Nationwide police operation on grooming gangs announced

A nationwide constabulary cognition to way down those successful grooming gangs has been announced by the Home Office.

The National Crime Agency (NCA) volition people those who person sexually exploited children arsenic portion of a grooming gang, and volition analyse cases that were not antecedently progressed.

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said successful a statement: "The susceptible young girls who suffered unimaginable maltreatment astatine the hands of groups of big men person present grown into brave women who are rightly demanding justness for what they went done erstwhile they were conscionable children.

"Not capable radical listened to them then. That was incorrect and unforgivable. We are changing that now.

"More than 800 grooming pack cases person already been identified by constabulary aft I asked them to look again astatine cases which had closed excessively early.

"Now we are asking the National Crime Agency to pb a large nationwide cognition to way down much perpetrators and bring them to justice."

The NCA volition enactment successful concern with constabulary forces astir the state and specializer officers from the Child Sexual Exploitation Taskforce, Operation Hydrant - which supports constabulary forces to code each analyzable and high-profile cases of kid intersexual maltreatment - and the Tackling Organised Exploitation Programme.

It comes aft Sir Keir Starmer announced a nationalist inquiry into kid enactment maltreatment connected Saturday, up of the merchandise of a government-requested audit into the standard of grooming gangs crossed the country, which concluded a nationwide probe was necessary.

The premier curate antecedently argued a nationalist enquiry was not necessary, but changed his presumption pursuing an audit into group-based kid intersexual maltreatment led by Baroness Casey, acceptable to beryllium published adjacent week.

Ms Cooper is acceptable to code parliament connected Monday astir the findings of the adjacent 200-page report, which is expected to pass that achromatic British girls were "institutionally ignored for fearfulness of racism".

One idiosyncratic acquainted with the study said it details the organization failures successful treating young girls and cites a decennary of mislaid enactment from the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), acceptable up successful 2014 to analyse grooming gangs successful Rotherham.

The study is besides expected to nexus amerciable migration with the exploitation of young girls.

Read more:
Telford kid maltreatment victims talk out
What we cognize astir grooming gangs, from the data
The women who blew whistle connected Rotherham

Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, said connected Saturday that Sir Keir should recognise "he made a mistake and apologise for six wasted months".

Speaking to Sky's Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips, Chancellor Rachel Reeves refused to accidental if the authorities volition apologise for dismissing calls for a nationalist national enquiry into grooming gangs.

She said: "What is the astir important happening here? It is the victims, and it's not people's wounded feelings astir however they person been spoken about."