Young rape victims blamed for offences against them, ‘damning' gangs report says

Children and teenage girls were blamed for crimes perpetrated against them, a “deeply disturbing" report into grooming gangs has found.

- AMY-CLARE MARTIN, KATE DEVLIN

Yvette Cooper has vowed to take immediate action on 12 recommendations by Baroness Louise Casey following a rapid national audit on grooming gangs in Britain.

The home secretary said there had been “too much denial' and "too little justice" for victims as she announced a string of measures, including a time-limited national inquiry and mandatory collection of data on the nationality and ethnicity of perpetrators.

Addressing the Commons, Ms Cooper said:

• The report found "clear evidence" of over-representation of Asian and Pakistani heritage men among grooming gang suspects

• The government issued an “unequivocal apology" to victims for the country's failure to keep them safe

• The audit identifies a deep-rooted failure to "treat children as children" in investigations

• Grooming gangs are to be treated as "serious and organised crime", and more than 800 cold cases will be followed up by the National Crime Agency

• Asylum seekers who are found guilty of grooming children or committing sexual offences will have their applications rejected

In her 200-page report, Baroness Casey called for tougher prosecution of men who have sex with under-16s to ensure their charges are never downgraded from rape. She said we have "failed in our duty" to properly understand this kind of group offending as she hit out at an "appalling" lack of data over offenders' ethnicities.

"If we'd got this right years ago - seeing these girls as children raped rather than 'wayward teenagers' or collaborators in their abuse, collecting ethnicity data, and acknowledging as a system that we did not do a good enough job - then I doubt we'd be in this place now," she wrote.