INSIGHT UK called for a comprehensive national public inquiry into Britain’s grooming gangs on January 8th, 2025. We did so because previous inquiries have consistently failed to confront the true root causes of these crimes, crimes that have devastated countless young lives, including White British, Hindu, and Sikh girls.
We called for:
- A fearless investigation into grooming gangs, with zero tolerance for political correctness that obstructs justice.
- Full identification of perpetrators, including inter-city trafficking networks that “passed on” victims, to ensure accountability while protecting innocent communities. This must include understanding the ideologies and justifications, including religious beliefs and ethnicity, that the perpetrators used to groom vulnerable girls.
- Strong, actionable prevention measures to safeguard children and ensure these atrocities never happen again.
Yet the Government’s Draft Terms of Reference for its independent Grooming Gangs Inquiry fails to meet any of these calls. The proposed methodology does not seek to uncover the true drivers behind these crimes.
Although religion is mentioned, it appears only in the context of institutional response, whether authorities hesitated to act for fear of appearing racist or harming community cohesion. What is glaringly absent is any serious examination of religion or ethnicity as motivating factors behind the abuse itself.
The Terms of Reference make no attempt to address what countless victims have already testified: that religion and ethnicity played a role in encouraging and normalising the grooming and sexual exploitation of predominantly White British, Hindu, and Sikh girls.
It is now widely acknowledged that a significant proportion of perpetrators in grooming gangs are men of Pakistani-Muslim heritage. If this inquiry is to have any credibility, it must ask the difficult but necessary question: why are offenders emerging disproportionately from certain sections of this community?
To avoid this question is to abandon the victims.
Here, religion and ethnicity cannot simply be brushed aside. They matter because they shaped attitudes, behaviours, and targeting patterns.
Louise Casey’s National Audit on Group-Based Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (published June 2025) explicitly states:
“Despite reviews, reports and inquiries raising questions about men from grooming and sexually exploiting young White girls, the system has consistently failed to fully acknowledge this or collect accurate data so it can be examined effectively.”
The audit documents repeated examples of Pakistani-Muslim majority grooming gangs.
In Derbyshire in 2010:
“11 men convicted in Derbyshire as part of Operation Retriever. All of those convicted were men, aged between 24-38, and were predominantly of British Pakistani ethnicity, with one White British offender. They are convicted of systematically grooming and sexually abusing 26 teenage girls.”
In Oxfordshire between 2005 and 2010:
“a significant proportion of those found guilty nationally of group child sexual abuse being from a Pakistani and/or Muslim heritage”
Baroness Casey’s audit goes further, urging authorities to:
“examine further cultural and religious drivers behind child sexual exploitation including concerns that Sikh and Hindu children had been targeted for abuse because they were ‘easy targets’ and who would never tell anyone about being exploited because of the shame.”
So why, in light of this evidence, are religion and ethnicity still excluded as potential drivers?
Why does the Government refuse to acknowledge what victims, communities, and official audits have already made painfully clear?
Decades of cases point to a consistent and disturbing pattern: Pakistani-Muslim gangs are disproportionately involved in organised grooming and sexual exploitation. To deny this is to deny reality. And to deny reality is to deny justice.
If this inquiry is to mean anything, it must confront the uncomfortable truth: religion and ethnicity have played a role in these crimes, and they must be examined openly, honestly, and without fear.
The Government’s inquiry must address religion and ethnicity not merely as issues of response, but as possible drivers of abuse.
Anything less is a betrayal of victims. The survivors deserve justice. And the nation demands it.
