Over 106,000 people have signed a government petition, requesting that the Home Office releases its full review into grooming gangs.
The initial review was commissioned by then Home Secretary Sajid Javid in 2018, who described the scandal of child grooming as “one of the most shocking state failures that I can remember.” He also promised that there would be “no no-go areas of inquiry“ as part of the review, saying that he would not “let cultural or political sensitivities get in the way of understanding the problem and doing something about it.”
However, the findings of this review have not been published, and a Newsnight report in January 2020 was told by the government that “no public report will be published as a consequence of this work.”
A report by The Independent, published in January, found that almost 19,000 children were sexually groomed in England in 2019. Tim Dieppe commented at the time of the report, asking how many more girls would be sacrificed on the altar of political correctness before the government would act:
“Thousands of young girls are suffering abuse because of a politically correct unwillingness to systematically tackle the problem. … We need to be open about the ethnicities and religious convictions of the perpetrators and the victims –so that we can properly understand the patterns of abuse and motivations of those involved and put a stop to this horrific abuse.”
Despite the obvious evidence, the government has made no attempt to estimate the number of victims of grooming gangs over the years.
In answer to a recent written question from Lord Pearson, the government made clear that it had no idea how many have suffered at the hands of grooming gangs over the years, and only offered estimates for the year 2015.
The petition, started by free speech activist Jonathan Wong, “[demands] the release of the official research on grooming gangs undertaken by the Government in full.”
It is currently the fastest growing petition on the government website and garnered some 25,000 signatures in just over 12 hours. After five days, the petition now has over 106,000 signatures – enough for Parliament to consider a debate on the issue.
Please add your name to the petition and pressure the government to release its official research on the characteristics of grooming gangs.
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