UK inquiry: 250,000 girls raped by grooming gangs as police, politicians looked away

An independent British inquiry released a 219-page report June 16, concluding that organized networks of predominantly Pakistani Muslim men sexually exploited girls and young women across the United Kingdom over several decades while police, social workers, schools, the National Health Service, and politicians repeatedly failed to intervene or suppressed evidence of abuse.

The report, "The Rape Gang Inquiry," estimated that as many as 250,000 girls and young women may have been victimized nationwide. The inquiry was chaired by independent Member of Parliament Rupert Lowe and led by survivor and activist Sammy Woodhouse. Funded by more than 20,000 public donors, the probe lacked statutory powers to compel witness testimony or access classified records. The panel also included Conservative MPs Esther McVey, Nick Timothy, and Carla Lockhart.

Scale

The report's estimate of 250,000 victims traces to a 2019 speech in the House of Lords by Lord Pearson of Rannoch. Drawing on findings from the 2014 Jay Report on Rotherham, which documented at least 1,400 victims in a single town, Pearson said a national total of "upwards of 250,000" was "probably an underestimate."

The inquiry said the figure "cannot be confirmed with precision," noting that the Baroness Casey National Audit on Group-Based Child Sexual Exploitation, published in June 2025, found the scale of abuse "remains impossible to quantify precisely due to inconsistent data collection and historical suppression."

The report said it found evidence of grooming gang activity in at least 149 local authority districts, representing nearly 40% of Britain's districts.

Perpetrators

The report cited research by Peter McLoughlin, author of the 2016 book “Easy Meat,” which analyzed grooming gang convictions from 1997 to 2018 and found that about 87% of those convicted in group-based child sexual exploitation cases had what he described as "distinctively Muslim names."

It also cited a 2017 analysis by the Quilliam Foundation of 264 convictions between 2005 and 2017 that found 84% of perpetrators were South Asian, with the vast majority identified as Pakistani Muslim. The report further quoted Dr. Taj Hargey of the Oxford Islamic Congregation as estimating that about 95% of gang members are Muslim.

The inquiry concluded that the networks were "predominantly of Pakistani heritage," while noting that additional groups involving Somali, Iranian, Syrian, Turkish, and other Muslim backgrounds had also been documented.

According to the report, victims were often girls as young as 11 who were initially befriended by young men offering gifts, alcohol, or drugs. The girls were then transported in taxis to houses, apartments, and hotels, where they were raped by groups of men, filmed for blackmail, subjected to violence, pressured to convert to Islam, sometimes impregnated, and, in some cases, trafficked between cities.

The report said victims testified that abusers referred to them as "white trash" and "kuffar," an Arabic term for nonbelievers.

The inquiry concluded that perpetrators "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."

Institutional failures

The inquiry catalogued failures across multiple British institutions.

Police forces "discouraged reporting, criminalised victims, destroyed evidence and allowed perpetrators to walk free," the report said.

One survivor, identified only as Fiona, told the inquiry that police issued formal "harbouring notices" to her abusers — written warnings prohibiting them from contacting or housing her — but took no further action. Fiona testified that, on one occasion, a police officer returned her to a house where abuse was taking place and told the men to "have fun with her." On another occasion, she said police told the abusers that if they could persuade her to sign herself out of care, authorities would stop pursuing the case.

The report also cited a survivor's account of a police call handler who, after being told the men abusing her daughter appeared to be Asian, allegedly responded: "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."

According to the report, social 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 report said the National Health Service "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."

Woodhouse, who has spoken publicly about being abused by members of the Rotherham grooming gangs, was denied compensation by the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority because officials determined she had "consented" to the abuse as a minor, according to the report.

Political accountability

The report said the Labour Party "bears particular responsibility," arguing that Labour-controlled councils and Labour MPs were briefed on grooming gang activity years before public acknowledgment of the problem. It noted that Labour MPs voted 364-111 in January 2025 against a Conservative amendment calling for a national statutory inquiry.

The inquiry also cited a Daily Express investigation by Zak Garner-Purkis and Callum Cuddeford, published Feb. 22, 2026, that alleged 13,000 suspected grooming gang members and pedophiles received warning letters during the period when Prime Minister Keir Starmer served as director of public prosecutions.

The Prime Minister's Office did not issue a statement following the June 16 publication of the report.

The report also criticized the Conservative Party, which held national power from 2010, for failing to require ethnicity data collection for child sexual exploitation offenders and for not establishing a full statutory national inquiry despite years of evidence.

The Labour government announced a national inquiry in December 2025 under the leadership of Baroness Anne Longfield, with terms of reference finalized in March 2026. The report argued those terms deliberately excluded "systematic examination of the demographic, cultural and religious drivers" of the abuse.

Report's framing and recommendations

In a foreword, Lowe wrote that "Britain doesn't have a racism problem, it has an immigration problem," arguing that postwar immigration policies and political reluctance to address concerns about race contributed to the conditions that allowed the abuse to continue.

The inquiry called for a new Childhood Sexual Exploitation Act, minimum prison sentences of 50 years for ringleaders, mandatory deportation of foreign national offenders, and what it called "Sammy's Law," which would expunge criminal records for victims convicted of offenses committed under gang coercion.

The inquiry said it plans to release full witness testimonies and pursue civil and private legal actions following publication of the report.