Chief Executive Andrea Williams comments in light of Baroness Casey’s statement that grooming survivors are still being failed
Baroness Casey’s latest intervention should shame our nation.
That survivors of grooming gangs were not only abused as children but then prosecuted as criminals by the very authorities that should have protected them is one of the darkest indictments imaginable of modern Britain.
Casey’s warning that many of these survivors are still being failed today reveals something even more disturbing: the institutional failures that enabled these crimes have not been fully addressed.
For years, vulnerable girls were groomed, raped, trafficked and brutalised while police forces, social services, local authorities, care homes, schools and health professionals repeatedly looked the other way. We know this because we have dealt with some of these cases at the Christian Legal Centre.
The cases are harrowing and heartbreaking and I feel the pain every day. I feel the pain of not being able to help the victims to wholeness in a way that only God can.
Casey’s earlier audit exposed a culture of blindness, denial and institutional cowardice that left children unprotected and perpetrators free to offend.
Yet we should not imagine that this was merely a failure of procedures, training or resources.
It was a failure of moral vision and courage.
Losing sight of our God-given dignity
A society that loses sight of the God-given dignity of every human being will eventually lose its ability to protect the vulnerable. When we abandon God, we do not become neutral. We lose the moral foundations upon which justice depends.
The grooming gangs scandal was not simply the failure of a few individuals. It represented a collapse across entire institutions.
Care homes failed children. Social services failed children. Police failed children. The NHS failed children. Prosecutors failed children. Courts failed children. Time and again, adults in positions of authority saw warning signs but chose not to act. In some cases they actively blamed the victims instead.
How does an entire system reach the point where abused children are treated as offenders?
The answer lies deeper than bureaucratic incompetence.
No fruit without the root
For decades Britain has attempted to retain the benefits of a Christian moral framework while rejecting the Christian beliefs that created it. We have appeased the ideologies that sought to replace it.
Secular, liberal humanism makes us highly individualistic and we make ourselves gods.
We chase what we think will bring us fulfilment and freedom but end up enslaved to sin. This weakens our soul and we become unable as a community to stand up against a false religion that arises in our midst and asserts comes its vision.
That of Islam.
We have wanted human rights without believing that human beings are made in the image of God. We have wanted justice without acknowledging a divine standard of justice. We have wanted compassion without accepting the source from which compassion flows.
The result has been moral confusion.
Where there is no self-restraint, there can be no institutional restraint.
Institutions are not abstract entities. They are collections of people. If individuals lose the moral courage to speak truth, to confront evil and to protect the vulnerable, institutions inevitably become weak, fearful and compromised.
Proverbs warns that “where there is no vision, the people perish” (29:18). We might equally say that where there is no moral vision, children perish.
Many of the professionals involved undoubtedly believed they were acting compassionately. Some feared being accused of racism if they spoke out on the Islamic character and nature of what was going on in the grooming gangs. The women we know who are victims became Muslim, fully veiled, and had multiple children and abortions.
Others professionals feared career consequences. Others preferred administrative convenience to difficult confrontation. Casey’s audit documents how legitimate questions were often avoided because institutions feared causing offence.
At Christian Concern, we called much of this out in real time as it was unfolding and many years ago but we were isolated and side-lined; called shrill and scaremongering.
We were labelled homophobic, transphobic and Islamophobic. We always tested our hearts. There was no hate in our hearts but rather overwhelming love for the Lord Jesus and our neighbour. We have always been ready to risk all for the love of God and neighbour. The passion is no less real today than it was then.
The Christian understanding of justice and love begins with truth. Real compassion never requires us to ignore reality. Real love does not avert its eyes from wrongdoing. Real justice is willing to confront uncomfortable facts because the wellbeing of victims matters more than the comfort of institutions.
The continuing failure to clear victims’ names and secure proper compensation demonstrates that the instinct to protect systems rather than people has not disappeared. Casey has rightly highlighted the injustice of survivors carrying criminal records for actions committed under coercion while many perpetrators escaped accountability.
Every conviction obtained against a child who was in fact a victim represents a profound miscarriage of justice.
Those convictions should be overturned. Those survivors should receive proper support. Those responsible for institutional failures should face accountability.
But we must also learn the deeper lesson.
Britain cannot solve a moral crisis merely through administrative reform.
New inquiries have their place. New procedures matter. Better data collection is necessary. Stronger policing is essential. Casey’s recommendations deserve implementation.
Yet no amount of structural reform can substitute for moral renewal.
The grooming gangs scandal exposed what happens when institutions become detached from enduring moral truths. When right and wrong become negotiable, when truth becomes subordinate to political sensitivities, and when courage gives way to self-preservation, the vulnerable suffer first.
Children paid the price.
But the good news is that Jesus Christ paid the price for all the failure on the cross over 2000 years ago.
The Christian faith offers a radically different vision. It teaches that every child is precious because every child bears the image of God. It teaches that authority exists to serve and protect, not to preserve itself. It teaches that justice matters because God is just. It teaches that the vulnerable deserve protection because Christ himself identified with the vulnerable and laid his life down for them.
The Christian faith says that when we confess our sins both individual and corporate there is a road to redemption; a road to repairing institutions.
That vision built many of the institutions that once made Britain strong.
If we want those institutions to recover their purpose, we need more than policy reform. We need a Jesus centred Revival and Reformation.