bruises.

Following this, she wrote a post on Facebook alleging that she had been a victim of grooming gangs. The post went viral. Within half an hour, the police arrested her and she was sent to prison.

Following her daughter’s conviction, the family experienced sustained harassment and intimidation, particularly from one Muslim man. Sally reports repeated failures by the police to protect them. She believes her daughter was a vulnerable young woman who lied at times but was nevertheless groomed.

Marlon is the father of a daughter who was a repeated victim of grooming as well as being repeatedly failed by authorities.

Marlon reported his 14-year-old daughter Scarlett missing a number of times because she was being groomed and exploited. The police informed social services that what Marlon was doing was appropriate as he was acting to safeguard his daughter. However, social services did not accept the police’s assessment and instead dragged out the investigation for three months. During that time his daughter disclosed concerns to her school, which resulted in social services attending Marlon’s home. While his daughter was present they told him that if he tried to stop her from leaving the house she should call social services or the police.

Social services undermining his parental authority resulted in her missing episodes escalating dramatically. Social services effectively gave her permission to go missing, and the case was then closed without meaningful intervention. Marlon placed a formal complaint to social services stating that he was struggling to cope with his daughter's missing episodes. The social worker assigned to him following this openly stated to him that they were only taking the case because of his complaint. This made him feel like the problem rather than a parent concerned with safeguarding his daughter from abuse.

On one occasion Marlon stood in front of the door to prevent his daughter from leaving late at night resulting in her repeatedly kicking him and breaking three of his fingers. He reported this to social services who simply stated he should walk away when she becomes violent. Even after showing them the bruises on his back that he received as he walked away they did not change the advice they gave. Marlon remains convinced that if his child were male and he were female the response would have been different.

Marlon would often spend his evenings driving in search of his daughter until three or four am while having work the following day, which his employer was not supportive of. He often reported her missing to the police, who would sometimes turn up to his house many hours later. On one occasion he saw footage of the police saying not to bother even waking him. This made him feel more like a problem rather than it being the safeguarding emergency that it was.

Scarlett was unlawfully excluded from school due to grooming-related behaviour and assigned a new school where the grooming gang operated. A multi-agency risk management meeting was eventually convened with children’s services and the police’s Missing from Home team. While the meeting was ongoing one of the police officers in attendance told Marlon to stop reporting his daughter missing. Marlon challenged this which resulted in the police officer shouting at him in front of all in attendance. The officer has since been dismissed. The social worker and manager present did not intervene but privately acknowledged he was right to continue to report his daughter missing. They refused to launch a formal complaint against the officer.

Shortly after this his daughter went missing for several days and was eventually found at Marlon’s mother’s house, unkempt, distressed and stating that she had been raped. Care staff returned her to the location of the rape, thereby destroying forensic opportunities, and failed to report it to police until days later. Marlon had to make his own referral to the rape crisis centre, by which time forensic evidence was lost.

The perpetrator was arrested but bailed with the condition not to contact Marlon’s daughter. Immediately upon leaving the station he called her and threatened her life. He was an adult and drug dealer and his associates soon began attending Marlon’s home. His daughter was terrified of them. An older woman began to groom and manipulate Marlon’s daughter under the guise of friendship.

After another missing episode Marlon was able to trace his daughter to a specific property. Despite repeated calls and reports of men entering the property both police and social services failed to remove her or issue an abduction warning notice. His daughter was later found to be the victim of criminal exploitation, including drug supply, prostitution and being forced to dig up a firearm. These acts were directed by the older woman amongst others. At this point the impact on Marlon was catastrophic. He was physically exhausted, anxious, depressed and lived in constant fear. He was attacked by masked individuals in his home with the police response delayed and dismissive.

Marlon’s daughter was eventually taken into secure care where she was subjected to further abuse, including sexual abuse by staff and other children, neglect, and safeguarding failures. Marlon made multiple complaints. At a court hearing, social services attempted to place his daughter on a child protection plan for emotional abuse and neglect by Marlon himself. However, the judge intervened and ordered this to be amended to be recorded as beyond parental control.

Marlon’s daughter continued to be moved between unsuitable placements. She was groomed repeatedly, trafficked, forced into drug supply, and raped by adult men. She became pregnant as a result of rape. The handling of her termination by professionals was traumatic and negligent. Police later charged Scarlett with intent to supply Class A drugs, despite her being a victim of trafficking and on the National Referral Mechanism. Scarlett was placed in a unit run entirely by male Muslim staff where she was groomed again. Racist abuse and extremist comments were made to her. Marlon again raised concerns which were ignored.

Despite his repeated attempts to help his daughter, he has experienced many instances of violence from her as a result of the trauma and grooming. He has experienced many assaults, received black eyes and had to sleep barricaded in his room. He repeatedly requested domestic abuse support but was refused because he was a male parent. He has been forced to complete parenting courses and blamed for his daughter’s abuse.

The whole experience has harmed Marlon financially, emotionally and psychologically. He states it has destroyed his life. He is no longer the person he used to be. Marlon’s case highlights that parents can also be victims of both grooming networks as well as widespread institutional failure.

If you would like to hear Marlon’s story in greater detail, he has recently published a book about his experiences titled In Plain Sight (2026).

From a young age, adult men moved in and out of his life, and he was encouraged to refer to them as “dad” or “uncle.” This made it seem normal that adult men would be around him as a child. He was moved around many different home environments and learned to accept situations without question. His early experiences made him believe that adults could enter his personal space without consent, that fear should be tolerated, and that he had no control.

Wallace’s earliest memory of abuse occurred when he was four or five years old, when an adult came into his bedroom at night and got into bed with him. He could not identify who it was but instinctively knew it was wrong. His main abusers were his mother’s partner and the partner’s brother, who both exercised authority over Wallace and were treated as trusted adults. They were connected to a biker group in the area. Not all members of the group were involved in the abuse, but a core group of men were.

Wallace recalls being taken to a particular house where multiple men were present. It had a dark atmosphere, lit by candles, possibly snake-shaped candle holders placed near the fireplace. The setting felt deliberate and staged. Multiple adults were sitting around watching him, which instinctively made him feel unsafe. He was led into a bedroom, restrained and raped by an adult.

His mother’s partner’s brother spoke to him as if what had just happened was normal, despite the considerable pain and emotional distress he felt. Wallace asked if he would receive a toy for what had happened. He did receive one, but it was cheap and insignificant. Even then he realised that there was no real compensation for what had happened to him. The same pattern of abuse occurred on multiple occasions. Wallace recalls seeing other boys and girls present who were usually restrained and drugged. He also recalls being drugged himself and losing consciousness. He would often wake alone or with other abused children, disoriented and distressed. This has caused long-term psychological damage.

At one point the police raided the property. They took Wallace outside and showed him adults one by one, asking if he recognised them. He had been coached to say these men were his “uncles,” and that is what he said. He associated authority figures with fear and wanted to avoid saying what he believed might be the wrong thing. As a result, the police intervention did not protect him. No safeguarding followed and he returned to the abusive environment.

The signs of abuse were there and only reinforced Wallace’s view that speaking out would not lead to safety. As an adult he eventually attempted to report what had happened to him, a disclosure which took years. He expected to be treated as a victim of serious childhood sexual abuse, but instead his disclosure was treated as a mental health issue. He was asked to provide psychiatric and medical notes before any proper investigation would take place. The lack of seriousness from the authorities resulted in Wallace’s statements being recorded improperly.

Due to this experience he made complaints to the police, to professional bodies including the General Medical Council, and to other oversight organisations. Each process was slow, fragmented and obstructive and continued for years without resolution. During this time he was forced to relive his experiences repeatedly while being met with scepticism. At no point was his well-being considered, which further compounded his trauma as he once again felt dismissed, disbelieved and unprotected.

Owing to Wallace’s abuse he has experienced long-term psychological harm. This harm has affected his education, relationships, sense of self-worth and his ability to feel safe. He wishes for his abusers and the authorities who failed to act to be held to account, and for his story to help protect other children from similar harm.

Sebastian was raised in Scotland in a stable household. Sebastian’s mother held down a professional job, owned her own home and car, and the family regularly went on holidays together. Despite this relatively secure background, which was not typical of abuse victims, Sebastian was raped and abused from the age of six by family members – without Sebastian’s mother’s knowledge. These family members instilled in Sebastian the belief that, to be safe, you had to give them what they wanted. This led Sebastian to develop a transactional view of interpersonal relationships.

At age eleven, Sebastian was introduced by these abusive family members to a local café owner. The owner gave Sebastian free food, lifts in his car, and free cinema tickets to build trust and a sense of obligation. From there, they began prostituting Sebastian out to a number of people. These included seemingly respectable professionals such as estate agents, solicitors, care support workers for children, and even police officers. Even at boarding school, Sebastian was raped, assaulted, and groomed by staff and connected adults, with Sebastian’s injuries often ignored by medical professionals. All of Sebastian’s abusers were White British.

In adulthood and during the final years of the abuse, Sebastian became aware of the wider operation of the grooming networks, both in a quiet rural area and in the city. At the age of 40, Sebastian was finally able to escape a cycle of abuse that had lasted for nearly four decades. Following years of abuse, Sebastian, born a biological female, transitioned to the opposite sex and now identifies as a trans man. Sebastian transitioned socially at 41 and medically at 48. However, when describing the abuse experienced as a child, it remains important for Sebastian to recognise that these events occurred while living as a girl and perceived as such.

Sebastian acknowledges that this transition was, at least in part, a consequence of the abuse experienced, and feels safer from further abuse when presenting as a man. Sebastian recognises the profound impact trauma can have on a person’s life and believes that different people find different ways to cope. For some, that may mean choosing a particular career or relationship or making unhealthy choices by using substances or alcohol; for Sebastian, transition and finding peace in being “Seb” became the pathway to recovery.

Sebastian describes healing from trauma as a form of transformation. For Sebastian, that transformation has involved a change of personal identity and finding a sense of safety never known while living as a female. Sebastian understands that others may not fully understand the paths people take to cope with trauma, but hopes that at the very least, they will try to understand. Sebastian now advocates for other survivors, with the aim of protecting vulnerable people and helping to develop local measures to prevent child abuse.

Anna was raised in a stable, middle-class household with both parents present. She first experienced abuse at the age of 13 by a perpetrator who was almost 18, whom she met through friends. He began their interactions with what is known as “love-bombing”: he complimented her, messaged her regularly, offered to buy her gifts and alcohol, requested photographs of her, and discussed meeting up.

They arranged to meet at a local bus stop and go into town. At the last minute, he changed the plan and asked Anna to meet him at the end of a path in a nearby woodland. Upon arrival, his demeanour was cold and aggressive. He demanded that Anna perform oral sex on him and threatened to tell people she knew that she had sent him explicit photographs and that they had already had sex. Feeling threatened and fearful, she complied.

Unbeknownst to Anna, he had covertly recorded the incident. A few days later, multiple men added her on Snapchat and began mocking and taunting her. The perpetrator himself sent Anna the video, laughed, and told her he had shared it with his “boys and brothers,” leaving her feeling humiliated, fearful, and traumatised.Anna reported the assault to the police, but despite explaining the coercion and threats, the case was closed with no investigation into the creation or distribution of child sexual abuse material.

Rumours spread rapidly among Anna’s peers, and she was mocked and insulted in public. A year later, Anna encountered three Muslim brothers through a friend who was already being groomed and abused by them. They supplied her with alcohol and cigarettes in a public park and waited until she was heavily intoxicated before they began assaulting her. One of the brothers pulled her behind a tree and groped her chest despite her repeated refusals. When she tried to flee, he pushed her violently against the tree, causing her to hit her head and suffer a concussion.

The grooming continued through threats to her family, intimidation, verbal abuse, and cycles of affection, gifts, and coercion. Anna did not feel safe reporting the abuse to the police. On another occasion, she was again supplied with alcohol. One of the brothers grabbed her body violently, dug his fingernails into her, and yanked at her underwear repeatedly while laughing. Anna cried silently, feeling powerless to stop the assault. Afterwards, she tried to cut contact, but one of the brothers located her and banged on the door shouting while she hid inside until he left. Out of fear, she complied with further demands to meet the brothers, resulting in more assaults.

There was a period of nearly four years before any trial was held, largely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The perpetrators used this time to spread rumours portraying the abuse as consensual and to boast about the assaults. In the courtroom, the abuse and intimidation continued: they pulled faces, pointed and laughed at her, and made rude remarks about her appearance. This behaviour was not addressed by the court. One of the brothers was convicted of sexual assault and, as he was taken into custody, shouted “Allahu Akbar.”

At the sentencing, the brother’s sister shouted abuse at Anna, threatened her, and later breached her anonymity online. She blamed the jury, stating they were “all white.” She was eventually arrested and charged with malicious communications.

Anna states there is a broader failure to confront the role of ethnicity, religion, and cultural dynamics in organised sexual exploitation due to fear of accusations of racism.

On one occasion, instead of being taken to school, she was driven to one of the men’s sister’s houses and taught how to cook “Asian food.” Her friends spent more time with the men, but because her parents expected her to come straight home after school, she had limited contact with them beyond the lifts. She notes that her friends were already doing adult things such as smoking, drinking, and going to clubs, whereas she still had a more child-like disposition.

This dynamic continued for three years until she turned 15, when the abuse began. She started going with her friends to a restaurant run by Muslim men to help with deliveries. This escalated when one of the men who worked there – a 35-year-old Bangladeshi man – kissed her, causing her to run away. The same man later raped her when she was 15. Because her friends were also being abused, Taylor believed it was normal and that the man was her boyfriend. However, when she walked in on him with one of her friends, she realised this was not the case. After this, her behaviour changed dramatically: she began skipping school and drinking heavily.

During a family incident that led to police being called, Taylor’s father mentioned his suspicions that she was being abused by Asian men. The police responded that there was nothing they could do because she had “consented.” Police were called on multiple occasions regarding the abuse of Taylor and her friends, but they consistently refused to take action. The only time they helped her was when a group of “Asian” girls called the police; officers then returned Taylor and her friend home. Taylor believes they only intervened on that occasion because they did not want to face accusations of racism, given that the call came from “Asian” women. By the age of 16, she had been introduced to many more men and was constantly harassed by them over the phone. Some men would initially appear kind and caring, leading her to believe they were in a relationship, only to lure her into situations where she would be gang-raped. They used a combination of false kindness, violent abuse, and alcohol to coerce and control her. Cars would stop in the street and demand she get in. She would be raped and then taken to the next abuser. She claims that on some nights she was passed to as many as ten different men, and estimates she was abused by around 100 men in total.

One common tactic used by the gangs was to send taxis to pick up drunk girls late at night. The driver would pretend to stop at a shop for a drink, then drive off, leaving the girl behind. A group of men would then “rescue” her, only to take her to a pre-arranged house for gang rape. A number of women also played a role in directing girls to their abusers in exchange for gifts and money. These women would trap the girls in properties or use violence to coerce them. Taylor has witnessed shootings, had knives held to her throat, and a gun held to her head. The gangs used the death of one of the other girls as leverage, threatening that anyone who spoke out would be next.

Realising she had to escape the abuse, Taylor made a detailed twenty-page statement to the police. She provided the phone numbers of more than one hundred “Asian” men and showed them messages in which the men threatened to rape her mother, beat her father, and burn down the family home. No investigation followed. Both her teachers at school and her GP were aware that something was seriously wrong but did not pursue their suspicions further.

Viewing her medical record as an adult, there were documented concerns from around a year old. There were notes of a rash “down below” with question marks recorded. There were further entries where it was described as a possible nappy rash, again with question marks. Seven years later a doctor made a note that she was a child that should be “kept an eye on.” Her mother refused to discuss her situation with Marie in the room. The record showed that she had significant bowel and gynaecological problems. Despite the signs of abuse, no safeguarding action was taken.

From around the age of seven Marie’s mother’s partner began grooming and sexually abusing her. He would bring her presents and then touch her inappropriately. Marie said to him what he was doing was “bad” and she did not like it. He told her that her mother had told him it was allowed. Her mother would ask “Marie” how she got on with him, demand she had thanked him “properly” and would threaten to get angry if not. She was complicit and the abuse continued for many years.

Her mother would deliberately shame her. When Marie began to menstruate she thought she was dying but her mother told her periods were what “dirty girls” had. She deliberately gave her sanitary pads that would leak so she could shame and punish her. If she had a spot on her face she would put a large blob of Germolene on her face and tell her not to remove it otherwise people would not know she was “dirty.” When she was unwell her mother would get her partner to rub Vapour Rub on her chest. Her mother would soak her underwear in bleach and make her wear it, which still causes Marie discomfort to this day. In one instance her mother and her partner forced a bottle inside her which was painful. Her mother would attach clothes pegs on her clitoris to see how long Marie could last. Marie’s mother also groomed her for others and she had to share a bed with her.

Marie was taken to another man’s house by her mother’s partner where she was raped. He began to traffic her to other perpetrators he knew through his work that operated like an organised group or gang. She became pregnant as a product of her abuse. On two occasions her mother took her to a woman’s house. There the woman used a knitting needle to perform the abortions. The woman’s husband also raped her.

She had bottle tops opened up inside of her vagina, then made to drink what was in the bottle when she was primary school age. There were instances where she ran into members of her grooming network who would lure her to a secluded location and rape her. The abuse she experienced included extreme sexual violence and degradation. She was raped repeatedly over the years, including anal rape. She was subjected to penetration with objects. She was urinated on. Her legs were held open. She was bitten on the back, cut on the leg and strangled. She has lasting injuries.

Marie attempted to end her own life at school by walking in front of a van. At college she drank a bottle of vodka and took a box of tablets in an attempt to kill herself. The college counsellor raised concerns and contacted her GP but nothing was done. Between leaving school and joining college, at seventeen, she was groomed by a 55-year-old police sergeant. He knew her background and claimed that he would catch her attacker and get justice for her. Instead, one evening he offered to take her out of the house and raped her. He went on to rape her on another occasion.

Upon becoming an adult she went to a Women’s Aid refuge for safety. They moved her to a safe location. On one occasion her mother and partner went to the Women’s Aid office, but they refused to give them information and introduced additional measures to protect Marie. While in the safe house she miscarried, a product of her mother’s partner. Following this Marie drunkenly called her mother and told her what had happened. Even after explaining who impregnated her, her mother said “We would have loved a baby in the house.” She went to the police in recent years and told them that she was a survivor of child sexual abuse and they told her to go away and “sort her head out.” None of the perpetrators have been brought to justice.

Jane’s father had significant mental health issues, though until the age of five she describes a generally positive relationship with him. However, after meeting a new partner following the departure of Jane’s mother, he became colder, more distant, and increasingly abusive. He used his hands, a slipper, and a cane to hit

Jane’s mother re-entered her life with a new boyfriend when Jane was 13. The boyfriend was abusive towards Jane’s mother, and on one occasion raped her in front of Jane.

It was around this time that Jane’s mother’s drug dealer began grooming her via Facebook. He had become aware of the fact that Jane was self-harming, and presented himself as a sympathetic and supportive friend. Jane, vulnerable at the time, exchanged messages with him for several months.

Eventually, the drug dealer began asking Jane whether she had ever smoked cigarettes, taken drugs, or had sex. During one half term, he asked to meet with her. She agreed, and he came to Jane’s father’s house while Jane’s father was at work, armed with a kosh. He took her up to her bedroom and told her to strip naked. He said “you may be 13, but you’ve got the body of a woman” and raped her before promptly leaving.

From then, the drug dealer regularly called Jane and waited outside her school for her. Jane would hide in the staff room and tell teachers that she did not want to leave as she knew he would be waiting for her. The staff did not intervene and would force her to leave the school.

The drug dealer regularly took Jane to his girlfriend’s house where he would give Jane valium and cannabis. He would also show her the drugs he took, including heroin, methadone, and crack cocaine. The drug dealer sexually abused Jane “every day apart from the weekends” for several months.

Jane was misdiagnosed with a personality disorder at this time. She did not tell anyone about her relationship with the drug dealer until one night during an argument with her mother, who was drunk. Her mother said “I don’t know why you are like this” and Jane replied “because I am being fucked by a 50-year-old man and nobody has noticed.”

The following day, Jane returned from school to the police at her house. The police insisted that Jane, still just 13, would need to testify in court alone against the drug dealer. Intimidated, she did not wish to face him, and he was not prosecuted.

Following the revelation of Jane’s grooming and rape by the drug dealer, Jane’s father called her a “whore” and told her that he “wished she would just hurry up and kill herself.” The school accused Jane of using self-harm to manipulate her father. She was regularly placed in detention and threatened with expulsion due to falling behind with schoolwork. As a result, Jane became increasingly disobedient and suicidal.

At the age of 14, Jane began running away from school, taking drugs, and spending time with men older than her. On one occasion, she took an ‘overdose’ before school in an attempt to end her life . She was taken to hospital after the staff told her she would have done it in the woods or somewhere private if she actually wanted to die. Her father then came to the hospital and told her to “try harder next time as she was wasting everyone’s time. Later that day, she attempted suicide by cutting her own throat, but failed.

Jane was briefly taken into care at the hospital. She was discharged after less than a month, and “everybody acted like nothing had happened.” Her father would not accept her back into the family home, so she was left homeless. Jane spent a short period of time staying with friends, until social services was informed about her situation by her aunt. Jane refused to return home, disclosing to social services that she was being physically abused and showed them the bruises on her body. She was then briefly taken into foster care, before being moved into a children’s home until she was 16 years old. Jane was then moved into a semi-independent living facility for vulnerable young people.

After a few months, a female peer at the accommodation invited Jane to what she described as a “party.” This peer was coercive and intimidating, and Jane did not feel able to refuse. She was taken to a block of flats in Hounslow, and expected to be met with a group of people her own age. Instead, the flat was occupied by six or seven Somali men.

Jane was taken into the bathroom by the girl who had brought her there and instructed to shave. She was told that she was being sold to the men for sex. Jane did not want to participate, but complied out of fear. She was then sexually abused by one of the men, and made to sleep in a small child’s bed afterwards. The following morning, the girl who took Jane to the flat was paid by the men.

This occurred repeatedly over a period of months, sometimes with multiple other girls present. Jane was told that she needed to gain weight to be more desirable to the men. In response, Jane began purging, which developed into a severe eating disorder.

Jane was blackmailed with the threat of prison by the peer if she disclosed her exploitation to anyone. Violence and intimidation became commonplace at the semi-independent living facility. On one occasion, a young woman returned to the accommodation intoxicated and distressed, saying that she had been abducted and sexually assaulted. The staff – who were aware that sexual exploitation was taking place on the site, but chose to do nothing about it – responded by accusing her of making it up.

Eventually, Jane disclosed her own sexual exploitation to accommodation staff, including the trafficking and exchange of money. She was told that what was happening did not constitute trafficking as she was over the age of 16. The police were not contacted and no action was taken. Jane was blackmailed by staff with the threat of being blamed for the exploitation of her and others if she took her complaints any further. Jane’s eating disorder intensified, and she began self-harming again. She was sectioned under the Mental Health Act and admitted to a psychiatric hospital. While hospitalised, she disclosed the exploitation again. Police interviews took place, but – due to her being heavily medicated – Jane was treated as an unreliable witness and no further action was taken. She also disclosed in writing what was happening to her. It was removed from her most recent social care file, but the original clearly states she wrote a letter to them a year before she was hospitalised and her police interview matched the letter. The letter was not acted on by the authorities.

As a result of her abuse and eating disorder, Jane has developed endometriosis, which has resulted in the loss of half her uterus.

Jane has since learned that her records at the semi-independent living facility have been lost or destroyed despite statutory retention requirements. Even into adulthood, Jane has not received any closure and attempts to get justice have been met with delays, obstruction, and retraumatisation. Jane states that she believes that children remain at risk due to the culture of silence that persists across institutions that should be caring for them.

By the age of 14, Leanne was drawn into peer groups linked to significantly older men. These men were adult males, primarily of Kurdish, Iraqi, and other Muslim backgrounds, and they operated in groups. Grooming was systematic: alcohol, drugs, accommodation, and emotional manipulation were used to entrap her. She was taken to various houses in Sheffield (notably Pitsmoor) and other cities, where multiple girls were trafficked and sexually exploited.She was raped repeatedly, drugged, and on at least one occasion held captive and beaten for several days. She witnessed stabbings, shootings, and machete attacks, handled firearms as a child, and was forced into environments of extreme violence.

At 15, Leanne became pregnant by an adult Iraqi man. She miscarried, and later discovered that records had been falsified to suggest she was 16, thereby minimising the seriousness of the offence. Despite repeated missing episodes, police intelligence, and sexual exploitation strategy meetings, safeguarding failed. The council housing department refused to assist her due to her age. Child protection plans were implemented but did not remove her from danger.

Social services and police were aware she was associating with older Kurdish men and at high risk of sexual exploitation, yet intervention was weak and inconsistent. No perpetrator was prosecuted for her rape. She eventually escaped exploitation only after becoming a mother at 17 and moving away from the grooming network.

As an adult, Leanne lives with chronic physical and psychological harm, including trauma-related fibromyalgia. She has never received justice. She gave her evidence to ensure that what happened is finally acknowledged and not repeated.

After moving onto the council estate, trouble began immediately. One older boy attempted to take Lilly’s hand from her mother when she was five years old. Her mother reported it to the police, but it was treated as a joke. Years later, the same person went on to rape a three-year-old.

This perpetrator and his brother then began targeting the family. They harassed Lilly’s mother and beat her father badly. This created an atmosphere of constant fear and chaos. The police frequently attended the family home, turning over belongings and breaking possessions while investigating false accusations.

Over time, Lilly and her siblings were taken into care. Siblings who returned home disclosed severe abuse in children’s homes, including rape, violence, humiliation, and intimidation. Lilly herself was groomed and repeatedly abducted and raped by a man from the age of six. He threatened to harm her sisters if she spoke.

Lilly’s sister was sexually abused by her own social worker at age twelve. This was actively covered up by management, who pretended he was in a relationship with another social worker to deflect suspicion. He gained legal guardianship of Lilly’s sister and eventually married her. He was paid by the local authority, and her sister never completed her education. Lilly witnessed children being selected by staff and handed over to foreign taxi drivers over many years.

In the children’s home, Lilly was violently assaulted and sexually abused by staff. Management figures dismissed or covered up the abuse. She also suffered numerous violent injuries from staff. The most serious was a head injury that resulted in lasting neurological damage. Later in adulthood, she was diagnosed with a brain aneurysm. After returning to school with serious injuries, Lilly was sent back home to her parents. At age fourteen, upon returning to the estate, she was gang-raped by older men and boys. She did not report it to the police.

As an adult, Lilly learned that police and council records of her abuse had been hidden for decades. Operation Marmion briefly acknowledged her account before being shut down at a senior level. She was told the perpetrators were out of jurisdiction, dead, or untraceable. No one was held accountable.

Grace’s mother prevented contact with her estranged father without giving any reason, causing Grace to rebel against her. By secondary school age, her behaviour had deteriorated significantly. She began getting into cars with adult men who offered her cannabis, music, food and lifts. She states that the majority of the men who groomed her were Pakistani, although some white men acted as intermediaries and assisted in the grooming of girls.

She was raped on multiple occasions by adult men, often while intoxicated. Because she had been drinking, she believed she was responsible for the abuse. At fifteen, she believed she was in a relationship with an adult man, a situation that lasted around five years. During that time she experienced domestic violence, rape, and coercive control.

She reported the perpetrators to the police, wishing only to prevent other children from experiencing abuse. However, the police arrested and interviewed some of the men about Grace without consulting her in advance or assessing the potential impact on her. She felt pushed into prosecution without adequate preparation or support. She found the process abrupt and poorly explained. As a consequence of the police’s handling of the case, she experienced flashbacks, panic attacks, and a relapse into substance misuse.

Another partner was a paedophile involved in grooming gangs who sexually abused her children and others. He stalked, harassed and threatened the family, and manipulated police investigations for years. Police repeatedly failed to seize devices, link cases, act on stalking logs, or protect her and her children. Non-molestation orders and bail conditions were breached without consequence. The cumulative impact includes severe mental illness, displacement, loss of employment, and ongoing fear.

Victoria gave evidence as the mother of a vulnerable teenager who started at a local college in 2022.

In 2023, her daughter abruptly converted to Islam. Victoria discovered Muslim clothing, a Quran, and a prayer mat hidden under her bed. Her daughter began quoting the Quran and praying five times a day. This sudden change coincided with a secret relationship with an Algerian Muslim student who held strong Islamic beliefs. She became disrespectful to her family and started speaking negatively about Britain. Victoria says her daughter changed completely.

The boyfriend exerted coercive control: he held her daughter’s banking details via Face ID, controlled her social media, isolated her from her family, and imposed strict Islamic practices. Concerned by this, Victoria contacted the police and reported the controlling behaviour and sudden conversion. The police said they would refer her daughter to social services, as she was still a child.

When social services visited, they learned her daughter was being made to take contraception. They also discussed the nature of her new Islamic beliefs. The social worker said she would refer her to Women’s Aid for support with the coercive and controlling relationship. Victoria asked the social worker to look into the partner’s background, but the college did not respond to the social worker’s inquiries. Victoria then contacted the college’s safeguarding lead herself. The lead agreed it sounded like exploitation and referred the case to Prevent – the British government’s counter-terrorism programme designed to safeguard vulnerable people from radicalisation and terrorism.

Her daughter’s diet changed dramatically: she stopped eating bacon and ate far less than before. She spent a lot of time in and out of hospital but never explained why to her mother. Her mental health also deteriorated severely. After meeting the man, she repeatedly attempted suicide by cutting and made desperate calls saying she would kill herself. During one emergency hospital stay, police removed her daughter from Victoria, threatened Victoria with arrest, and transported the girl to the address of her abuser’s brother – despite Victoria’s explicit warnings about the danger. There, her daughter was subjected to mental and physical abuse, including strangulation, death threats, rape, and financial exploitation. Money was funnelled through the abuser’s brother’s bank account. The man and his family racially abused her, calling her a “white slag,” and pressured her to drop all complaints and marry him.

Prevent’s involvement was catastrophically delayed. The college’s safeguarding lead initially told Victoria that referrals had been made and accepted, but later evidence showed they were sent late, incorrectly, or not at all. Arrests were delayed for months, and rape allegations were eventually dropped due to lack of evidence after only limited phone checks. Victoria concluded that systemic failure and institutional reluctance to address Islamist-related safeguarding had placed her daughter in grave danger.

Her desire for adult attention resulted in poor behaviour at school. She was expelled in Year seven and placed in a pupil referral unit, which she was eventually excluded from as well. She attributes her disruptive behaviour to a lack of desire and emotional capacity to engage with her education, as well as the lack of structure in her life. She was preoccupied with seeking attention, validation, and care.

By the age of 13 she began to be groomed by older men whom she encountered locally, usually in the town centre. Some were older white men, but there were also Muslim men connected to a newly opened restaurant in the area. As the grooming continued, Eleanor’s behaviour deteriorated significantly. She had frequent encounters with the police and was arrested often. During this time, older men gave her drugs and kept her in various houses. She believed these men were looking after her and offering her the care she craved.

Whilst this was ongoing, her mother was unaware of her location but did not report her missing. No authority intervened regarding why she was often missing, arrested, and spending significant amounts of time with adult men.

When she was fourteen, she returned home one day after being away and no one answered the door. Eleanor climbed onto the roof of the house and managed to get inside. She discovered the house was completely empty. Her mother had thrown everything away – including childhood photographs and personal items – and had left without telling her. She went to social services of her own volition and was instructed to go to her father. She was expected to travel to him on the train alone. She had no meaningful relationship with her father and only spoke to him occasionally. When Eleanor arrived, he made it clear that his new partner was his priority and that she and her sisters came second. His partner tried to get her onto a more stable path and back into education, but due to her previous exclusions, schools repeatedly refused her. In an ‘ethnic minority’ majority area, she was explicitly told by one school that she could not be admitted because she was an English girl and would be the only one. She was placed in a Pupil Referral Unit, but the behaviour of other students there did little to give her the sense of safety, structure, and aspiration she needed. She therefore ran away often.

Frequent running away resulted in repeated arrests, and eventually social services decided she could be contained in a family setting and took her into care. While in care, she became more visible and accessible to men who were already looking for vulnerable girls, and she was once again groomed. On one occasion, some adult men approached her and offered her alcohol and a lift. She drank a small amount and quickly became unwell and lost consciousness.

When she awoke, she was aware she was inside a house that appeared to be decorated for an Asian wedding, but she lost consciousness again. When she finally awoke properly, she found herself abandoned by the side of the road, unclothed, injured, and disoriented. She managed to make it back to her children’s home. However, she was not asked what had happened, taken to hospital, or had any record made of the incident in her case files.

Following this incident, Eleanor went missing far more frequently. She would sleep rough in doorways, abandoned buildings, and taxis. No one at the care home asked her any questions about why this was happening. She was transferred to a different children’s home where men regularly collected girls from outside the home and sometimes came inside the building itself. The staff allowed this to happen. The men offered food, alcohol, places to stay, and a sense of belonging, but in reality they were there to sexually exploit children.

Eleanor became involved with an older man whom she believed was her boyfriend. He was involved in the drug trade. She was taken to Jersey and kept in a hotel for several days. She was not allowed to leave freely. Upon returning to the care home, no one questioned where she had been. She continued to be arrested for low-level offences, particularly shoplifting. She was eventually placed in a young offenders’ institution. On one occasion she was punched while being arrested, and this experience – among others – destroyed any trust she had in the police. From this point onwards, she saw the police as just another threat.

When she was 17, Eleanor was present at a stabbing incident involving men connected to the grooming network that had been abusing her. She was not involved in the violence but gave the victim first aid and called emergency services. She was arrested at the scene and charged under the doctrine of joint enterprise with conspiracy to commit grievous bodily harm with intent.

The case did not come to trial until two years later, when Eleanor was an adult, and so she was tried as an adult. She was sentenced to two years in prison. She believes she was criminalised for circumstances that arose directly from exploitation, neglect, and systemic failure, rather than being protected from them.

Following her conviction, Eleanor converted to Islam. She did not do so for theological reasons but practical ones, as a method of survival. In many environments she had experienced, Muslim girls were afforded some degree of protection relative to non-Muslims. She felt that conversion was a way to reduce risk and make herself less vulnerable.

Before serving her sentence she became pregnant by an older man and entered into an Islamic marriage with him, believing it might provide stability and protection. She was imprisoned with her young baby, an experience she found deeply distressing.

Following her release, she was subjected to domestic abuse and coercive control. This abuse was not always physical. It involved isolation, monitoring, restrictions on her behaviour, and the constant erosion of her sense of self. She was controlled through fear, guilt, and religious obligation. She was not allowed independence or employment, and others were told she was mentally unwell. This further isolated her.

She met and remarried another man who took her to Saudi Arabia. She was entirely dependent on her husband for everything and was not allowed to leave the house without him. She felt isolated and powerless. This experience made her realise she needed to leave Islam, but she knew that apostasy carried very serious consequences and so kept it to herself. However, she was eventually able to escape Saudi Arabia and return to the United Kingdom with her children.

Back in Britain with no home, work, or money, she was raped by another man, became pregnant again, and felt forced into another marriage. Her abuse continued. She eventually escaped the situation after studying in secret and building up her sense of identity and confidence enough to make a new life for herself.

Eleanor believes much of the harm she experienced could have been avoided had institutions adequately protected her. Children’s services did not safeguard her. The education system excluded her. The police criminalised her.

Rachel is the mother of a daughter who died aged twelve after taking an overdose. Her daughter was a joyful, creative, academically engaged child from a stable and loving home. She was, however, autistic, which made her more vulnerable to abuse and exploitation.

Following the lockdown response to COVID-19, her behaviour changed dramatically and she became withdrawn, depressed, and began self-harming.

Rachel’s daughter disclosed that she had been orally raped by a White British boy from her school. The disclosure devastated her and her family. When police eventually attended the family home, she was told it would be “her word against his,” that the process would take years, and that it involved extensive paperwork. This interaction caused her to shut down and withdraw her complaint. The police investigation went no further.

Despite assurances to the contrary, the alleged perpetrator remained in school and safeguarding was ineffective. She was subjected to relentless bullying, including physical assaults by girls linked to the perpetrator, which were filmed and shared online. Police took weeks to respond and failed to act on video evidence or threats. Rachel’s daughter was abused and threatened on Snapchat and other platforms daily.

The intimidation escalated when the perpetrator’s adult brother attended the family home and attempted to force entry. Police advised only that the family should consider moving house. Rachel’s son was assaulted at school.

On the night of her death, Rachel’s daughter took an overdose of colchicine, stating she just wanted everything to stop. She suffered multiple organ failure and died days later. Even after her death the abuse continued.

Rachel believes that her daughter was failed by the police, her school, and the Crown Prosecution Service. She states that she was effectively murdered by institutional failure.

Jen’s childhood was characterised by emotional neglect and a lack of safety. Her emotional needs were not recognised or prioritised by the adults in her life, particularly her parents, who were absent much of the time. Within the wider family context boundaries were blurred and inappropriate dynamics were normalised – for example, family members introduced her to drugs and alcohol around the age of 13.

Throughout secondary school, Jen was bullied, but staff did little to help despite her obvious distress. On the contrary, they contributed to her victimisation. Much of the bullying stemmed from an incident in her first year in which a teacher refused to allow Jen to use the toilet, resulting in Jen wetting herself and being made to stay in the soiled clothes for the rest of the day. The teacher faced no repercussions. Jen began self-harming and running away from home, and the only adult she felt she could confide in committed suicide around this time.

Into adolescence, Jen had no stable sense of self-worth and no adults who consistently protected or advocated for her. Her self-harm worsened and she experienced suicidal thoughts, yet safeguarding responses remained absent. Jen began to believe that she was “not worth protecting,” and as a result became increasingly vulnerable to exploitation. At 13, adult men began contacting her online, giving her a sense of validation and belonging. Sexual conversations were common, including one man encouraging Jen to insert a knife into her vagina.

At 15, offline grooming began with a group of White British men who presented themselves as sympathetic friends to the vulnerable Jen. Though she was not raped by these men, one told her that “touching was okay, but we can’t have intercourse until you are 16 because of the law.”

At the age of 17, Jen was introduced to a gang of Iraqi Kurdish Muslim men by a friend who she now believes was, herself, groomed. The gang members – all of whom were illegal migrants – trafficked Jen to numerous towns and cities across the Midlands where she was raped by multiple men at what were described as “parties.” On one occasion, she was anally raped in a park by one of the gang members. She was taken on drug runs and witnessed the slaughtering of a lamb in the bathroom of a house.

She describes “a closed and intimidating social world governed by fear, loyalty, and silence,” in which racially supremacist attitudes were openly and regularly expressed. White British people were described as “white trash,” and white girls as “English pig‑dogs.” Perpetrators insisted that children “choose” exploitation, and Britain and its institutions were described as “soft” and “easy” to exploit. They boasted of receiving “free money” from the British state, and on multiple occasions Jen was forced to fill in asylum benefit applications on their behalf.

Jen witnessed intimidation, violence, trafficking, asylum fraud, sexual exploitation – including the drugging and raping of children as young as 13 – and the aftermath of a gang-related murder while involved with the group, and was thus afraid to defy or disclose against its members.

The gang became increasingly controlling and abusive, isolating Jen from her friends and family. Her movements, communications, and decisions were closely monitored and restricted, and any attempt to assert independence was met with threats. She suffered emotional, psychological, and sexual abuse, and at 18 became pregnant as a result of rape.

Jen was repeatedly told she was inferior and unclean as a non‑Muslim. Religious coercion escalated into forced conversion to Islam, partly due to her pregnancy. She was taken to a “dark,” “dingy” flat that had been converted into a mosque and married by an imam in an Islamic ceremony without giving consent. The marriage was used as a mechanism to legitimise control over her, and restrictions on her behaviour increased.

During pregnancy the threats intensified. Jen was told she had no right to leave or make decisions about her child because to do so would be anti-Islamic. Her behaviour was tightly controlled, including an instruction not to eat pork as the father believed “it would make the baby gay.” She was told that disclosure to the authorities would result in shame and punishment.

Nevertheless, she attempted to report her situation to the police, but no action was taken. The ideological and religious dimensions of her trafficking and abuse were minimised and her disclosures were reframed as relationship issues or cultural matters before being dismissed as exaggerated and unreliable.

After the birth of her daughter, Jen’s access to her child was restricted and used as a means of leverage. The father – an Iraqi illegal migrant – repeatedly took their daughter to Iraq, despite having claimed asylum in Britain on the basis that he could not safely remain there. While there, she was exposed to firearms including AK-47s.

When her daughter was 3 years old, Jen contacted the police after the father threatened to take their daughter to Iraq and never bring her back. The police responded that it was a “civil matter” and did not intervene. Jen has not spent a single one of her daughter’s birthdays with her since she was nine years old and has had minimal contact with her for several years. Her father continues to take her to Iraq regularly.

Jen now lives with complex PTSD, anxiety, depression, dissociation, periods of agoraphobia, and persistent fear and distress in relation to her daughter’s safety and autonomy. These difficulties significantly impair her ability to function day to day. She gives evidence so that religiously-motivated coercive abuse is properly recognised and confronted, even when doing so is politically, culturally, or socially controversial.

When she was around the age of five, Kate and her two brothers were removed from the care of their biological parents and placed in a foster home. It was determined that they could not return to their parents’ custody, and they were adopted by a couple from a town around 50 miles away. Kate and her brothers settled well into their new home and family environment, and for the next seven years, Kate’s life was happy and stable, with her adoptive parents providing the love and support that her biological parents had failed to give.

Kate’s adoptive parents were committed Christians and the family attended the local church every Sunday. Much of Kate’s social life outside of school revolved around church activities, including youth groups and spending time with other families within the church community. At school, she performed exceptionally well, and was identified as “gifted and talented” across a range of subjects. She rarely got into trouble and, despite suffering from low self-esteem, was well-regarded by teachers and peers alike. Kate maintained a limited circle of friends, and directed most of her energies into her studies, which provided her with a sense of achievement, structure, and self-worth.

Kate was highly ambitious and optimistic about the future. She held herself to very high standards, and aspired to attend university, complete a PhD, and pursue a career in archaeology or paramedicine. She was also driven by a strong sense of family, and looked forward to getting married and having children of her own.

Around the age of twelve, Kate began to receive sex education at school. She found these lessons upsetting as, up to this point, her understanding of what had happened to her during her early childhood was very limited. Social services had failed to identify the abuse at the time, and so it had never been acknowledged, discussed, or explained to her. She entered adolescence confused about what had happened to her and without a clear understanding of healthy boundaries and inappropriate behaviour. She lacked the confidence to confide in an adult, and this left her vulnerable.

Kate came to realise that the abuse she had suffered at the hands of her biological father and half-brother was not normal or legal. She began to experience a growing sense of shame, fear, and self-blame, and felt a deep uncertainty about her identity, body, and relationships with others. She soon began to experience suicidal thoughts.

Still just twelve years old, Kate decided to take her own life. One Saturday night, after her family had gone to sleep, she left her home in the early hours and walked to a secluded location where she intended to commit suicide, hoping she would not be found. She paused beneath a tree to shelter from the rain, and after a while she heard a group of men approaching. By their tone Kate suspected that they were drunk, and when they saw her they began jeering. They called her a “no-homer” and suggested that she could “stay warm on their dicks.” Kate, terrified and regretful, waited for the men to pass before attempting to return home – but as she was walking, she was grabbed from behind by one of the men.

Kate was overpowered by the three men, forced to the ground, her arms and legs were pinned, and the men took turns to orally and vaginally rape her. When it ended, the men hit her repeatedly and threatened to find her, kill her and harm her loved ones if she ever told anyone what had happened. So violent was the assault, Kate’s clothes were left bloodstained.

Traumatised, she walked across the town to her family’s church, knowing that her parents would be there in a few hours. She sat on the porch and cried for several hours before deciding to return home. While she was walking, both a van and a taxi driver stopped to ask if she was okay given her disheveled appearance and visible distress. She replied that she was. When she arrived home, she hid her bloodstained clothes and went to sleep.

Kate did not disclose the assault to anyone and her mental and physical health rapidly deteriorated. She began self-harming and her suicidal thoughts intensified. She attempted to take her own life on multiple occasions over the following months and was admitted to hospital many times as a result. She started getting bullied at school. Concern for her welfare escalated, but Kate resisted every attempt by her parents and teachers to intervene. She was assigned a Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) practitioner by the local authority with whom she started regular counselling sessions, but Kate did not find this either effective or helpful and she continued to keep the assault hidden. The professionals concluded that her deteriorating health was linked to her early-life trauma.

Later that year, Kate received a message on social media from one of the abusers. To this day, Kate does not know how they found her. The message was a video of the assault, and they threatened to share it with Kate’s friends and family if she did not comply with their demands. Kate feared that if they did so the bullying would worsen and she would get into trouble. Once again, she did not disclose the incident to anyone, and – believing she could resolve the blackmail – she went to meet them.

She was instructed to come to a house in the local town centre. She was taken inside, and all three abusers were present. They proceeded to rape her again, this time making clear that she was being filmed. Following this, they told Kate that she now “worked” for them and was expected to do what she was told, for otherwise the footage would be leaked. She was given a phone and told always to remain contactable.

In the period that followed, Kate was required to meet the two chief abusers frequently. They introduced her to other men in their network and she was repeatedly subjected by them as well to sexual abuse. Kate was also forced to participate in webcam abuse sessions, which generated revenue for the abusers. If the livestream did not generate what they considered to be a satisfactory amount of money, Kate was punished. The constant shifting of expectations was used as a method of control.

Kate gradually became more open with her counsellors. Though she still did not disclose the full extent of what was happening to her, she began to refer to the initial assault as “the event,” and they soon worked out that she had been raped – though they did not suspect ongoing abuse. They shared their concerns with Kate’s parents and, almost a year after the initial assault, Kate’s mother confronted her about the suspicions that she, Kate’s father, and the social services professionals had formed. Kate confirmed to her mother that she had been raped. Soon after the disclosure, Kate was taken to a Sexual Assault and Rape Centre (SARC) for further counselling.

The SARC therapists encouraged Kate to report the initial assault to the police. Kate hoped that doing so would lead to an intervention that would stop the ongoing abuse, but was too frightened to name the perpetrators, fearing reprisals from the gang. Nevertheless, she reported the assault to the police, providing them with as much information as possible, and was brought in for questioning with her mother.

At the police station, Kate was taken into the interview room. Before the interview began, and without Kate’s mother present, Kate was told that this was her “last chance” to say that her report was untrue. She was warned that if any part of her account could not be supported by evidence, she could and would be arrested. For an extended period of time, both officers repeatedly told her how much trouble she would be in if any detail of her statement was disproved, and that she could withdraw the allegation before the interview started with no further consequences. They also suggested that her parents would be relieved if she said the incident had not happened.

Still just twelve years old and already deeply traumatised, Kate became overwhelmed by the pressure she felt the officers were placing on her, and said what she believed they wanted her to say: that the rape had not taken place. This interaction occurred before the recording began and, as a result, the formal interview did not reflect the coercion that took place. Kate felt unable to disclose anything further, including the abuse that was ongoing at the time, because she felt she was not being believed or taken seriously. The police report recorded the incident as a withdrawal of the complaint. Following this experience, Kate again attempted to take her own life.

Shortly afterwards, Kate’s mother found content in Kate’s diary describing the rape. She encouraged Kate to speak to the police again, but Kate explained that the police had previously pressured her to withdraw her complaint. Nevertheless, Kate returned to the police station and, this time, completed the interview.

Some weeks later, Kate’s parents discovered sexually explicit messages in her phone between Kate and several adult men, including sexual photographs. These were reported to the police, but it was concluded that Kate was engaging with these men consensually, despite being just 13 years old. Kate, still afraid of retribution from the gang, denied all knowledge of these exchanges, and was not questioned further.

Over the course of the following year, Kate went missing on numerous occasions, including during school hours and late at night. She alleges that no record was made of her absence. The gang was blackmailing her into doing what they called “jobs” – sexual abuse by gang members and their associates, for which the gang received payment. These included webcamming, gang rapes, “parties,” “cop nights,” and “red rooms.” Kate was raped multiple times a week, sometimes 2 to 4 times a day.

During this time, Kate encountered another girl whom the gang was exploiting. Kate – then 14 – suspected that the girl was younger than her. On the night that they met, Kate had been instructed to meet two of the gang members in a secluded location late at night. When Kate arrived, they were holding the girl “tightly” around the neck. One of the gang members told Kate that the girl was being “broken in” that night, and that the men she would be “servicing” were particularly “brutal.” Kate attempted to intervene, telling the gang members that she would take on the “jobs” instead. In response, the gang members beat and raped her. Kate went on to “work” with this girl on numerous occasions, and they became very close. Throughout the first half of the next year, the exploitation intensified, and Kate made another attempt to take her own life. Shortly afterwards, she entered into a relationship with a relative of one of the gang members, leading to a temporary pause in the abuse. The relationship lasted for almost a year, but when it came to an end, the exploitation resumed almost immediately.

Later that year, Kate – then 16 – experienced the most significant missing episode to date. During this incident, the gang trafficked Kate to a town far from her home where she was restrained and raped repeatedly on a canal boat – including, she alleges, by a police officer. At one point, Kate tried to escape, but was caught, and the gang beat her and cut off much of her hair as punishment.

Kate attempted to escape a second time and was successful. She reached a nearby house and knocked for help. The woman who lived there took Kate in and gave her clothes, as Kate’s own clothes had been badly damaged by the abusers and she was partially naked. The woman called the police, who attended the property. The woman attempted to remove the rope that remained around Kate’s wrists, but was instructed by the police to leave them in place as they were considered evidence.

Kate was hesitant to speak to the police given both the recent alleged abuse by a serving officer and the wider context of threats, coercive control, and physical and sexual violence that she had been experiencing. Nevertheless, she disclosed what had happened on the canal boat – but not the historic exploitation, fearing reprisals – to the police. She also did not report that she had been raped by a police officer.

The investigation did not progress and the police accused Kate of lying about the exploitation. This represented a turning point in Kate’s dealings with the police, as she thereafter felt that she could not turn to them for help, fearing she would not be believed.

Kate was placed on a Child Protection Plan by the local authority. She shared a diary with one of the social workers containing details about the sexual abuse she had been suffering, though once again she was not believed. During this period, Kate was diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder. Soon after, Kate alleges that she was raped in a hotel by a man she believed to be a doctor. The police were called to the hotel as the staff were concerned that she was a prostitute. When the police arrived, she was found alone and naked in the room, having been left there by the abusers and instructed to wait for more men to arrive.

At this point, both Kate’s family and the professionals involved in her care began to express frustration with what they perceived to be her “lifestyle choices.” They did not believe that she was being exploited and instead assumed that she – still 16 – was willingly meeting adult men.

This “misinterpretation” of Kate’s situation had a profound impact on how professionals responded to her in the following months and years. Because they believed her behaviour was voluntary, subsequent incidents – such as unexplained absences, being found in hotels, receiving inappropriate messages, or associating with adult men – were treated as matters of personal choice rather than indicators of ongoing exploitation. As a result, these events were not treated as safeguarding concerns. Instead of exploring the possibility that she was being coerced or controlled, professionals increasingly framed the issue as one of behavioural difficulty, risk-taking, or non-compliance.

This perspective, Kate alleges, influenced decision-making across agencies. Referrals were closed prematurely, safeguarding meetings did not lead to protective action, and disclosures or partial disclosures were not pursued with the seriousness she felt they required. The assumption that she was engaged in consensual activity meant that professionals did not intervene effectively, even when the circumstances strongly indicated exploitation. This perspective reinforced her isolation, reduced her ability to seek help, and ultimately allowed the exploitation to continue and escalate.

On one occasion around this time, concerns were raised at Kate’s school. She was escorted to an office where the Assistant Headteacher, the Designated Safeguarding Lead (DSL), a PCSO, a police officer, her social worker, the school nurse, and her Head of Year were present. They prevented her from leaving the room and pressed her for names and details about the individuals involved in the abuse. At that time, due to fear, coercion, and the threats she felt she was under, she did not feel safe or able to provide the information they were requesting. Instead, she provided the nicknames of some of the individuals involved. Kate was visibly shaking and repeatedly asked to leave, explaining that she would be in significant danger if she revealed further information.

After the meeting concluded, Kate was allowed to leave but no protective measures were put in place. She was not supervised, safeguarded, or provided with any immediate safety planning. Despite indicators of fear and coercion, she was permitted to return home and continue her usual routine. No follow-up action was taken to monitor her well-being in the days that followed.

After the meeting at the school, Kate’s abusers made it clear that they knew she had spoken to the police. They told her that they were aware of every time she spoke to the police, as “they had people on the inside.” They accused her of “snitching,” telling her that she would “pay for it.” Shortly afterwards, she was taken to a remote, wooded location. The young girl whom Kate had met before was also present. Initially, Kate believed they had been taken there for another “job.” The men then subjected the girl to extreme sexual and physical violence while Kate was forcibly restrained and made to witness what happened. Kate alleges that the girl was then murdered in front of her.

Following the incident, Kate reports that the abusers used what had happened as a direct and ongoing threat to ensure Kate’s silence. They repeatedly told her that the murder had occurred because she had spoken to the police and insisted that it was her fault. This message was delivered consistently and became a central part of their coercive control. They made it clear that the same thing could happen to Kate or to others if she ever disclosed anything again.

On another occasion, Kate reports that she was taken from her local church at a Sunday morning service. She was taken to a nearby city, an hour away, to do “jobs.” She alleges that she was raped in the car on the way to the city. She eventually managed to get away from her perpetrators, but they followed and caught up with her and dragged her off a canal path and raped her. After the perpetrators left, Kate left the structure and attempted to walk back along the canal path. She was visibly injured, distressed, and her clothing was damaged. A group of men who were fishing nearby saw her in this state and contacted the police. Emergency services attended, and she was taken to the hospital for medical attention. Kate reports that no effective safeguarding measures were put in place following this incident.

When Kate turned 17, she joined a local college. This transition created a significant change in her routine. She had more independence, fewer supervised hours, and less direct oversight from adults compared with her previous school. This increased her vulnerability, as the individuals exploiting her were able to take advantage of the additional freedom and reduced monitoring associated with college life.

Kate’s parents found it increasingly difficult to keep her safe and was placed in Edge of Care Services under the age of 18. She stayed at the care home 2 nights a week as ‘respite care’ for her family. During this period, she reports that she was trafficked by the gang to London. While there, she was subjected to repeated sexual exploitation. At one point, she managed to contact the care home and inform them of her location. A colleague provided guidance over the phone and directed Kate to a place where she could remain safe until help arrived.

The police attended and collected her from the location. She disclosed the exploitation that had occurred, and, on this occasion, the officers took her account seriously and responded with what she felt was appropriate concern. They advised that she should not return immediately to her local area due to the risks to her safety. However, Kate’s local authority did not agree with this and insisted that she be returned home. Staff from the care home travelled to London to collect her and return her to the placement.

During this period, a retired police officer became aware of Kate’s situation through a mutual connection. A friend got in touch with him on Kate’s behalf and he got in touch with Kate. He travelled to meet her in person the next morning and came to her college. He expressed an intention to support her and stated that he believed he could assist, but explained that, due to her age, he would need to liaise with my allocated social worker before taking any formal action.

Kate’s social worker declined to engage with him. The situation quickly became confusing and overwhelming for Kate – the lack of cooperation from professionals, combined with the ongoing exploitation and her deteriorating mental health, led to a significant emotional crisis. Kate became extremely distressed and expressed intentions to end her life while at college. As a result, she was sectioned under the Mental Health Act and taken for assessment.

Shortly after this incident, Kate was taken again by the individuals exploiting her. They told her that they knew she had spoken to the police. She was removed from college and taken to “a Red Room setting.” Another girl, Meg, was also present. During this incident, Kate alleges that she was forced to witness extreme violence that resulted in Meg losing her life. This, she says, was done deliberately, and the perpetrators made it clear that this was a direct consequence of their belief that she had disclosed information to the police after her sectioning.

Before Kate was due to start university, she reports that she was taken to London during the Notting Hill Carnival and made to engage in “street-based sex work.” At one point, Kate found the nearest police officers and attempted to explain that she was not safe, that she had been trafficked, and that she was worried her abusers would find her. They confirmed that she had been reported as a missing person and contacted Kate’s father, who told the officers that she was lying and refused to come and collect her.

The officers then transported her to a police station. When she arrived, she was told that she could not remain there and that, because her father had declined to collect her, she would need to leave the station. No safeguarding measures were put in place, and she feared that the individuals exploiting her would find her again. She felt entirely abandoned by the adults and professionals who should have kept her safe and, overwhelmed and distressed, again attempted to take her own life. Soon after, she started university – a goal she wanted to achieve as she thought it would be a route out of the abuse. However, the increased independence and reduced oversight associated with university life created new opportunities for the individuals abusing her to extend the exploitation beyond Kate’s local area. This, she reports, marked the point at which her trafficking became national in scope, with the abuse occurring across multiple regions of Britain.

Over the course of this academic year, Kate alleges that she was regularly taken to a range of cities across Britain. These movements were frequent, often unplanned, and carried out with little notice, making it impossible for her to establish any stability or predictability in her daily life. The level of violence during this period increased significantly. My injuries became more frequent and more visible. On several occasions, Kate’s university lecturers and friends noticed bruises and other marks, which reflected the severity and regularity of the abuse. Despite these indicators of harm, no effective safeguarding intervention took place, and the exploitation continued.

On one occasion, Kate was taken by her abusers from an area close to the university. They told her that she was “in trouble” because she had not been available for “jobs” due to a recent hospital admission. She was transported to a remote location, and held in a caravan for “approximately nine days.” During this period, she reports that she was subjected to repeated sexual violence, severe physical assaults, and sustained torture – including being raped by a dog as the men placed bets on whether it would penetrate her vagina or her anus, filmed, and forced to rewatch the footage. This was “the most extreme and prolonged” incident she experienced and represented a significant escalation in the level of harm and control being exerted over her. The duration, isolation, and intensity of the abuse during this period had a lasting and profound impact on her physical and psychological well-being.

Over the following year, Kate went missing for several extended periods and was subjected to continuous trafficking and rape across the country. When the COVID-19 lockdown began, her day-to-day movements and university activities were restricted in line with national guidance. However, the individuals controlling her exploitation continued to expect her to attend “jobs” throughout this period. The lockdown did not reduce the level of contact or demand placed on her.

Following this period, the trafficking began to reduce gradually. Kate received a positive ‘Conclusive Grounds’ decision through the National Referral Mechanism, confirming that she was a victim of trafficking and exploitation.

The grooming behaviours to which Kate was subjected did not follow the “boyfriend model” or grooming tactics that are often associated with child sexual exploitation. Instead, the abuse she experienced was based primarily on blackmail, coercion, and threats. From the outset, the individuals involved used fear, intimidation, and control rather than affection or persuasion to entrap and exploit her.

The demographics of the men abusing Kate were mixed. The first group who trafficked and exploited her were primarily White British or from Gypsy, Roma, and Traveller backgrounds. As she got older and was trafficked more widely, the primary abuser demographics were Pakistani, Bangladeshi, and Bengali Muslims. The other victims she encountered were almost exclusively White British. Kate was repeatedly subject to racially and religiously motivated, and “being white was repeatedly used as a justification for the abuse or to minimise or dismiss the harm being inflicted.” Kate was verbally attacked and demeaned because of her religion, including being mocked for wearing a cross and being told that “her Christian faith offered her no protection.” The abusers regularly suggested that “her God had abandoned her.” Comments were constantly made suggesting that white girls and Christian girls were viewed as having degraded moral character or lower value, whereas Muslim girls were described by some of the men as having dignity and higher moral standing.

Kate has participated in this Inquiry because she feels “a personal responsibility to speak up for the many girls across the country who are unable to do so” and to “help ensure that the realities of this form of exploitation are understood, and that meaningful change can be achieved.” The systems that should have protected Kate did not recognise the risks she was facing, did not respond effectively when concerns were raised, and in some cases, she feels, “contributed to the harm by dismissing or disbelieving what was happening.”

For powerful testimony sourced from beyond our hearings, see Appendix I.

Whistleblowers who tried to expose the rape gangs were systematically silenced, discredited, and punished. On occasion, their careers and reputations were also tarnished. Social care professionals, campaigners, and public activists who raised evidence of still ongoing grooming, trafficking, financial abuse of children in care, and institutional cover-ups faced suspension, defamation proceedings, dawn raids, asset freezes, fabricated charges, gagging bail conditions, and career-ending isolation. Authorities assured them that full investigations had taken place when none had occurred and records were destroyed. Senior officers and elected members acknowledged concerns as credible yet took no remedial action. The state did not merely ignore whistleblowers; it punished them to protect the gangs and its own reputation.

We wished to correct for that, so we invited these whistleblowers to our Inquiry.

Below are some of their testimonies.

Our whistleblower social worker is an experienced children’s social care professional with nearly four decades of service. Her specialist work focused on leaving care services and safeguarding highly vulnerable young people. In February 2018, she raised extensive whistleblowing disclosures concerning financial abuse of young people, misuse of public funds, unlawful sanctions, illegal evictions, racism towards children in care, and systemic failures to safeguard against sexual and criminal exploitation.

She was assured that a comprehensive investigation would occur. In the event, responses were delayed, fragmented, and opaque. Senior officers later acknowledged that financial abuse was likely but claimed proof was impossible due to missing records. She was informed that shredders had been purchased at units and that records may have been destroyed. Despite this, the disclosure was deemed “reviewed” without her ever having been interviewed. She describes repeated safeguarding failures witnessed while she was Interim Co‑Manager of semi‑independent units, including children with severe mental health needs placed unsafely, repeated missing episodes, untreated exploitation risks, and delayed police or mental health intervention. Her evidence illustrates escalating harm, including self‑harm, sexual exploitation, criminal exploitation, and unlawful housing practices.

After raising these concerns, she experienced retaliation, including removal of payments, suspension based on unfounded allegations, and professional isolation. Senior leadership and elected members repeatedly failed to engage meaningfully with her concerns. She concludes that the local council prioritised reputational and financial considerations over child safety, leaving ongoing risks unaddressed.

Caven compiled multi-agency records from 2003 onwards. These showed that police, councils, and MPs knew about organised grooming by Pakistani Muslim gangs years before any public admission. Vines engaged with national media and provided evidence to senior officials. He states that one of the interviews in which he partook – namely, with Sky News – was misrepresented, which led to defamation proceedings that rendered him bankrupt and ruined much of his life. He alleges perjury by MPs and a failure by police to investigate it. The pattern demonstrates that early whistleblowing on institutional awareness produced retaliation rather than protection for victims.

Tommy Robinson documented grooming patterns after the exploitation of a close female relative at age 14. He heard hundreds of similar accounts from families across England. When he formed the English Defence League and spoke publicly, South Yorkshire Police allegedly subjected him to repeated arrests and dawn raids on his family homes. He reportedly also faced fabricated charges, asset freezes, and threats that forced repeated relocations. The state treated public whistleblowing on the ethnic and religious patterns of the gangs as more dangerous than the gangs themselves.

After Robinson repeatedly detailed the scale of Muslim grooming gangs across Britain, the state responded with targeted legal action that in effect silenced him. In May 2018, he livestreamed outside Leeds Crown Court while defendants in a major grooming gang trial were entering the building. He was immediately arrested for breaching the peace and charged with contempt of court for violating reporting restrictions that protected the defendants. He was sentenced to 13 months in prison on the same day. Although released after two months on appeal, the case was reheard and in July 2019 he was resentenced to nine months imprisonment. This sentence combined six months for the Leeds offence with three months for breaking an earlier suspended contempt order related to a similar incident at Canterbury Crown Court in 2017.

The timing and nature of these prosecutions to many suggest clear retaliation. Robinson had been one of the most high profile voices highlighting the grooming gang scandal at a time when authorities in Rotherham, Rochdale, and elsewhere were still denying its existence or suppressing evidence. Instead of investigating the gangs he identified, the state focused its resources on imprisoning the man who had drawn public attention to them. The contempt charges ensured that his reporting on ongoing trials was criminalised while the grooming networks continued to operate. There is a prima facie case that the repeated use of the courts against Robinson was not about fair justice, but about punishing one of the individuals who forced the grooming gang scandal into the open long before official institutions were willing to act.

For around two years, Fred worked as a decoy, posing as a child online to identify adults seeking to groom and sexually exploit children. He was exposed to highly disturbing sexual communications, which had a severe psychological impact and eventually led him to step back from decoy duties.

Leveraging his professional background, Fred shifted his focus to developing tools for digital tracking, perpetrator identification, and forensic evidence gathering. His work is designed to produce court-ready evidence. He has collaborated with multiple British child protection teams and interfaced with various police forces, including specialist online child protection units.

To date, Fred has assisted in the identification, tracking, and reporting of nearly 1,300 suspected child sexual predators. These cases have resulted in arrests, prosecutions, and convictions. At least four cases involved attempted child trafficking. He has also identified and provided technical data leading to the shutdown of approximately 30 deep web servers hosting large volumes of child sexual abuse material.

Fred has observed that many offenders are repeat perpetrators, with some convicted multiple times. In his view, rehabilitation is ineffective for this category of offender, and current sentencing practices frequently fail to act as a deterrent, with some individuals receiving only community orders despite strong evidence.

Fred believes that online grooming could be substantially reduced or eliminated through existing technology and artificial intelligence. Such systems could detect grooming behaviours in real time based on established models. A recurring pattern in the cases Fred has supported is that the vast majority of suspects initiate contact with decoys, suggesting they are actively targeting multiple children.

He highlighted one specific case on one platform involving an individual who presented publicly as a Quran and Arabic tutor linked to a mosque and teaching centre at two universities. Extensive digital evidence, including chat logs, IP data, and location information, was submitted to the Police. Despite this, the individual appeared to leave Britain shortly after, later resurfacing in the country and abroad while the investigation remained open. Fred expressed concern about the lack of apparent action in this case despite strong evidence, and noted subsequent cyberattacks on his systems originating from the Middle East.

Fred has faced direct personal threats, including a life threat from a serious repeat offender with prior convictions for abduction, torture, and rape. Fred provided this testimony to highlight the scale of online grooming, technological opportunities for prevention, and systemic gaps that allow perpetrators to continue offending.

Perpetrators from Pakistani Muslim and other Muslim backgrounds formed the core of the rape gangs nationwide.

They operated under an honour and shame clan code that treated non-Muslim girls, especially white working-class girls, as property available for sexual use because these girls had no male protectors who could retaliate. The men began by showering the girls with attention, gifts, alcohol, and drugs. This then escalated to coercion, gang rape, and trafficking. They transported victims across towns, shared them with friends and family, and sometimes forced conversions to Islam followed by religious marriages. The Muslim men justified the abuse by describing White British girls as “easy,” “trash” or morally inferior. The same networks targeted Sikh girls until Sikh communities mobilised collective male protection and forced the gangs to withdraw. British girls were not permitted such a defence. This religiously framed exploitation was repeated in every major town and city and beyond.

Britain has seen a series of high-profile convictions for organised group-based child sexual exploitation, commonly referred to as “grooming gangs.” However, the number of convictions amount only to a small proportion of the men who carried out the crimes.

In cases where perpetrators of Pakistani heritage were named publicly in court records or reports, their names have consistently been Muslim in character. According to the 2021 Census for England and Wales, around 93% of individuals identifying as Pakistani by ethnicity also identified as Muslim, with only about 1% following another religion (the remainder having no faith recorded).

Researcher Peter McLoughlin in Easy Meat (2016) compiled a comprehensive list of grooming gang convictions from 1997 to 2018 (with updates in subsequent analyses), drawing from published court outcomes. His examination of names indicated that approximately 87% of those convicted bore distinctively Muslim names, which was a figure echoed in related analyses far exceeding the Muslim proportion (around 6%) of the general population of Britain.¹³

The majority of these convicted groups consisted entirely of men from Muslim backgrounds. These groups are predominantly of Pakistani heritage, especially when the group exceeds ten or more members. The larger group size dynamic of Pakistani perpetrators is on display in major prosecutions and official reviews from locations such as Rochdale, Rotherham, Huddersfield, Oxford, Telford, and others.

Other convictions have involved groups primarily composed of Muslims from non-Pakistani origins, demonstrating that the issue is not necessarily confined to one ethnic group:

Two Somali-origin gangs in Bristol. A mainly African-heritage gang in Banbury. Three Iranians in Chelmsford. Three Syrians and one Kuwaiti in Newcastle. Two Turkish men in Somerset. A Romanian rape gang in Rotherham. The large Newcastle “Operation Sanctuary” case, involving 17 men and one woman from diverse Muslim backgrounds: Albanian, Kurdish, Bangladeshi, Indian, Turkish, Iranian, Iraqi, Pakistani, and Eastern European heritage. Nearly all published names were Islamic.

These patterns are drawn from judicial proceedings, sentencing records, official inquiries (such as those into Rotherham, Rochdale, and others), and public reporting on concluded cases. Recent developments, including ongoing reviews and data audits (e.g., national audits and reopened historic cases), continue to examine the scale, characteristics, and patterns of such offending.

With regard to the scale of the crimes, this is reflected in conviction records, police data from relevant force areas, and audits – all of which note overrepresentation of South Asian/Pakistani-heritage men in certain group-based cases while acknowledging data limitations on ethnicity nationwide. Smaller non-Muslim groups often feature different dynamics or victim profiles compared with the classic multi-offender “grooming” model in larger operations.

The term “Asian” has frequently been applied in media, official statements, and public discourse to describe the perpetrators in grooming gang cases across Britain. This broad labelling can be misleading, however, because Britain hosts a substantial number of non-Muslim Asian populations, such as Hindus and Sikhs from India, Buddhists from Japan, and Christians from the Philippines and Vietnam. These populations have, with only very rare exceptions, had no involvement in these offences. In fact, members of these communities have more often appeared as victims than as perpetrators in the grooming gang cases that have come to light.

Dr. Ella Hill, a survivor of the Rotherham grooming gangs and now a qualified doctor, has courageously shared her experiences and reflections in multiple public forums, including testimony to the 2022 Jay Inquiry, a July 2020 podcast interview, and a 2018 article in The Independent. Her report is entirely consistent with the evidence that was heard at The Rape Gang Inquiry.

Following years of repeated sexual violence, severe beatings, and attempted murder by her abusers, her family members were forced to change their surnames and relocate to another part of the country so that she could complete her schooling and later pursue and obtain a medical degree.

In her accounts, Dr. Hill has consistently described the abuse as being both racially and religiously aggravated. She was explicitly told during the rapes that the attacks were happening because she was white and because she was Christian.

She explained that she was initially groomed and then trafficked by a Pakistani Muslim boyfriend to groups of Muslim men. She was repeatedly taken to various houses and flats where she was raped, physically assaulted, and tortured. Even after she tried to escape and hide, her main perpetrator tracked her down, broke into her home, and attempted to kill her on five separate occasions. She survived these attacks but was left with extensive lacerations and bruising.

On at least five occasions she approached the police, presenting medical evidence of her injuries, yet each time she was told there was nothing they could do and her evidence was not accepted.

Dr. Hill has emphasised that the verbal abuse she endured was saturated with both racial and religious slurs. While being beaten she was repeatedly called “a white slag,” “a white whore,” “a white cunt,” and simultaneously condemned as a non-Muslim who deserved punishment for failing to follow Islamic rules. Her abusers, she said, operated according to what she termed “Grooming Gang Ideology” under which they believed their crimes were religiously justified.

In fuller detail, in her submission incorporated into Associate Professor Lisa Oakley’s evidence to the 2022 Jay Inquiry, Dr. Hill stated:

I was beaten, strangled, suffocated, and my head held under water, tortured, kicked, and raped over 100 times. I was told that if you don’t scream when you’re raped, then you’re consenting to the rape, so you should be stoned to death. I was told that Muslim girls know this (because the Quran says that Aisha’s silence was her consent to the marriage to Mohammed). So Muslim girls know to scream, but white girls don’t, so that’s their fault then, because they’re not Muslim. When I did wear a headscarf to try to protect myself from being raped, I was told to get it off, and they raped me again. (I now know that all these so-called “ways to protect yourself from being raped” are “rape-myths” used to excuse perpetrator’s criminal behaviour.)

They threatened to kill my parents if my parents tried to stop me seeing them. I was intimidated with guns, and threatened with body parts being cut off with knives. When I tried to escape I was told that I had offended their honour, so they had to spill my blood. They did this in an honour attack. All of the sexual abuse that I experienced was linked to spiritual abuse or religious abuse. Religious scriptures were used as tools of control to force me to conform to their will. I was not allowed to question these religious beliefs. They used their religious “moral authority” and self-proclaimed elitism to control me through use of scripture, forced confessions, censorship of decision making, requirement of secrecy and silence, isolation, excessive shaming and punishment around sexuality, and requiring unquestioning obedience. I experienced this as a deeply personal, terrifying physical, emotional and spiritual attack. Every time they quoted scripture it was very hard to argue with; to them it was like I was arguing with God. To me it was actually like I was arguing with the devil. They used their so-called “religious moral authority” to do the most horrific, immoral acts imaginable.”¹⁴

The entirely typical experiences of survivors known as ‘Sarah’ and ‘Anna’ – both of whom were helped by the Christian Legal Centre – provide further illustration of the religious elements reported in some grooming gang cases.

Sarah endured a 12-year ordeal after being kidnapped from the street at the age of 15. During this period she was repeatedly drugged with Valium, beaten, and raped. At one point, her abuser presented her with a certificate from the mosque and declared that they were married according to Islamic rites. Later, he divorced her under sharia procedure simply by stating “I divorce you” three times. She was then immediately married in a ceremony conducted by an imam to a man she did not know. Within minutes of the ceremony ending, while the wedding party continued downstairs, she was raped by her new ‘husband.’

Over the years Sarah was subjected to eight forced abortions, one of them five months into pregnancy. When she accompanied her abuser to medical appointments, he required her to wear a hijab and walk five feet behind him. She was compelled to learn the Quran in Arabic and permitted to speak only Urdu and Punjabi. She was also made to cook and clean for the gang members who abused her.

Sarah made several unsuccessful attempts to escape. On one occasion, after she reported her kidnapping to the police, she was interviewed by a Muslim officer who switched off the tape recorder and instructed her to drop her allegations because of “lack of evidence.” She later learned that this officer was imprisoned for child sex offences.

In a separate case, Anna was living in a children’s home in Bradford in 2002. From the age of 13 she was raped and abused while in the home and at 15 she was forced into a sharia marriage. Her social worker attended the marriage ceremony and permitted her husband’s parents to foster her after she became pregnant; the parents received a fostering allowance from the state. Anna described her situation as one of “domestic slavery” in which she was treated “like a maid” and repeatedly sexually abused by dozens of men.¹⁵In Britain, reports from the Metropolitan Police in London alone have indicated an average of 1,125 sexual assaults per year involving unlicensed taxi drivers. A significant proportion of the offenders in these cases have been identified as Muslim.¹⁶

A further form of sexual exploitation associated with certain Muslim communities across Britain is marriage trafficking. The Forced Marriage Unit (FMU) handled 801 cases in 2024 concerning girls and women resident in the country who were forced into marriage with men, providing direct support in 229 of those instances.

Among the 280 cases where the focus country was recorded in 2023, the six countries accounting for the highest numbers were Pakistan (45%), Bangladesh (13%), Afghanistan (7%), India (3%), Somalia (3%), and Nigeria (2%). Of these six, all except India and Nigeria have overwhelmingly Muslim populations.

Earlier Home Office figures from 2009 showed that 90% of forced marriage victims in Britain were Muslim. In more recent years, however, the FMU has ceased collecting or publishing data on the religion of those involved – a shift that echoes patterns of avoidance seen during the grooming gang investigations.

An FMU report stated:

Although forced marriage occurs in various communities and is not unique to Muslims, statistics show a clear overrepresentation of Muslims among those involved in forced marriage cases. It is also inaccurate to claim that Islam mandates a woman’s consent for marriage.

Similar patterns of sexual offences disproportionately involving Muslim men have been reported in other Western countries with significant Muslim immigrant populations. In the Netherlands, considerable media coverage has focused on so-called “lover boys” who are predominantly Moroccan Muslim men. These individuals first seduce Dutch girls, often teenagers, and then coerce them into prostitution in order to profit from their earnings. According to a 2001 report by the Amsterdam based Child Right organisation, approximately 5,000 “ordinary” Dutch schoolgirls aged 13 or 14 from typical family backgrounds had been lured into prostitution by “lover boys.” The documentary film Lover Boys, directed by Julia Rooke, follows the work of Ibrahim, a Dutch Moroccan social worker supporting both the perpetrators and their victims.¹⁸

In Sweden, a 2021 academic study examining “Swedish rape offenders” concluded that nearly half of the convicted individuals were born outside Sweden, with immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa being markedly overrepresented among them.¹⁹

In Australia, nine Lebanese Muslim men were convicted in 2002 of gang-raping white girls. Contemporary media reports at the time indicated that police were aware of over 60 female victims linked to the group, though the convictions related to the rapes of seven girls. Police seized a mobile phone message from one of the perpetrators that read:

Offender data from the 2017 Quilliam Foundation analysis, together with recent independent investigations, reveal a consistent, disproportionate involvement of Muslim men – overwhelmingly of Pakistani heritage – in group-based CSE.

The 250,000 figure is not a precise count. No such count exists because the British state has failed to record it. But we may regard it as a conservative estimate that accounts for the organised, repeated nature of the abuse (many girls raped hundreds of times by multiple perpetrators) and decades of institutional concealment.

Analysis of 264 convictions for group-based child sexual exploitation from 2005–2017 found that 84% (222 offenders) were South Asian, with the vast majority Pakistani Muslim. Only 7% were white and 8% black.²¹

Additional context from expert commentary includes statements by Dr. Taj Hargey, an imam at the Oxford Islamic Congregation, who observed that virtually every individual in these grooming gangs appears to be Muslim, estimating that 95% of those involved are of Muslim faith.²²

As previously stated, Peter McLoughlin’s research indicates that approximately 87% of rape gang convictions were of people with distinctively Muslim names. These figures stand in marked contrast to the much smaller proportion of Pakistani or Muslim communities within the overall population of modern Britain (Muslims approximately 6.5% and Pakistanis around 2.1%, according to the most recent census data). Multiple examinations, including police data from various forces, national audits and independent reviews, have documented this overrepresentation in group-based offending of this nature, even as some earlier official narratives emphasized no single community profile or sought to downplay ethnic patterns.²³

The number of reported rapes in the United Kingdom has risen substantially since 1997, when the era of large-scale mass immigration into the country commenced under Blair. Official police recorded crime data for England and Wales indicate that rape offences stood at approximately 8,593 in the year 2000 – a figure closely aligned with levels observed in the late 1990s prior to major changes in recording practices.²⁴ By the year ending March 2025, police recorded that rape offences had increased to over 70,000 according to figures published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), reflecting a rise exceeding 800% even after accounting for population growth of around 15% during the intervening years.²⁵

In stark contrast, Poland, which maintained relatively low levels of immigration throughout the same period, has experienced a decline in reported rapes. Polish national police data show 2,399 recorded rape offences in 2000 falling to 1,127 by 2023 – a reduction of more than 50%. With a stable population of approximately 38 million, this equates to a per capita rate of around three rapes per 100,000 residents in recent years, compared with over 100 per 100,000 in the United Kingdom.²⁶

These comparative patterns drawn from official sources highlight divergent trends between the two nations. References include the ONS bulletin on sexual offences in England and Wales for the year ending March 2025, the Home Office historical police recorded crime tables, and Eurostat police recorded offences data alongside Polish national statistics compiled via Statista for the period covering 2000 to 2023. Per capita calculations further underscore the scale of the disparity when relative population sizes are considered.

These figures indicate that the rape gangs are a specific ethnoreligious phenomenon, with Muslims – especially Pakistani Muslims – significantly overrepresented.

Britain is not a unique case. This sort of thing goes on anywhere that either welcomes mass migration from Muslim countries or contains long-established Muslim populations. There is a consistent pattern of sexual violence directed against non-Muslim minorities in settings where Muslims form the majority.²⁷

Across Britain, as we have noted, girls from Sikh and Hindu backgrounds have also been targeted by Muslim gangs. Unlike the White British majority, these non-Muslim immigrant populations were never prevented from organising as a collective to protect their own. In doing so, as was their duty, the Network of Sikh Organisations drew attention to the “appalling treatment” of non-Muslims in Pakistan:

In April 2024, UN human rights experts expressed serious alarm regarding the vulnerability of minority girls in Pakistan to forced religious conversions and forced marriages. Their press release highlighted that Christian and Hindu girls in particular face heightened risks of abduction, trafficking, child forced marriage, domestic servitude, and sexual violence.²⁹

Human rights groups and media reports, including a 2021 BBC investigation, have estimated that thousands of non-Muslim girls – primarily Christians, Hindus, and Sikhs – are abducted annually in Pakistan, compelled to convert to Islam, and forced into marriage with their abductors. One documented case involved Farah, a 12-year-old Christian girl abducted from her home in June 2020 by three Muslim men, raped, and forced to perform household labour as a slave.³⁰

A common sequence in these cases sees a girl abducted, coerced into signing a conversion certificate, and swiftly married to a Muslim man. Police in Pakistan frequently side with the abductors over the girl’s family. When parents pursue legal action, courts tend to uphold the legitimacy of the conversion. Birth certificates may be falsified to indicate that the girl is not a minor. Contact with her family is typically blocked. Following conversion to Islam, non-Muslim parents lose all authority over their child, as Islamic law prohibits non-Muslims from exercising guardianship over Muslims, including their own offspring.

The evidence from grooming gang convictions across Britain repeatedly shows a Muslim background among many of the perpetrators. When this is viewed alongside similar patterns of sex crimes observed both in countries of origin for immigrants and in Muslim-majority societies, it offers compelling grounds to consider that elements of Islam are contributing to the grooming gang scourge in our country.

While it is unsurprising that a religion can shape and regulate sexual behaviour, the suggestion that Islam might play a role in driving sex crimes remains deeply uncomfortable for some in the liberal West. Even so, the possibility of an Islamic influence on these crimes cannot be dismissed. The available data strongly points toward it as a hypothesis that merits serious examination.

The impact of any religion on individual behaviour is rarely direct and unmediated; it is heavily filtered through culture, which a religion can gradually reshape over generations. Not all Muslim communities or societies are influenced by Islam to the same degree or in the same manner. Minority Muslim populations may behave differently from majority ones. For instance, convictions of Indian-origin Muslim men in grooming gang cases across Britain are notably rare compared with those of Pakistani heritage. This disparity may relate to a demographic context: Muslims form only about 14% of India’s population (with Hindus comprising around 80%), placing them in a minority position where social and legal constraints differ markedly from Pakistan, where Muslims dominate overwhelmingly and non-Muslims constitute a small, often marginalised minority. In such a setting, exploiting non-Muslim neighbours becomes far easier.

At least eight theological aspects of Islam may contribute to cultural patterns that enable or normalise the sexual abuse of non-Muslim girls. These include (1) the doctrine of Muslim superiority, (2) the principle of loyalty and disavowal (al-walā' wa-l-barā'), (3) male dominance over women, (4) enforced seclusion and veiling of women, (5) forced marriage combined with the absence of a fixed minimum age of consent, (6) the perception of female sexuality as inherently dangerous or fitna, (7) the historical sharia institution of slavery, (8) and the system of dhimmitude.

These are all rooted in classical Islamic theology, up to and including Islamic jurisprudence. But even in sharia-governed nations, adaptations are common, such as setting a minimum marriage age or restricting unilateral divorce by men in order to lessen the harsher effects on women.

Islam holds that those who are righteous and truly fear God, meaning Muslims, are inherently superior to those who reject God’s commands, namely non-Muslims. This idea is captured in Quran 3:110:

The verse positions Muslims as the finest community, entrusted by God with the duty to enjoin good and prohibit evil. This responsibility can be understood as authorising Muslims to correct, compel, or, if needed, punish non-Muslims, potentially through coercion or force. Other Quranic passages affirm Islam’s ultimate supremacy over all religions, as in Sura 48:28:

Non-Muslims who refuse Islam are described in harsh terms, such as in Sura 8:55:

The concept of Muslim superiority is closely linked to derogatory views of non-Muslims. For instance, Sura 9:28 labels “associators” (a pejorative term encompassing Christians, Jews, and other non-Muslims) as “unclean” (najis).

These teachings can provide a religious justification that bolsters an abuser’s conviction of their own superiority and facilitates the dehumanisation of non-Muslim victims.

In her July 2020 podcast interview, Rotherham survivor Dr. Ella Hill described abusive language and acts that embodied this sense of superiority. She recounted being made to bend down and kiss her perpetrator’s feet as a deliberate act to underscore her inferiority. She also spoke of another Rotherham victim who, during gang rapes by dozens of men, was forced to lick their feet clean because “they believed they were morally superior to her.” Hill observed:

She further noted that her rapists viewed non-Muslim habits as inherently impure:

The Islamic principle known as al-walā' wa-l-barā' (loyalty and disavowal) commands Muslims to direct their love and allegiance towards what pleases God while hating, avoiding, and distancing themselves from what displeases Him. In essence, it calls for loving and supporting fellow believers and rejecting non-believers.

This teaching draws on several Quranic verses, including:

These passages emphasise that Muslims should maintain strong bonds within the Muslim community while keeping non-Muslims at a distance and harbouring enmity toward them. The Quran warns that God views non-Muslims with contempt and that Muslims who befriend, ally with, or associate closely with them risk being regarded by God as disbelievers themselves. While some Muslims downplay this doctrine, revivalist movements, which have gained considerable influence in Western countries, have actively promoted it, presenting strict adherence to loyalty and disavowal as vital for the Muslim community’s success in carrying out its divine mission.

Beyond its theological role, al-walā' wa-l-barā' has profoundly shaped certain Islamic cultures. In such environments, many Muslims feel strong pressure not to say or do anything that could damage the image of the Muslim community or bring discredit to Islam. Within an honour- and shame-based framework reinforced by these values, speaking out to outsiders about wrongdoing committed by fellow Muslims is often seen as an act of betrayal. This dynamic can have serious real-world consequences. For example, in her book The Imam’s Daughter (2009), Hannan – later known as Hannah – described her experience as a 14- or 15-year-old Pakistani teenager in Britain.

After confiding in a female teacher that her father, an imam, was beating her, the teacher informed the deputy head, who arranged for a male Pakistani Muslim social worker to meet with her at school. Initially terrified because of his background, Hannan eventually opened up to him about being treated as a domestic servant, fearing a forced marriage, and enduring physical abuse. That same afternoon, she returned home to find the social worker speaking with her father and relaying everything she had said. While the social worker was present, her father acted kindly, but once he left, her father subjected her to a severe beating and rape, threatened to kill her if she ever spoke again, and imprisoned her in the cellar for days. When Hannan later encountered the social worker at school and refused further contact, he reportedly told her:

Similar patterns have appeared in accounts from grooming gang survivors. Some have described approaching the police only to be interviewed by Muslim officers who switched off the recording device and urged her to abandon her complaint due to supposed “lack of evidence.” A deeply ingrained culture of enforced loyalty and community protection can discourage individuals from reporting abuses or providing evidence against members of their own group. Had the social worker in Hannan’s case reported her disclosures to the police, leading to her father facing criminal charges, he would have exposed himself, and by extension those associated with him, to the serious risk of being labelled a traitor within the community.

The prominent Indian-Pakistani Muslim thinker and revivalist Abul A‘la Maududi, in his influential work Let Us Be Muslims (2016), maintained that Muslims cannot achieve true success until their highest allegiance is given to God and to the Muslim ummah (community). The doctrine of loyalty and disavowal exerts particularly strong pressure when Muslims live as a minority in non-Muslim host societies. In such settings, as they seek to preserve and assert a powerful collective identity, Muslims may place even greater emphasis on internal solidarity and separation from non-believers than they would in their countries of origin.³³

Islam establishes that men hold the position of managers or maintainers (qawwāmūn) over women, as stated in Sura 4:34, where the role involves ensuring women remain in their proper state. Under Islamic law, every woman remains under the guardianship (walī) of a male relative. Normally, this is her father. Should the father be unable to serve due to death, loss of mental capacity, or apostasy from Islam, a specified order of male relatives from the paternal line steps in, starting with the paternal grandfather, then sons, brothers, nephews, and uncles. Sura 4:34 further authorises men to discipline their wives, including through physical violence.

Numerous authoritative sources and sharia regulations reinforce the notion of women’s inferiority to men. Sura 2:228 declares that men hold a rank above women. The Prophet Muhammad stated that women are deficient in both religion and intelligence relative to men, and in the same hadith he noted that women form the majority of those in hell. He also taught that if a woman or a dog passes in front of a praying man, the prayer is invalidated (a reason mosques position men with their backs to women during prayer). Sharia obliges a wife to engage in sexual intercourse with her husband whenever he desires it; if she refuses, Muhammad said the angels will curse her until morning.

Divorce under sharia strongly favours men. A husband may unilaterally divorce his wife without stating a reason simply by pronouncing “I divorce you” three times. For a wife, obtaining a divorce is far more difficult, typically involving a formal legal process and often a financial cost. Following divorce, the mother may retain physical custody of young children up to a particular age, but the father retains legal guardianship. Moreover, if the mother remarries, she loses the right to have children from her previous marriage reside with her. Sharia rules on evidence further diminish women’s status, valuing a woman’s testimony at half that of a man’s.

Inheritance laws under sharia generally allocate women half the share given to men (for example, a son receives twice the portion of a daughter). A wife or wives together inherit one-quarter of a husband’s estate if he leaves no children, or one-eighth if he does leave children. In contrast, a husband inherits half of his wife’s estate if she has no children, or one-quarter if she does.

Sharia’s approach to rape also disadvantages women. Rape is categorised as a form of zinā (illicit sexual intercourse), the same offence that covers adultery and fornication. Zinā is defined as sexual intercourse between a man and a woman who is neither his wife nor his slave. There is no distinct offence of rape; it is treated as coerced zinā (and marital rape is not recognised). The penalty for the rapist mirrors that for consensual extramarital sex: 100 lashes for an unmarried person or stoning to death for one who is or has been married. When a woman accuses a man of rape, her consent is presumed unless both the act of penetration and her lack of consent are proven by four male eyewitnesses who each directly observed the man’s penis entering the woman’s vagina. (Naturally, the presence of four men witnessing a rape without intervening makes it highly improbable they would testify in the victim’s favour). Should a woman allege rape but fail to produce the four required male witnesses, she risks being convicted of zinā on the basis of her own accusation. In 2003, Pakistan’s National Commission on the Status of Women reported that up to 88% of women imprisoned in Pakistan were rape or gang-rape victims who, unable to meet the four witness requirement, were instead convicted of illicit sex.³⁴

Taken together, these sharia provisions that institutionalise male dominance over women exert a profound influence. In cultures shaped by Islam, boys can be raised to grow into men who assume rightful control over the women in their lives, confident in their inherent superiority.

Islamic law contains multiple provisions that mandate the covering and seclusion of women. It is widely recognised that a Muslim woman must cover most of her body when appearing in public. Additionally, sharia grants a male guardian the authority to restrict a girl’s or a woman’s movements, allowing him to confine a wife or daughter to the home and permit her to leave only when accompanied by a male relative and for a valid reason.

This is reflected in Sura 33:33, which instructs women: “Stay in your houses and do not flaunt yourselves.” One consequence of the sharia-derived culture of covering and seclusion is that a woman who appears in public without covering or remains outside the protected space of the home may be culturally perceived as unguarded and therefore sexually available or promiscuous. This notion, that an uncovered woman invites molestation, is suggested in Sura 33:59 of the Quran, where Muhammad is instructed that his wives and daughters should cover themselves so they are “not abused.”

Certain Islamic preachers have explicitly endorsed this view. Following the high-profile convictions of Muslim men of Lebanese background for rape in Sydney, Australia, the country’s Grand Mufti, Sheik Taj Aldin al-Hilali, controversially placed blame on the victims for not being covered and not remaining in their homes. He stated:

In making these remarks, Sheikh al-Hilali was presenting Islamic norms as the remedy to crimes of the kind committed by rape gangs. According to this perspective, if individuals adopted Islam and adhered to its rules, women and girls would be protected from such abuses because they would be kept secluded, placed under permanent male supervision, and rendered invisible to outsiders.

Under sharia, marriage takes the form of a contract arranged between two men: the groom and the bride’s male guardian (her walī). The structure closely resembles a contract of sale. The groom pays an agreed sum, known as the mahr, to the bride and in exchange she becomes sexually available to him.

Islamic jurisprudence sets no minimum age at which a girl or a woman may be married. Religious authorities permit a father to arrange a marriage for his daughter even while she is still an infant. The Prophet Muhammad himself married Aisha when she was six, an arrangement made between Muhammad and her father, and consummated the marriage when she was nine. The Quran itself addresses the remarriage of a divorced girl who has not yet reached menstruation (Sura 65:4).

Sharia distinguishes between types of guardians. The bride’s father or paternal grandfather is termed a walī mujbir (‘forcing guardian’), because certain schools of Islamic law allow him to compel a virgin daughter or granddaughter into marriage without her consent. The notion that a girl must reach a particular age before she can consent to sexual activity is foreign to Islam. In Islamic teaching, the only lawful context for a woman to consent to sex is through marriage, and even that consent is not always required.

Significantly, the Arabic term nikāḥ denotes both marriage and sexual intercourse. Sharia in effect merges the two concepts. An unmarried woman is forbidden from engaging in sex, while a married woman has no right under sharia to refuse sexual relations with her husband. Hadiths further state that a virgin’s silence constitutes consent to marriage. This merging of consent to marriage and consent to sex sheds light on Dr. Hill’s account that her rapists interpreted their victims’ silence as consent to the rape, drawing on these same hadiths.

Islamic scholars differ on the degree of physical or emotional maturity needed for sexual intercourse within marriage. Some hold that the onset of puberty serves as the threshold for readiness, though Muhammad consummated his marriage with the nine-year-old Aisha before she reached puberty and others permit ‘thighing’ (intercrural sex) with a wife who is menstruating or considered too young for vaginal penetration. This practice Dr. Hill also described.

These observations suggest that Muslim grooming gangs may exhibit religious and cultural indifference to the modern concept of an age of consent. In an interview, Andrew Norfolk, one of the first journalists to expose Britain’s rape gang scandal, stated that

Islamic canonical sources portray women as possessing sexual desires that are at least as strong as men’s, if not stronger and view these desires as potentially harmful to men. The Prophet Muhammad stated: “After me I have not left any trial more severe to men than women.” The Arabic term fitna used here denotes a severe trial that can involve seduction or temptation leading people astray from faith, and it also carries connotations of chaos that disrupts social harmony.

Muhammad further suggested that men are susceptible to sexual temptation, explaining that Allah has preordained a portion of zinā (unlawful sexual intercourse) for every man: “Allah has written for the son of Adam his inevitable share of zinā whether he is aware of it or not.”

One practical expression of anxiety over women’s sexuality is the practice of female genital mutilation (FGM), which various schools of Islamic law either require or strongly recommend as a way to curb excessive female sexual desire.

Another reflection of the perceived danger posed by female sexuality is the strict separation of the sexes, enforced through practices such as veiling women’s bodies, restricting them to the home, and the Quranic directive against men and women gazing at one another: